EXCLUSIVE: VOD platform planning five-ten original shows.

Martin Warner

British entrepreneur Martin Warner’s US and UK-based VOD service Flix Premiere has announced a $50m production fund.

The move comes one year after the platform launched on desktop, mobile and OTT channels and will allow Warner and his team to produce five to 10 Flix Premiere Originals over the next two years.

“This will enable us to get in earlier on films and get involved in marketing at an earlier stage,” CEO Warner, who is on the Croisette scouting for titles, said.

Backed by media and technology investors, the fund will assemble an agnostic slate, picking up films from the international festival circuit and acquiring titles at script stage. Warner expects to announce the first six titles by the end of the year.

“A couple of years on and a few hundred movies later we haven’t digressed from that plan,” Warner said. “We tend to have smaller independent movies and outside the lions like Amazon Studios and Netflix we’re in 95% of the US and UK households (on an average of three devices) and we’re on pretty much every application. We have ambitions to scale.”

The Flix Premiere line-up comprises gems like Daniel Bonjour’s After The Rain, Navin Ramaswaran’s Chasing Valentine, and Interwoven starring Mo’Nique, and rotates every 10 to 14 days. Films remain exclusive on the site for 12 months.