Secret Cinema

Summary

Secret Cinema creates award-winning immersive shows, producing 50+ titles & selling 1m+ tickets to date. Bringing much-loved films to life in a spectacular way, they're now primed for growth post-lockdown, planning to take their hit UK shows international & expand to new formats like music & gaming. Backed by Active Partners.

• Strong track record of growth: ticket sales increased 3x, 2017 to 2019
• Long-term studio relationships and an exciting pipeline of new shows
• International expansion already underway, with shows in Shanghai & LA
• Backed by Active Partners (Soho House, Rapha, Finisterre & Leon)

Idea

Secret was born of Fabien Riggall’s life-long love of film. His idea was to take the cinematic experience to the next level, creating “worlds” in which the lines between the audience and performance blur and each person is immersed in the story. Across 50+ shows we have sold over 1m tickets, with our biggest shows selling over 100k each.

Our shows are spectacular: the aim is to create the best night out of the year and, with a Net Promoter Score of 78, we rate among the world’s most loved brands. Our database has expanded by 54% since 2019: growth which shows no sign of slowing.

Our format is scalable, working across genres and we are now expanding into shows built on music and gaming, entertainment segments larger than film.

We are also growing internationally. In 2019, we took Bond to Shanghai and in 2020 worked with Netflix to adapt our Stranger Things show for LA, reaching a US audience of over 300k.

As well as announcing our next UK blockbuster title, imminently we will launch shows that bring major format innovations: our first gaming title with a renown Games publisher, and a digital production with a major studio, based on a popular film franchise.

We are raising funds to support our growth, emerging from lockdown with pent-up demand and our strongest-ever slate of shows. Immersive pioneers, our goal is to build a genre-defining next gen entertainment business.

Team

We have a team that combines creative excellence with deep commercial expertise, capable of building Secret into a global business.

Fabien Riggall founded Secret and was CEO until 2016. He now mentors our creatives 1 day a week, including the Group Creative Director, Matt Bennett, who has been with us for four years and two years ago assumed creative responsibility for all shows.

Max Alexander joined as CEO in 2017, was previously MD at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group, and originally at McKinsey & Co. Max’s direct reports include:

Nicola Blackford, Chief Commercial Officer, ex Boston Consulting Group. Nicola led the recent transfer of Bond to Shanghai and worked with Netflix to take Stranger Things to LA

Damien Macaulay, COO / CFO, with long experience in creative businesses in the UK and US. Ex PWC

Sacha Milroy, our Technical Director, who joined from The National Theatre, where she was Director of Producing and Planning

This executive team is balanced with strong oversight from investors. Our NEDs are:

Spencer Skinner, Managing Partner at Active Partners, Secret’s lead investor. Active’s other investments have included Soho House, Rapha, Finisterre and Leon

Chris Huey represents NEON Adventures, and is a Director of Front of The Pack, based in London and LA

Richard Mathews, who was our interim CEO, and has been an NED and investor in growth companies for 20+ years