Empire was launched a full 102 years ago when a young pharmacist named Georges Haddad, Mario’s father, began projecting silent shorts in Beirut cafes and opened the city’s first movie theater, which he dubbed the Cosmograph. Even to this day, Mario still manages theatres in Lebanon. In addition to its longstanding distribution ties to Hollywood studios such as Columbia Pictures and 20th Century Fox, Empire distributes on a very selective basis, the occasional Arab film such as SEA SHADOW, DJINN and FROM A TO B and is producer alongside Front Row and Film Clinic of the Arabic-language remake for Netflix of PERFECT STRANGERS that co-starred Nadine Labaki and Mona Zaki.