While many users love Arri for the amazing cameras, lenses, lights and accessories they make, Arri is also one of the major rental houses for high end motion picture equipment. In fact, for a long time, Panavision was rumored to be both Arri's biggest competitor (as a rental house) and biggest customer (buying Arri bodies and "Panavising" them for rental customers who wanted Panny glass and Arri bodies).
While most Arri equipment is available for purchase, there is still at least one Arri item, the Alexa 65, that is "rental only," so if you want to work with it, you've got to go to Arri.
Up until now, Arri has had five North American rental locations, Burbank, Brooklyn, Vancouver, Atlanta, and Charlotte. Studio Daily now reports that Arri will be closing the Atlanta location, despite Arri Atlanta having serviced such major productions as Avengers: Infinity War out of that location.
The most surprising part of this is that Arri is keeping their location in Charlotte. North Carolina is a beautiful state which is wonderful to shoot in, and Charlotte rental houses often service the large TV presence in Wilmington NC, but it is not the hotbed of production that is Atlanta in specific and Georgia in general.
It also doesn't seem like North Carolina will be picking up the slack since the announcement mentioned that Arri will be moving inventory from their Atlanta location to Burbank and Brooklyn, not Charlotte.
This makes sense since Arri is focusing on major coastal demand and is turning those locations into regional training centers, but it does leave us wondering if Charlotte is far behind, or if there are other strategic reasons for choosing to close the location that is in arguably the larger market.
The plan is to offer employee's from Atlanta the opportunity to relocate to other Arri Rental locations.
