EMI Films

Spikings announced a slate of films under his auspices: The Jazz Singer with Neil Diamond, The Elephant Man (both 1980), Honky Tonk Freeway (1981) Franco Zeffirelli's biopic of Maria Callas, Discoland (which became Can't Stop the Music), The Awakening, and The Knight directed by Ridley Scott.

Delfont created a new company, Associated Film Distribution, to distribute films of EMI and ITC, then controlled by Lew Grade, his brother. This has been called "an utterly foolish move." EMI's film division was renamed Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment, to reflect EMI's merger with Thorn Electrical Industries to become Thorn EMI in 1979.

In March 1980, EMI were only making one film in Britain The Mirror Crack'd, which was released at the end of the year, but was a box-office failure. Lord Delfont announced that the company had purchased two British scripts, The Defense by John Mortimer and Off the Record by Frederick Forsyth. He admitted that sixty percent of the company's film budget would be spent in America the following year but "100% of the profits would come to this country... We have got to make films we believe are international, to get the money to bring exports back to this country."

In February 1981, Barry Spikings announced a slate of films worth £70 million, including Honky Tonk Freeway, Memoirs of a Survivor, Comrades and The Knight (now a Walter Hill film). The latter was not made.