29/11/2007

After having recently acquired a 92% stake in Italian distribution company Eagle Pictures, French-Tunisian businessman Tarak Ben Ammar said at the current Sorrento Screenings that the company would produce and distribute six Italian films a year.

He also announced the company’s new heads: Jacopo Capanna will be CEO and Marco Lombardo, who has worked with Ben Ammar for over 30 years in the film industry, managing director.

The financier bought into Eagle through his 95%-owned Prima TV and with investment bank Interbanca, for approximately €85m. The acquisition of the company founded by brothers Ciro and Stefano Dammicco, and in financial difficulty, is part of a wider goal to create competition for US film distribution companies in Europe’s largest countries.

After buying into America’s The Weinstein Company, Ben Ammar, with US investment firm Goldman Sachs and other financial partners, acquired Canada’s Alliance Film, owned by UK distributor Momentum and Spain’s Aurum. Together with them and Ben Ammar’s French distribution company Quinta Communications, Eagle will now be part of the pan-European cinema group Alliance Film Europe.

“Rather than work in individual territories, I wanted to reproduced the US studios’ model", said Ben Ammar in Sorrento. "Their strength lies in offering the possibility of reaching the entire world. We’re not aiming to cover the entire planet, but we are interested in becoming an important presence in Europe, because it represents 40% of the entire international market. We intend to help production companies have the stars and actors capable of making a film exportable, of giving life to an international product.”

Ben Ammar also confirmed his intentions to enter the Scandinavian market with Scanbox. "As of today, all that’s missing is Germany, but we’re moving to acquire a company or create a new one."

(Translated from Italian)