10/10/2005

In the same period every year, the problem of bottlenecks of releases in the theatres comes to the forefront. Next Wednesday, ten features begin their releases and three among them hope to have print totals of 600, 550 and 400 copies. And the following weeks will prove to be just as busy with 11 new arrivals on the 19th of October, 10 on Wednesday the 26th October, 59 releases are set for the 5 Wednesdays in November and an impressive total of 17 new features hit the screens on the 7th of December. This will leave on the sidelines a number of films hoping for a long enough release to create word-mouth, a worry for many distributors of quality films.

Talking to Cineuropa, Jean Labadie from Bac Films underlined the dangers of this blockage: "As soon as a film from Disney brings out 900 prints in December, it’s evidence of a lack of agreement between the distributors and exhibitors to allow a chance for different types of films. I think that growing rise in the number of prints and the increase in the costs of release is extremely dangerous for our industry. What’s different about France, is that it has managed to retain its diversity, the cinematic diversity of different countries, diversity in the size of films, diversity of subject matter. This diversity is threatened by the increase in the cost of a print, by huge American films and some very large French films too. Output deals between the Studios and the paying TV networks are one of the factors in the increase in releases since it is in the studios’ interest to bring out their films, films that would have been left on the shelves before. Fixing that side of it would go a long way to calming the market place down. An balanced decision and a reasonable approach on the placing of films will not oblige French films to follow the inflationary trend. It is very difficult to explain to a French producer these days that to release 100 prints is a genuine release since he has the impression that it is nothing with regard to medium, mediocre, often bad films which achieve a release of 200 and 400 copies. The imbalance has to be rectified because the danger of this situation is that people will go to see a film based on the size of its release and not for its quality, a deception that will turn spectators away from the cinema and to other means of entertainment."

(Translated from French)