Exhibitors boycott De Laurentis: "He didn’t respect the windows"
A new controversy has broken out after the clash between exhibitors and a mobile telephone company that wanted to broadcast the The Interpreter on its clients’ phones while the film was still in theatres. This time, it is over the new film by Carlo Verdone, Il mio miglior nemico (lit. “My Best Enemy”), scheduled to be released on March 10.
Some of the larger multiplex chains (including Warner Village, UCI, Cineplex and Medusa Cinema) and several independent multiplexes have decided not to screen the film in their theatres because they say the film’s producer and distributor, Aurelio De Laurentiis, has made no specific commitment as to whether or not Il mio miglior nemico will be released on home video before the 15 weeks after its theatrical release are up. De Laurentiis, who heads Filmauro, has already begun selling box office champion Christmas in Miami on DVD, just two months after it was released in cinemas.
The exhibitors are apparently responding to the rejection from the UNPF (Producers’ Union) – which is part of ANICA (Italian Association of Cinematographic Audiovisual and Multimedia Industries), of which De Laurentiis is president – of the draft of a “windows” agreement (on the time between a film’s theatrical release and its exploitation in other forms), recently signed by the exhibitors’ and distributors’ associations.
A recent study, published by the Multicinema Association of AGIS (an umbrella group for all the associations and organizations working within the entertainment industry), showed that a simultaneous release of a film on various platforms would strip exhibitors of 40-50% of their profits, without any possibility of recovering the lost revenue through other markets.
(Translated from Italian)
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