06/03/2007

France’s leading exhibitor UGC has made a strategic move after its announcement yesterday that it intends to place "a two-year price freeze on unlimited film passes."

UGC group president Guy Verrechia sparked outrage at the end of January (see article) with his intention to reduce from €5.03 to €4.26 the sum paid by cinema theatres to distributors (who then divide the amount between producers and directors) on each admission with a UGC membership card.

For €18 per month, the card gives unlimited access to 470 UGC cinemas nationwide as well as, by legal obligation, to local arthouse cinemas who want to sign up to the system.

Having clearly given into government pressure to maintain current rates, UGC (whose agreement for the Unlimited Pass is up for renewal by the Centre National de la Cinématographie on March 18) prefers to "give the players time to work together to define new practices", but emphasises the "competitive inequalities between cinemas, some of which offer, without any restrictions in price or time, the same films under incomparable conditions in terms of the length of the theatrical run and remuneration."

Among the first to react have been ARP (Association of Authors, Directors and Producers) and SACD (Association of Authors, Composers, Playwrights) who "hope that this project leads to stricter regulations on unlimited membership cards in order to prevent a dominant player imposing his law in the future in what is an often vulnerable economic area and penalise creators, who are at the heart of cultural diversity.

Demanding real transparency in the system of unlimited membership passes, a quality poorly lacking in their management to date, ARP and SACD have also not spared their irony by stating that it is "nice to note that UGC, who in the past has built on its dominant position in the exhibition sector, is now requesting that the government and the industry investigate unfair competition between cinema theatres".

(Translated from French)