After acquiring the Paris-based studios of EuropaCorp, Front Line SAS and Euro Media Group for 33 million euros in February 2022, Eagle Pictures has now shared an investment plan worth roughly 40-50 million euros for the creation of new production studios in Rome. The announcement was made on the occasion of the Roman world premiere of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One. “There’s no antagonism with Cinecittà, on the contrary”, stated Tarak Ben Ammar, the principal shareholder of Eagle Pictures, which is the first independent distributor and producer of films in Italy. “This expansion of studio space in Italy stems from the fact that Cinecittà is at capacity. Hence our project, which has been developed in accordance with the Italian institutions”.

According to plans, the new studios will be up and running in the second half of 2024. The project comes in addition to a series of investments over the past three years, totalling upwards of 100 million euros, for film acquisition and production, as well as for acquisitions and agreements. The most important of these is with Sony Pictures Entertainment for exclusive distribution in Italy of Sony films from May this year, and the option of using Sony’s widespread reach abroad in order to better circulate Italian films internationally. This agreement with Sony also provides for co-productions, such as The Equalizer 3, for example, in 2022, whose filming was moved to Italy.

Ben Ammar acquired Eagle Pictures in 2007, and in 2019 he acquired a minority stake in SpyGlass Media Group, which had inherited a library of over 300 films from The Weinstein Company. In March of this year, a merger took place to also incorporate 3 Marys Entertainment, an independent Italian production and distribution company which has brought titles such as Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película] to cinemas.

According to Ben Ammar, “with Eagle Pictures in Italy, the studios in France and Eagle Pictures’ shareholding in Spyglass Media Group, we’ve built an international audiovisual production and distribution centre which stretches from the Mediterranean countries, passing through Italy and having a European base in France, to reach as far as the USA, with a view to exchanging workforces, directors, authors and works, and positioning ourselves as world-class players”. Eagle Pictures’ turnover has grown from 66 million in 2021 to 99m in 2022 and is estimated to exceed 100 million in 2023. The gross operating margin, meanwhile, was 18 million in 2021, 19m in 2022, and is expected to reach over 25 million in 2023.