US streamers more flexible when working with European producers

The rules of cooperation between US studios and streamers and European producers are starting to change.

That was a key takeaway from the Locarno Film Festival think tank StepIN on the state of the indie film industry, where on Wednesday around 50 European and international invited industry players attended a day-long event with working sessions to exchange thoughts on practices, business models and new ideas and suggest strategies.

“The old model that global streamers used to adopt of wanting ‘all or nothing’ and wanting to own everything forever has really evolved into a much more flexible approach now,” said Carlo Dusi, Head of Minutes at London-based Endor Productions of the Round Table on New Opportunities for Film Financing and Production and presented his group’s conclusions.

They are now open to “exploring ways in which they can acquire or jointly commission multiple areas, taking licenses rather than ownership on a permanent basis [and] Sharing rights and revenue more flexibly,” he added.

“We spoke a lot with our US studio representative [veteran acquisitions and production exec Sejin Croninger, who is executive VP of worldwide acquisitions at Paramount Pictures and was also among the event’s keynote speakers] about the fact that there is an increasingly flexible acquisition model that allows the studio sector to take a stake in films that may be financially viable for them to produce but still have a place in their production pipelines, especially as those pipelines develop via theatre, television platforms and streaming,” added Dusi.

Wolf Osthaus, Director of Public Policy at Netflix for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, was also among the participants in this closed-door session.

After a hiatus over the past year from his purely business focus on mental health and the idea of ​​a more humane work environment, das The unique initiative of the Swiss Festival, now in its 10th edition, was back to Dive into the industry’s most pressing operational issues and what lies ahead.

Here are more StepIN takeaways:

At the theatrical ecosystem sessionmoderated by Neon’s President of Theatrical Distribution Elissa Federoff, it was pointed out that “mAll theaters in the US just expect people to come back and not do enough to bring them back,” said the meeting’s note taker, MUBI Marketing Director Irene Musumeci, presenting her conclusions.

And the theater situation in Europe is similar.

“In France, the cinema has replaced the church, but even there the market share is now minus 20%; in Italy it is minus 60%. It is a disaster! Basically, the core audience in Europe that is over 55 years old has not come back,” Musumeci said, stressing one attendee.

Similar to the USA, blockbusters have recovered very well at the box office in Europe; but the arthouse sector remains very difficult. Audience trends are changing and it “definitely sees OTT as a threat,” she said.

Federoff struck an upbeat note during the session and also during her keynote address to the roundtable, saying that “there have been tremendous changes, but they are cyclical. Eventually everything will come back.”

Basically, Federoff posits that people will watch movies in different ways in the future, but those who enjoy watching movies in theaters will continue to do so.

However, it is inevitable that the theater’s footprint will be much smaller in the future. “Essentially, we shared that we believe the theater space will change and potentially shrink bit, but it won’t die!” Musumeci concluded.

The Roundtable on Gender Equality and Social Impact moderated by Danielle Turkov Wilson, Executive Producer of Think-Film Impact, who was also a keynote speaker, emphasized that there is not only an internal skills gap that needs to be filled, but also an external audience demand from Millennials and Gen Z which, by their count, have purchasing power in excess of $360 billion.

Think-Film’s Amy Shepherd, who took the minutes for this session, pointed out that “Data is inherently biased in the way it is collected and presented. Even some of the reports on gender equality or audience desires are missing an important piece of the puzzle.”

In addition, “there is also a gap in that we need easy implementation of existing legislation,” she added.

This group also put forward the stark and controversial suggestion that one way to close this gap, in its various forms, is through quotas, which could be a viable way “to fix an existing imbalance,” she said.

Those quotas could range “from behind the camera crew to quotas for film festival involvement,” Shepherd specified.

“We all want film festivals to showcase the very best in artistic quality; but when there is such a small number of films submitted to festivals run by women, for example, then there will always be an imbalance,” she noted.

“So at festivals there has to be a quotient of having a certain number of productions by women directors so that they [films directed by women] can even get going,” Shepherd added, warning that “this is something that requires a much, much deeper conversation.”

At a session on “Film Festivals and Markets in the Hybrid Age”. “The general feeling was that hybrid is the future,” reports Marge Liiske, Managing Director of the Tallinn and Baltic event, which is the industry side of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

“But it won’t work the same for every festival because every festival and every market is different,” she added.

Liiske pointed to a very alarming body of data that “about 80% of the films screened at a festival do not reach theatrical distribution. As such, many physical festivals are the only way for filmmakers to meet their live audiences,” said Liiske.

Even post-pandemic, virtual or hybrid screenings set up by festival brands are “opening up new audiences,” she said, which is definitely a positive.

Another interesting observation is that festival audiences are ageing. “There are indications that more than half of the festival-goers are over 60 years old,” said Liiske. “Festivals and markets need to work with younger people by getting more young people on their teams. Only the young generation can understand how to reach and attract the TikTok generation.”

StepIN participants also included Christine Vachon, Head of Killer Films; Susan Newman-Baudais, Head of Eurimages Fund; Vanja Kaludjercic, director of the Rotterdam Film Festival; Oscilloscope President Dan Berger; Jiyong Kim, who is president of South Korea’s AK Entertainment; and Alexis Hofmann, Head of Acquisitions at Bac Films of France.