Luc Besson to build mega studio - Facility to lure Hollywood blockbusters to Paris

Posted: Thurs., Jun. 11, 2009, 10:58am PT

Luc Besson to build mega studio

Facility to lure Hollywood blockbusters to Paris

By TOBIAS GREY, JOHN HOPEWELL

http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=print_story&articleid=VR1118004816&categoryid=3599

Luc Besson's EuropaCorp and Tarak Ben Ammar's Quinta Communications are partnering to launch the e30 million ($42 million) Paris Studios, France's first modern megastudio.

Paris Studios aims to rival London's Pinewood and Berlin's Babelsberg as home to big Hollywood shoots, as well as European and French productions. Construction begins in December, and the studios will open in early 2012.

Speaking at Thursday's launch, Besson, accompanied by Ben Ammar and Culture Minister Christine Albanel, said he'd already received positive feedback from Hollywood studios, singling out Fox Filmed Entertainment co-chair Jim Gianopulos.

With nine soundstages, including one at 23,680 square feet, Paris Studios will be part of the ambitious La Cite du Cinema film complex, located at a former power station in Saint Denis, northern Paris, where the press conference was held.

Beyond EuropaCorp and Quinta, other Paris Studios shareholders are facilities provider Euro Media Group and Besson's Frontline, which holds his 62% stake in EuropaCorp.

La Cite du Cinema will house the Louis Lumiere National Film School, offices for EuropaCorp and Ben Ammar, as well as workshops, offices for other movie companies and a state-of-the-art theater.

Outside the Paris Studios, La Cite is owned by La Nef Lumiere, a joint venture of Gallic state investment bank Caisse des Depots and Vinci, a French property developer.

Investment in La Cite -- including the Paris Studios, construction, equipment, hardware and offices -- runs at around $224 million.

La Cite is a Besson passion project, which he first conceived, he said Thursday, when he was forced to shoot 1997's "The Fifth Element" at Pinewood in London for lack of a big French studio.

Despite the huge productions they host, Europe's main studios are not large money-spinners. In 2008, Pinewood-Shepperton Studios turned a $9.2 million profit, Berlin's Babelsberg $4.9 million.

Albanel said the Paris Studios' greenlight had been facilitated by Gaul's new 20% tax rebates for Hollywood shoots, approved by the National Assembly in December.

The Paris Studios and Cite complex mesh with EuropaCorp's growth plans at a time when it's suddenly been thrown under the Hollywood spotlight by the $150 million U.S. box office for EuropaCorp-produced "Taken."

Two-thirds of EuropaCorp's movies are now aimed at the international market. It will be a major user of the Paris Studios while seeking international and French shoots to use them as well.

The Paris Studios will also help EuropaCorp's deliver productions to U.S. studios at competitive prices, as was the case with "Hitman," which EuropaCorp made for Fox.

The Paris Studios launch was greeted with jubilation by the Gallic film industry.

"They could have a very big impact as a complement to the tax rebates," said Patrick Lamassoure, managing director of Film France.

"Big foreign shoots will now have a complete studio with not only state-of-the-art soundstages but also high-tech and post-production facilities, like Pinewood or Barrandov," Lamassoure said.

EuropaCorp's Paris Studios investment will be capped at $8.4 million.

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Cine Expo - Europe d-cinema rollout hung up on funding

Europe d-cinema rollout hung up on funding Exhibitors air frustrations at annual Cinema Expo confab By Carl DiOrio June 22, 2009 AMSTERDAM -- Dithering over funding and other details has European theater operators as frustrated as U.S. exhibitors with the slow rollout of digital cinema. With bank financing still scarce, d-cinema proponents have been left scrambling for innovative other means of tapping into the required capital. "It's very hard," said Howard Kiedaisch, CEO of the London-based d-cinema integrator Arts Alliance Media. "But we do take heart from the deal we were able to do in December." In that case, Arts Alliance went to the Brussels-based leasing tech financier Econocom to back its rollout of equipment to convert 400 screens in France. More conventional lenders remain on the digital sidelines on the continent and elsewhere, but there are some other signs of progress. Presently, at least two Hollywood majors are poised to announce virtual print fee agreements covering screen conversions throughout Norway, using government funding to get things going. A similar, more limited arrangement is also being mulled for German exhibitors. But much of the d-cinema talk at Cinema Expo -- the annual exhibition confab that opened its four-day run at the RAI convention center here Monday -- amounts to so much grumbling. "Many of us are frustrated that it hasn't been going stronger," European Digital Cinema Forum chief Dave Monk acknowledged in an opening-day presentation. "That's because we've been struggling with recession and financial meltdown. But the boxoffice shows digital cinema is real -- not just some fancy-pants, one-off kind of thing." Of course, the real sweet spot in digital cinema is 3-D, which allows exhibs to charge a premium price for movie tickets. Gino Haddad of Beirut-based Circuit Empire said eight of the Middle East exhib's 92 screens have been converted to digital, and six of them now also boast 3-D capability. "It's only for the difference between 35mm and 3-D that the customer is willing to pay the premium," Haddad said. At Empire that means a markup of $2 to $3 on general ticket prices running $6 to $8, depending on location. EDCF's Monk said 3-D's global footprint reached 4,000 screens in the second quarter. Beverly Hills-based 3-D vendor RealD announced Monday that its European footprint has grown fivefold this year, with its worldwide installations now totaling more than 3,200 screens in 45 countries. "RealD 3-D continues to defy global financial trends with consistent boxoffice results multiple times that of 2-D screens," RealD chief Michael Lewis said. Digital projection also saves studios big bucks on distribution costs -- which is why they've been willing to sign VPFs around the world to help cover most installations costs. The studio agreements provide payments stretching over several years. But upfront bank capital still is generally needed to get hardware shipped and installed. And that's been the sticking point for longer than anybody likes to think about. "Digital cinema is a small business that really requires a lot of work," Fortis Bank exec director Christophe de Winter shrugged during a d-cinema panel discussion. The banking stall has kept exhibs from implementing thousands of planned screen conversions for the past year. In the U.S., execs at JPMorgan hope finally to go to market in July with a long-stalled lending syndication on behalf of the nation's three biggest circuits. "These things are extremely complicated and frustrating," Disney senior vp Jason Brenek observed. Once installed, d-cinema does offer another notable benefit for exhibs besides 3-D: alternative programming. Arts Alliance numbers among distributors of cultural and sporting fare that now regularly supplements film programming in theaters around the world. The company also occasionally distributes niche-market specialty films such as "Iron Maiden, Flight 666," a heavy-metal concert documentary whose one-day theatrical success Arts Alliance hopes to replicate in September with the eco-drama "The Age of Stupid." The Pete Postlethwaite starrer will promote its global release with a "solar cinema tent" premier in New York's Central Park in September. Arts Alliance may extend the "Stupid" run beyond its opening day if results match the pic's well-received recent run in the U.K.

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Euro producers may get credit crisis benefit - The Hollywood Reporter - June 22, 2009

Euro producers may get credit crisis benefit Discussions of tax incentives at international film confab By Scott Roxborough June 22, 2009 COLOGNE, Germany -- The credit crisis could have a sliver lining for European producers as cash-strapped U.S. filmmakers are forced to turn to the international marketplace to finance their projects. Speaking at the opening panel of the International Film Conference in Cologne on Monday, indie film veteran including Bleiberg Entertainment CEO Ehud Bleiberg, IFP executive director Michelle Byrd and Oscar-winning producer Peter Herrmann ("Nowhere in Africa") agreed that, in the indie film world, the center of gravity might be shifting towards Europe. "The traditional way of financing independent films in the U.S. isn't working anymore," said Bleiberg, suggesting that U.S. independents need to embrace international co-production if they hope both to get their films made, and have a chance of recouping their investment. "With tax and other incentives in the U.S. you can maybe cover 30% of your risk, but you still have to recoup 70%," Bleiberg said. "If you can do a European co-production with Germany, France, Spain or Italy say, you can get up to 80% of your budget from European soft money, leaving just 20% risk." Herrmann agreed that for many U.S. companies, the national blinkers have come off. "It used to be that U.S. producers were only interested in (foreign producers) if you could get them money. Now they are interested in real co-production," he said. But famed German director Tom Tykwer, who gave a keynote speech to open the conference, warned European filmmakers of the perils of diving into the murky waters of the U.S. film business. Tykwer spoke of the Byzantine layers of bureaucracy and legal complications involved in the making of his U.S.-German co-production "Heaven" (2002) and advised German filmmakers "to only do a co-production with the U.S. if it makes sense for the story." Bleiberg said European producers and directors should be more confident to tell local stories for an international market, instead of trying to "tailor their films to a U.S. audience." And that they should be aware of the leverage they have. "Here in Europe you are in a much better position than we are in the U.S.," he said. "American producers who have had to go outside to get financing suddenly need international partners. I truly think for European producers, this could be a golden age." The International Film Congress, backed by the NRW Film Board, ends Tuesday.

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