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Manuel Alduy • Head of Film at Canal +

Pre-acquisitions, pressure and diversity

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At the Dijon Film Meetings, Cineuropa spoke with Manuel Alduy, head of the Canal + group’s film section since February 2008 (after two years as head of French film acquisitions).

Cineuropa: Canal + is a driving force in financing French film production. What will be your final figure for pre-acquisitions in 2010 and what production trends have you noticed?

Manuel Alduy: The number of pre-acquisitions for 2010 is in the region of 125 films for Canal + and about 15 for TPS in the first distribution window: pay-TV. Of these 140 films, CineCinema buys about one hundred in the second distribution window.

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As for trends, French films are still very diverse, with no more taboos over subject and genres: there have been lots of animated features, thrillers and action films, still as many auteur films, somewhat fewer comedies (even though the genre hasn’t been neglected), biopics and documentary features.

This year, there have been fewer very big-budget French films (seven pre-acquisitions in 2010 of films with an estimated budget of over €15m, compared to 10 or 11 in previous years) and a certain drop in production. We’ve pre-bought more films in the middle category (with an estimated budget of between €4-7m) than in 2009. And as part of the diversity clause (17% of our French budget must be spent on pre-acquisitions of films with an estimated budget of under €4m), our 2010 pre-acquisitions amount to an average of €510,000 per film, our record for the last six years.

Has the overall fall in investment in French production since 2009 put you under greater pressure?
There is quite a high level of pressure which can be illustrated by two figures. In 2010, the average estimated budget of the films we’ve pre-bought has fallen by around 20% to €6m, while our average pre-acquisition has only dropped slightly by 5% to €1.35m. In proportion to estimated budgets, we’re therefore at a higher level than last year. This clearly shows the drop in estimated budgets caused by a certain difficulty in securing financing and, at the same time, the pressure put on us to maintain a considerable level of pre-financing per film. This new situation cannot last in the long term because it amounts to making Canal + alone bear a greater share of the pre-acquisition risk.

What about pre-acquisitions of non-domestic European films?
We pre-buy very few European films that are not French-initiative and they are mostly films by major auteurs like Lars von Trier, Almodovar and Alex de la Iglesia, and so forth. It’s extremely rare because these non-domestic films are, after all, supposed to find pre-financing in their country of origin. Buying them later on is another matter. Our mission is to support pre-financing of French productions (French-language or otherwise). Moreover, we could choose not to pre-buy any non-Francophone French films at all, for we have no obligations whatever in this respect, but we buy them anyway to add to our film line-up.

Does Orange’s decision to "give up" its film channels remove a thorn from Canal+’s side?
Orange’s presence wasn’t really a thorn in our side. It created a slight artificial escalation for a while on a small group of French films. But fundamentally, we didn’t invest less, nor did we push our prices up on certain categories of films to the detriment of the overall number of films pre-bought. There are enough projects for everyone and as far as French films are concerned, it wasn’t really an issue. It pushed prices up a bit for US films in a particular context where they simply have greater difficulty in getting television distribution: so this went against the tide somewhat. Now, Orange has decided to find a partner to share the risks of this activity. France is a small country and few countries manage to have two rival pay-TV platforms based around film and/or sport.

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