Boxoffice - October 2016

NATO
NEWS
Alain Sussfeld
co-CEO of UGC
n Ideally situated on the Avenue
Champs-Élysées in Paris, just west
of the iconic Arc de Triomphe, sit
the business offices for UGC, one
of France’s leading exhibition and
distribution companies. The view
from the top floor, suffice to say,
is remarkable. A glance from one
office window reveals a mesmerizing
panorama from the Eiffel Tower to
the aforementioned arch at Place de
l’Étoile. It’s old Paris in its imposing
majesty. The view from the opposite
office window faces La Défense, a
modern business district full of glass
high-rises and steel skyscrapers. It’s
new Paris in its shimmering glory.
This visual dichotomy epitomizes
UGC’s focus on maintaining tradition while also
looking toward the future. And that variety manifests
itself at the multiplex.
It only takes a casual glance at the show times
in Paris to notice the array of options available for
moviegoers in the French capital. With 206 million
tickets sold in 2015, France is the largest moviegoing
market in Europe in terms of admissions and a
close second to the U.K.
in terms of box office.
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France's UGC helps pioneer
a new program to strengthen
the diversity of programming
at the movies
by David Binet, Director of Membership, NATO
What makes this moviegoing
figure intriguing
is that it is nearly 80
percent higher than it
was 25 years ago, when
France bottomed out
by hitting a historically
low level of admissions.
The market’s rebound
has been achieved, in
part, by collaboration
among the film industry’s segments in establishing
admissions-driving policies. Another such example
occurred this May, when trade bodies representing
production, distribution, and exhibition signed
an agreement with production and distribution
companies to help strengthen the market by putting
in place best practices to support wider diversity in
programming.
For Alain Sussfeld, co-CEO of UGC, the right
mix to optimize moviegoing in France should ideally
be 50 percent of the box office coming from U.S.
movies, 40 percent from French movies, and the
remaining 10 percent from other European and
non-European productions. “This is hard to create,”
Sussfeld said in an interview with Boxoffice Media
CEO Julien Marcel. “Even harder to maintain, but
this is essential to offer the type of quality and diversity
our audience expects.”
According to Sussfeld, one should not consider
diversity to be a threat to the success of Hollywood or
domestic blockbusters. All movies benefit from a good
market. Rather than representing conflicting interests,
Sussfeld calls it an “addition of interests.”
“The goal of movie theaters should be to make sure
that, at any point in time, all types of audiences can
be offered a movie that matches their interests, tastes,
or simply their mood of the day. Let’s not be obsessed
with blockbusters targeting the teenagers. Let’s focus
on the complete range of moviegoers from 5 to 75.”
The agreement signed in May between the industry’s
trade bodies suggests that UGC’s philosophy on
diversity is shared by others in the industry. The two
principal dimensions to the agreement that affect
exhibition aim to optimize screen counts and show
times for all films on the market. Firstly, all stakeholders
agreed to limit the number of screens dedicated to
any given film on any given day. The underlying idea
is that it is not good to overexpose a movie in a short
period of time. “Cinema cannot be summarized as
‘Take the money and run,’” said Sussfeld. “A movie
needs time in theater; it is part of its value. Putting
a blockbuster in too many screens and then getting
rid of it two weeks later is not good for anyone.”
Additionally, exhibitors take a commitment to offer a
predefined number of show times for limited-release
movies that would otherwise have a hard time making
it to the big screen. The strategy seeks to limit the
overexposure of blockbusters and applies equally to
French and U.S. movies.
Behind this approach is the idea that a solid theatrical
market requires a long-term strategy that includes
diversity of content rather than the maximization of
box office week after week. According to Sussfeld,
there is no successful diversity strategy without a
consistent commercial policy. In UGC’s case, this
policy is based on a strong loyalty program and an
unlimited subscription pass that aims to help viewers
discover new films. UGC’s unlimited pass is particularly
designed to reinforce the likelihood that moviegoers
will try different types of movies and adopt an attitude
of discovery in future cinema visits. As a result, UGC
is able to retain its fair share of blockbuster admissions
while over-performing on limited-release movies,
helping them balance low-attendance periods.
Sussfeld says his main concern is that this model
hasn’t yet been adopted outside France, making
it fragile by definition. With the support of other
markets, Sussfeld believes there would be a better
understanding of the specificities of moviegoing in
each market. Leave it to the French to teach us a thing
or two about maintaining a cultural commodity.
Ultimately, however, the model’s long-term
sustainability cannot exist without a solid slate of
releases. Year-to-date admissions in France, up 4.1
percent at the end of August, suggest the market
hasn’t encountered any difficulty adopting this new
model. The question for the near future now becomes,
will any other markets venture to attempt something
similar? n
20 BoxOffice ® OCTOBER 2016