Boxoffice Pro - April 2020

CINEMACON EXCELLENCE IN EVENT CINEMA
GIANTS OF
K-POP
Pathé Live Sets a New Standard
for a Global Event-Cinema
Release with BTS World Tour
Love Yourself in Seoul
BY DANIEL LORIA
INTERVIEW WITH THIERRY FONTAINE,
Chief Executive Officer, Pathé Live
Pathé Live’s record-setting global release
of the Korean boy band concert
film BTS World Tour Love Yourself in Seoul
in January 2019 turned into the largest
worldwide single-day event-cinema
release at the time, reaching 4,162 cinemas
in 105 countries. The scale of its release
was big enough to bring in $11.7 million
from 1.2 million admissions worldwide. It
fared particularly well in the United States,
where it earned over $2.8 million from
1,002 locations and claimed an impressive
per-screen average of $2,869 in its original
one-day run. BTS encore events for BTS
World Tour Love Yourself in Seoul helped
the film finish its theatrical run with a
global box office haul of $14.8 million. The
event is being honored at CinemaCon
2020 with the Excellence in Event Cinema
Award. Boxoffice Pro spoke with Pathé
Live CEO Thierry Fontaine about the film’s
record-setting release.
How did you first hear about BTS? Did
anyone at Pathé Live need convincing
that this would be a global hit?
My niece introduced me to BTS in 2016;
I had no clue who they were back then. I
started listening to them and watching
them perform. I was blown away. In May
2018 we started talking to Big Hit Entertainment
and went to see them perform
at the Staples Center in L.A. The team at
Big Hit saw right away the opportunity
in extending the concert experience to
cinemas: reaching out to fans who wanted
to relive their experience of the tour, those
who weren’t able to get a ticket, and those
who couldn’t make it because the band
didn’t play anywhere near them.
How did you go about promoting and
marketing this event globally? What
were some of the challenges? Is this
the biggest-scale event the company
has been involved in when it comes to
event cinema?
This is indeed the biggest-scale event we
have been involved with. Fortunately, BTS
has such a great connection with their fans
worldwide and benefit from a tremendous
following on social media, and thus
these platforms were at the center of our
marketing strategy. We wanted this to be
a weekend-only event. We wanted fans
to enjoy their favorite band all together
in packed auditoriums. We could not
have achieved this success without the
involvement and full support of our local
distribution partners and all the exhibitors
around the world.
This event also held encore
screenings in the panoramic screen
technology ScreenX in 15 territories,
the first of its kind. Do you believe
there is big potential in incorporating
new technologies in event cinema?
Indeed, these formats offer great potential
for event cinema by enhancing the theatrical
experience in terms of quality and
immersion. It also definitely helps differentiate
it from the experience of watching
content alone at home and creates an
additional incentive to make people come
out to their local theater.
What are Pathé Live’s plans and
ambitions in the event-cinema sector
for 2020 and beyond?
Our plans for now include the current and
upcoming season of our Bolshoi Ballet and
French National Theatre series, while we
are talking to some international artists
for potential future one-off events. For
the first time, we are also producing and
distributing the filmed exhibition A Night
at the Louvre: Leonardo da Vinci, to be released
worldwide this coming September.
This is the first time the Louvre has accepted
someone to film an exhibition. It’s been
visited by more than 1 million people. It
won’t just be another art documentary, but
rather a real private guided tour at the first
museum in the world around the biggest
artist of all time.
Courtesy Pathé Live
April 2020
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