Chance of the calendar, while the pretenders to the hertzian frequencies of TF1 and M6 presented their respective projects, Wednesday, February 15, before the Authority for the regulation of audiovisual and digital communication (Arcom, ex-CSA), the chairman of the management board of Canal+ (Vivendi), Maxime Saada, and his teams made a long declaration of love for cinema in a chic Parisian hotel.
“2023 will be the best year in cinema for Canal+”, he promised. The encrypted channel has already purchased 99 of the 100 films that have brought together the most admissions in 2022. This has been possible thanks to the new media chronology, namely the order in which the films are released after their theatrical release on television channels, video services and streaming platforms.
Since February 10, 2022, Canal + can indeed program feature films six months, and no longer eight months, after their theatrical release. “It has a huge impact on our subscribers,” noted Mr. Saada. For the first time, thanks to the renewals of its agreements with Sony Pictures and NBCUniversal, “Canal+ will be the only platform to offer [en 2023] films from the five major Hollywood majors [avec Warner Bros, Paramount et Disney] », he congratulated himself.
“No prior specific constraint or formatting”
Whether “Cinema is the keystone” of the channel, as assured by the director general in charge of antennas, Gérald-Brice Viret, it is because the films constitute “the first reason for subscription, ahead of sport”. Top Gun: Maverick has also exploded the counters: it was watched by three million subscribers.
On the production side, Canal + receives, according to Laurent Hassid, director of acquisitions, nearly 500 film projects per year, to retain only 120. “They are intended for theatrical release and are for all genres. We do not impose any specific prior constraints or any formatting »he said, in order to protect himself from any criticism.
Indeed, Canal+ had refused to finance Thanks to God, a film on pedophilia in the Church. The director François Ozon, until then always supported by the chain, affirmed February 14, 2019 In The Obs : “The bosses of the channel did not have the habit of intervening on the editorial content, it is changing. » Canal+ is financing its next film, my crime, much less controversial.
Maxime Saada had declared in January that Canal+ was ” ready “ to invest one billion euros in French cinema over the next five years. Until then, the group, obliged to respect its investment obligations in the seventh art, had undertaken to invest 600 million euros over three years in return for the modification of the chronology of the media. For the time being, the cinema organizations have not signed the new proposal.
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