FIAD participates in the UNIC Cinema Days

In the centre of Brussels the FIAD Secretariat attended the two day UNIC Cinema Days event where representatives from across the European film sector met to take stock of the cinema sector's performance in 2022, discuss the challenges the sector faces coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and what the next few years hold in store.

At the heart of the discussion was the agreement that the theatrical release of films remains essential for the life of a film and a well promoted theatrical release with strong admissions will give a film the best possible chance of success throughout the subsequent online and offline windows.

The quote from Warner Bros CEO - David Zaslav - in a recent Deadline article was brought up as an important statement on the value of the theatrical release from such an influential figure: " I’ve seen the data… A movie that opens in theaters perform five times as well as when it goes directly to streaming. The economic return when you open something in the theater.” Direct to streaming “was just a way to drive subscribers to drive the share price. Subscribers today are like clicks in the ‘90s. People were running around buying companies and aggregating clicks."

Participants also remarked that the cinema sector is still coming out of the COVID-19 crisis and that territories across Europe are each in their own stage of recovery. What was agreed upon though was the importance of offering audiences a diverse slate of films and the important role performed by film distributors in not only bringing films to a territory but investing in the marketing and promotion to encourage cinema going.