Tensions between distribution and exhibition The annual CineEurope trade convention in Barcelona brings the film distribution and exhibition sect
Tensions between distribution and exhibition
The annual CineEurope trade convention in Barcelona brings the film distribution and exhibition sectors together, with a focus on common goals and shared success. However, with global box office still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels, film distributors and cinema operators continue to offer different perspectives on the halting recovery.
Film studios need to offer forceful, balanced, year-round slates, serving all audience segments – and encourage cinemagoing by giving venues a consistent, reliable, exclusive theatrical window, say exhibitors.
Okay, but cinemas need to catch up with consumer demands and expectations by making their venues fit for purpose, and ensure every cinema visit is a memorable one, say distributors.
Cinemas will be in a better place to deliver on that when box office rises – a chicken-and-egg scenario that is concentrating minds of operators.
A potential disconnect between distribution and exhibition was probed in a Gruvi-presented focus session on Wednesday, ‘Our Common Goal: Sell More Cinema Tickets’. Amy Schmit, managing director of Sony Pictures Releasing Belgium, addressed digital marketing’s necessary invisibility to exhibitors, and the misunderstandings that result.
“We hear exhibitors complain, ‘We don’t see your marketing anymore,’ because they don’t really know what we are doing and how marketing has evolved,” she said. “We, as distributors, are within the marketing industry, permanently in contact with our media agencies, social media agencies, which is not especially the case for exhibitors. Digital has changed everything.”
The Disney windows conundrum
Among the substantial five Hollywood studios, Disney is the one that most fully believes in a lengthy theatrical window for its films – perhaps an irony, since Disney’s streaming platform Disney+ has more subscribers than those of its studio competitors.
However, Disney seems to be caught in a dilemma.
On the one hand, if other studios offer only a miniature theatrical window for films, and audiences expect films to quickly transfer to PVoD, VoD and streaming, the perception grows that films are always coming quickly to the home, and Disney gets caught up in the contagion: audiences might think Pixar’s novel film Elio will soon be available to watch from their own sofa.
“I don’t think consumers can tell the difference between movies [from different studios],” said Andrew Cripps, Disney head of theatrical distribution, at CineEurope’s Executive Roundtable session on the first morning of the convention. “We’re doing a very good job of confusing people.”
On the other hand, Disney is seeking competitive advantage, and at its own slate presentation Cripps emphasised how the studio releases films “exclusively on the big screen, longer than any of our competitors”, urging cinema operators to “team up [with Disney] on trailering”, and adding, “Let’s lean into this together.”
The takeaway: Cripps would like the other studios to join Disney’s windowing model and aid audiences regain the cinemagoing habit… and in the meantime, if they don’t, he’d like cinemas to reward Disney by preferencing the studio’s marketing materials in their theatres.
The battle for attention
The battle for consumer attention in today’s social-media-saturated age and how best to exploit social media were topics addressed by CineEurope throughout the four-day event.
Adam Cunningham, chief strategy officer at Allied Global Marketing, delivered a whirlwind, slide-packed keynote on the first day – ‘The Enemy Isn’t AI or Streaming – It’s Holding On To Attention’ – delivered at the dizzy pace of our TikTok world.
Cunningham outlined how theatrical held “structural moats” over content, distribution, production and celebrity, and how these moats have been challenged by a confluence of circumstances including user-generated content, AI and creator-led microfame. AI isn’t replacing cinema, but it’s outpacing attention.
The better news is that in a world where everything is infinite, cinema’s scarcity value becomes its value. And that scarcity lives not in content but in time (unbroken attention), place (co-presence), emotion (synchrony) and ritual. The keynote is not easily summarised, but available on Cunningham’s Strange Loop Substack. “That was a lot,” was one impressed verdict at CineEurope.
Earlier at the convention, panel ‘From Scroll to Screen: Turning Social Buzz into Box Office Sales’ gave a voice to Carla Boyd, Cineworld senior social media and content marketing manager. She suggested that social media has become cinema’s digital foyer (“it’s where people go before they see the film, it’s where people go after they see the film”), and while “marketing made by studios is still important”, there are opportunities to amplify social feeds and “lean into the excitement, create extra buzz around it”.
Boyd added: “Stop thinking of social media as another POS [point of sale]. Social media has to be bespoke. Social media has to be thought about in a different way.”
No films, no stars!
In past years, CineEurope has been a chance for attendees to see upcoming releases, and in recent years those have included Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny.
This year, the major studios all ducked the opportunity to show completed films, despite the imminent release of titles such as Pixar’s Elio (out today), Warner Bros/Apple’s F1 (June 25) and Universal’s Jurassic World: Rebirth (July 2). Sony showed the first 28 minutes of 28 Years Later two days ahead of the film’s world premiere in London, and Warner Bros showed a similar-sized chunk of Superman (out July 11).
Angel Studios showed animated film Sketch on the final day of CineEurope, by which time many delegates were heading home.
Also missing in action at this year’s CineEurope was the physical presence of film talent – not just movie stars, but also directors. OK, exhibitor-friendly Tom Cruise didn’t have an upcoming film this year, but the likes of Aaron Taylor-Johnson (who is in 28 Years Later) have reliably attended in the past.
Lionsgate bucked the trend with its short-but-sweet slate presentation on Monday, bringing the producer (Bobby Cohen) and director (Ruben Fleischer) of heist caper sequel Now You See Me: Now You Don’t to the stage, plus also the dapper Paul Feig, director and producer of thriller The Housemaid, which stars Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar.
Content trends: dancing, retro songs, Stephen King
While stars were absent, distribution executives got into performative mode at the studio slate presentations, and not just the Paramount team featured in the company’s annual filmed comic skit.
Universal’s president of marketing Julien Noble grooved onto the stage to Britney Spears’ ‘Oops, I Did It Again’, helping to emphasise the importance of dance moves in the studio’s M3GAN franchise and spinoff SOULM8TE. Dance moves featured heavily in Warner Bos Picture Animation’s The Cat In The Hat and Universal/DreamWorks Animation’s Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie, and also appeared in scenes shown from Pixar’s Hoppers and Paramount Pictures’ Smurfs.
Without wishing to suggest that viral marketeers are guiding artistic choices, imitable dance moves do not hurt customer engagement, which ripples across platforms such as TikTok.
Nostalgic songs dominated trailers and sizzles shown at CineEurope, from Studiocanal’s employ of New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ and Heaven 17’s ‘Temptation’ (both from 1983) to Universal’s deployment of Green Day’s ‘Basket Case’ (1994) and Disney’s of New Radicals’ ‘You Get What You Give’ (1998). Paramount went ancient school hip-hop with appropriate KRS-One track ‘Sound Of Da Police’ (1993) for crime comedy The Naked Gun.
Stephen King is no stranger to adaptations, but even by his standards, his film rights department has been busy. King adaptations presented in slates at CineEurope included The Life Of Chuck (Studiocanal for the UK), The Long Walk Home (Lionsgate) and The Running Man (Paramount).
AI: threat or opportunity?
Artificial intelligence was explored in another UNIC focus session ‘AI & Cinemas’, moderated by David Hancock, chief analyst, media and entertainment at Omdia. Dev Sen, co-founder and chief technical officer at Cinelytic, revealed how the company’s script analysis tool can read a screenplay and produce 10 pages of coverage within 60 seconds – as opposed to an intern or external reader taking four to eight hours to achieve the same result. While nobody will be greenlighting films on the basis of AI-generated script reports, the algorithm can aid companies filter submissions, and free up time for other tasks.
Eduardo Leal, group director of screen content at Vue, revealed how the company’s automated scheduling system – which has been through 53 iterations of refinement since 2016 – helps Vue play more films, keep films in cinemas longer, and schedule more showtime sessions. While Vue’s focus is currently exporting the AI system from the UK to its other cinema markets (it’s now in Italy, and Germany is next), Leal held out the prospect of licensing the technology to other exhibitors.
Focus sessions are presented by trade body UNIC, the International Union of Cinemas that delivers CineEurope in association with Film Expo Group.
Cineworld v Vue
UNIC annually teams up with Boxoffice Pro for a CineEurope reception unveiling Giants of Exhibition: Europe – ranking the top 50 cinema circuits by number of screens in the Europe region.
Odeon Cinemas Group, Cineworld Group and Vue International continue to occupy the top three slots… but the gap is tightening between second and third place. Cineworld has shed over 100 screens since last year’s count (down from 2,232 to 2,110), while Vue has increased (up from 1,926 to 1,964), and showed the biggest rise of any circuit in numerical terms.
Next Friday (June 27) sees Vue Nottingham open in the site of a former Cineworld cinema that closed in February. As Cineworld cinemas come up for lease renewal, will landlords look to other operators – such as Vue – to take over?
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