It's amusing to re-read the articles published five or 10 years ago predicting that Netflix would kill French cinema. Cinema owners, experts and amateurs alike equated this television platform to the devil. Oh how the tide has turned! Platforms are contributing to the health of the sector − even saving it. It's the end of an era, but we don't know if the next one will be happy.
Fortunately, it already is for France, which is the only country in the world where cinema attendance has increased between 2023 and 2024. This is thanks to a wealth of domestic production, which has offset the decline in Hollywood output. While 3,000 cinemas closed in the US in 2023, the industry in France is doing well, barely bruised by the country's 11 million Netflix subscribers.
This surprise is reminiscent of another in the mid-1980s, when Socialist president François Mitterrand green-lighted the creation of commercial channels, first Canal+, then La Cinq and TV6. The film industry howled, convinced that these intruders would broadcast bundles of films, and consequently kill off arty production and cinemas, which is what happened in Italy.
In France, TV didn't kill cinema, it saved it. By dint of rules and safeguards, TV went from nail in the coffin to cinema's savior. Canal+, created in 1984, is a living symbol of this: with an annual investment of €220 million, it is by far the biggest financer of cinema in France, with 130 films scheduled for release by 2024.
Historic deal
For those in the know, a miracle doesn't happen twice. You can twist the arm of French TV channels, but not of the American giant Netflix or Hollywood studios, who in Brussels are lashing out at French rules that they regard as communism, such as the tax levied on every cinema ticket, having to wait months before a film released in theaters is broadcast on a platform and priority funding of French films.
But now Netflix, Amazon and Disney are playing by the rules. After Netflix (which invested €50 million in French cinema) and Amazon, Disney has just signed a historic deal in France. To finance around 70 films and TV shows to the tune of €40 million a year for three years. In exchange, the company will be able to distribute its feature films on its Disney+ platform just nine months after their theatrical release, compared with 17 months previously.
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