Abstract
The last decade has seen an unprecedented wave of corporate development in the European film and television industries, with several major companies becoming vertically and horizontally integrated while also simultaneously expanding into international sales and distribution markets. Such changes fundamentally alter the landscape of the continent’s media industries, which have up to now been characterized by national and linguistic fragmentation and distinct separations between production and distribution. This chapter provides an overview of these historical changes, highlighting relevant developments at firms such as Studiocanal, Pathé and Wild Bunch, among others, and examines the implications of these changes for Europe’s co-production policy regime, which has long been predicated on the need to overcome the fragmentation of the European industries.
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- 1.
This article grows out of a larger research project which has received funding from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement n° 600371, el Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (COFUND2014-51509) el Ministerio de Educación, cultura y Deporte (CEI-15-17) and Banco Santander.
- 2.
Studio Canal rebuilt itself from a nadir in 2004 caused by the collapse of Vivendi Universal, a failed attempt at merging the French media company with a Hollywood studio.
- 3.
According to the company’s 2015 annual report, for example, €155 million (about 18%) of the company’s total revenues of €865 million came from its film production and distribution operations. See Pathé International, ‘Annual Report 2015,’ 1 (2016). http://www.pathe.co.uk/repository/AR2015.pdf.
- 4.
According to data available on the Lumiere Database maintained by the European Audiovisual Observatory, Philomena achieved a rate of market penetration in Switzerland that was sixth overall amongst the countries in which it was release. By this metric, the film was a bigger relative success for instance than in France or Germany.
- 5.
All information concerning Eurimages awards in this chapter was sourced from the Eurimages database of awardees. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/eurimages/About/default_en.asp.
- 6.
All information on the MEDIA programme awardees cited in this chapter was taken from the MEDIA Films Database, available online at http://www.mfdb.eu/en/.
- 7.
For an example of such an analysis, see Christopher Meir, StudioCanal and the Pursuit of a European Major (London: Bloomsbury, 2019).
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Meir, C. (2018). The Emergence of Pan-European Film Studios and Its Implications for Co-production Studies and Policy. In: Hammett-Jamart, J., Mitric, P., Novrup Redvall, E. (eds) European Film and Television Co-production. Palgrave European Film and Media Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97157-5_7
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