Abstract
The chapter investigates the reasons why Italy plays a marginal role in international co-productions. The author identifies four stakeholders that discourage co-productions: (a) moviegoers, who basically prefer 100% national films or US movies; (b) broadcasters, who are unwilling to finance-release-schedule risky films; (c) policymakers, who are more interested into attracting film shoots and promoting Italian executive producers for foreign films (through local funds & tax incentives) than into favouring co-productions; and (d) Italian producers themselves, who are not brave enough to explore new production patterns. For all these reasons, the number of international co-productions with Italy is stable and has not been influenced by the evolutions of national/local laws of the past few years. Of course, virtuous exceptions exist, as Paolo Sorrentino’s films demonstrate.
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Notes
- 1.
In the context of media industries, the concept of “smallness” is connected to four variables: (a) the geographical area of the country; (b) the number of residents; (c) GDP per capita; (d) forms of domination by other countries (Hjort and Petrie 2007).
- 2.
Cfr. the “European Cinema Yearbook” edited and published by MEDIA Salles: www.mediasalles.it.
- 3.
“Cultural interest films” are those films that, according to the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s evaluation, hold a particular cultural, artistic and spectacular value. Every year some of the films that gained this label receive a direct public financing by the Ministry itself.
- 4.
For a full list of economic advantages provided by international co-productions, please consult Hoskins et al. (1997).
- 5.
Greece co-produced 2 films in 2005, 2 in 2006, 3 in 2007, 5 in 2008, 2 in 2009, 2 in 2010, 10 in 2011, 10 in 2012, 10 in 2013, 12 in 2014, 6 in 2015 (Lumiere data, cfr. Papadimitriou 2017, 170).
- 6.
Spain co-produced 45 films in 2010, 74 in 2011, 55 in 2012, 68 in 2013, 100 in 2014, 74 in 2015, (European Audiovisual Observatory 2017).
- 7.
Paolo Sorrentino stands for an excellent example of international television co-productions, too. He created, wrote and directed the series The Young Pope (2016), which was a co-production between Italy, France and Spain, financed by HBO and Canal+, and it starred Jude Law and Diane Keaton.
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Cucco, M. (2018). The Many Enemies of Co-productions in Italy: Moviegoers, Broadcasters, Policy-Makers and Half-Hearted Producers. 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_11
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