French cinema may be enjoying a golden run on the festival circuit and in the awards race, but getting those films into U.S. theaters, and persuading American audiences to buy tickets, has become an increasingly uphill battle. That paradox was at the heart of a lively discussion at the American French Film Festival on Thursday, held in partnership with the CNC and Variety, where three veteran U.S. distributors painted a sobering picture of a market squeezed by shrinking theatrical opportunities.
The panel brought together Robert Aronson, executive VP of Cohen Media Group; John Gerrans, co-president of Strand Releasing; and Paul Hudson, CEO of Outsider Pictures, who have collectively brought hundreds of international films to American audiences. The challenges extend well beyond French cinema. With fewer distributors acquiring independent films and arthouse theaters increasingly turning to mainstream Hollywood fare, even critically acclaimed movies are struggling to secure meaningful theatrical runs.
The definition of a French-language box office hit has also changed dramatically along with the health of the special market for most foreign-language films. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s cult film “Amélie” grossed approximately $33 million domestically a quarter-century ago. By comparison, Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner “Anatomy of a Fall,” one of the most successful French films of the last five years which was handled by Neon and won an Oscar, earned around $5 million in the U.S.
Samuel Goldwyn, whose company released Pathé’s two-part “The Three Musketeers” and “The Count of Monte Cristo,” and recently acquired Antonin Baudry’s historical epic saga “De Gaulle,” told Variety in a separate interview following the panel that these films have far broader commercial potential than their limited theatrical exposure suggests. “The only thing that makes it an arthouse movie is because it’s in a foreign language,” Goldwyn said of “De Gaulle,” adding that it could easily play on 1,000 screens if it were in English. He’s still managed to roll out the first opus of the WWII saga into theaters this weekend across key U.S. markets simultaneously with transactional VOD.
