New Nouvelle Vague - France Flirts With Digital Cinema

PARIS — Do viewers of first-run films really need a theater these days? Two major movie distributors have decided they don't, choosing to release feature films directly online, skipping the theater altogether. This is how The Age Of Adaline — starring Blake Lively and Harrison Ford — was recently launched in France.

The companies TF1 Video and Wild Bunch have both decided that they will choose this new "digital cinema" model for five releases this year, offering new films as on-demand rentals at around $8, the average price for a movie ticket.

For now, this is just an experiment, both companies say. They have found a way to follow the rules of French cinema and still use this new model. Because French films aren't allowed to be introduced this way, they will only release foreign movies, mostly English-language, digitally. This also allows them to free themselves from the calendar of a movie's life that determines how long it can be shown in each medium — theaters, DVD, VOD (video on demand), free television and paid television.

Wild bunch and TF1 Video say digital cinema releases will make movies more profitable, whereas today they are victims of the saturation of movie theaters. "With 663 movies released exclusively in 2014, the theater network, despite all its efforts, cannot guarantee a larger geographical coverage," says Vincent Grimond, president of Wild Bunch. The profusion of releases creates effectively eliminates the movies that don't convince the audience in their first days.

Ad for a digital cinema movie in the Parisian metro — Photo: Bertrand Hauger

They also argue that a...