VOD around the world: an asset for French cinema?: six key players in the VOD market discussed this subject on January 13, 2014.
Video-on-demand (VOD) now generates $21 billion annually worldwide (2013), with revenues forecast to reach $45 billion by 2018. North America is expected to lead the market, boosted by major expanding markets in Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region.
Does the future of independent cinema lie in video-on-demand?
To answer this question, and many others, particularly concerning the future importance of VOD in the organization of French film distribution, uniFrance films hosted a roundtable on January 13, 2014. This event was held as a sidebar during the Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris, a major annual film market dedicated to French cinema, which gathers together around 450 leading figures in the movie sales and distribution sectors from around the world.
The speakers at this roundtable were Justine Barda, president of Telescope, an online aggregator working, notably, with Hulu; Jérôme Chung, co-founder of Under The Milky Way, a company dedicated to the digital distribution and marketing of movies and audiovisual programs; Alexandra Lebret, founder of France’s first VOD platform and secretary general of the European Producers’ Club; Pierre Lescure, who headed a review of Act II of France’s cultural exception policy and has just been named Cannes Film Festival’s president; Jaume Rippoll, publishing director and co-founder of FilmIn; and Nadia Zaionchkovska, executive director of the Russian website Megogo.net. The roundtable was moderated by Laurent Cotillon, editor in chief of the French trade magazine Le Film Français.
