Box office revenues drop and new VOD platforms
French films in 2019
BOX OFFICE
2019 American box office revenues dropped by about $500 million compared to 2018 during the same period, being a slump of 5.7%. Of course, fall is looking rosier, with the recent successes of Downtown Abbey, Ad Astra, Hustlers, and the upcoming releases of The Joker, Maleficent, Frozen 2, and the new Star Wars. But these films may not suffice to make up the losses and experts now agree that, in the best case scenario, the 2019 annual box office should drop by around 2% compared to that of 2018, which tallied 11.9 billion.
FRENCH FILMS
In this context, 2019 has been relatively tough for French films, particularly French-language titles (The Image Book, Sorry Angel, Daughters of the Sun, Sauvage, My Son). Non-Fiction has nevertheless crossed the $700,000 threshold at the box office. French English-language films (High Life, The Mustang, Climax) fared better, although the theatrical release of Anna by Luc Besson failed to meet expectations.
But upcoming releases of Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Neon), Les Misérables (Amazon), Atlantics (Netflix), I Lost My Body (Netflix), Zombi Child (Film Movement), and Frankie (Sony Classics) herald better days to come for French cinema in the United States.
VOD
Fall will be interesting with the launch of 2 new SVOD platforms whose aim is to directly compete with Netflix and Amazon: Apple+ will launch on November 1 for $4.99 per month, Disney+ will quickly follow on November 12 with its offer of $6.99 per month. The SVOD market will densify even more at the beginning of 2020 with the new HBO Max and NBC Universal services.
In terms of independent films, the American distributor Kino Lorber revealed during the NYFF its entirely new VOD service Kino Now: the new platform has opted for pay per view and, later, AVOD, and currently has several hundred titles in its catalog.
