The cinema mediator sends an injunction to Megarama after its request to exclude certain small cinemas

Cinema mediator Laurence Franceschini sent an injunction to Megarama on Thursday, asking it to stop its “business practices” calling for a boycott of certain small venues, in a letter consulted by France Inter on Monday May 11. The cinema network had asked numerous distributors at the beginning of March to limit access to films, in national release, to several small municipal cinemas accused of “distortion of competition” particularly due to the price of tickets.

The cinema mediator was contacted on April 30 by the National Center for Cinema and Animated Images (CNC). Laurence Franceschini orders the Megarama company to “put an end to commercial practices which aim to prevent certain distributors from entrusting the national release of their films to municipal cinemas in the catchment area of ​​their brands”we can read in the letter. This injunction “is a lightning victory”greets François Aymé, director of the Jean Eustache cinema in Pessac in Gironde and former president of the French Association of Art House Cinemas, contacted by France Inter.

The Megarama network, which has around thirty cinema multiplexes in France, sent an email on March 3 in which it asked numerous distributors including Pathé, Metropolitan Films, and Gaumont, to boycott several small municipal theaters. In this email, which France Inter was able to consult, several rooms are listed by Megarama as generating a “distortion of competition in terms of exposure and ticket prices for films in national release”. Megarama therefore asks distributors “to take these elements into account before the discussion of [leurs] next releases.

The cinemas mentioned are located in Val-de-Marne, Essonne and Oise. Most of these small subsidized municipal theaters sell entry tickets cheaper than the multiplexes of the Megarama network. Contacted by France Inter, the Perreux-sur-Marne cinema (Val-de-Marne), for example, declared that it had been receiving films three, even four, weeks late since the beginning of March.

Since the email sent by Megarama, a petition has been launched by the Union of local cinemas. Named “For the defense of access to films in local cinemas”it has since collected nearly 2,500 signatures.