What's the digital cinema future for Éclair?

The above question is merited by the news that fell like a bomb on the European attendees of ShoWest last week that almost half of the shares (43 per cent) in French post-production and digital cinema pioneer Éclair had been bought up by Tarak Ben Amar. Who he? You wouldn't know it from his brief Wikipedia entry, but he is the 83 per cent owner of France's Quinta Industries, whose ownership includes both LTC and Duran Dubois, i.e. Éclair's greatest competitors in France's post production market. From an artcle in Cineuropa:

The buyout, through Holland Coordinator Italia, was made possible after Philippe Dormoy, father of Bertrand Dormoy, left his posts of CEO of Éclair Laboratoires and vice-president of the Éclair Group in September 2005. "I became close to Mr Ben Ammar, who I’ve known since 1975, in order to ensure the longevity and the name of a group founded by my family in 1907, to which I remain much attached," said the seller.

. . .

The Éclair Group (Éclair Laboratories and Télétota) has a presence on all audiovisual markets (features, shorts, television features, advertising, documentaries, magazines), from production to distribution (set rentals, photochemical processing and sorting, audiovisual post-production, print production and archive restoration).

The article neglects to mention that the company has also done a lot of work in digital cinema, mastering over twenty movies (including a 4K title), with an average output of two a month. The company has also announced plans for a 4,000 screen digital cinema roll-out in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Scandinavia and has the support of at least two Hollywood studios.
Much of this thanks to Gwendal Auffret.

This is where things get interesting, because Tarak is also head of Technicolor at Quinta Industries. In fact, the bond between Technicolor and Quinta go very deep, as this press release from 2004 reveals:

Thomson and Quinta Enter Into Partnership for Post-Production and Film Activities in France

Quinta Benefits from Access to Thomson’s Skills and Technology Expertise Thomson Strengthens Presence in Post-Production and Film Activities in France
Paris, November 11th 2004 - Thomson and Quinta, a company controlled by Mr Tarak Ben Ammar, have entered into an exclusive partnership agreement covering post-production and film release activities in France.

The agreement will create strong commercial and technical ties between Quinta’s post-production and film activities (Duran Duboi, SIS and LTC) and Thomson’s Technicolor Entertainment Services, a leading player in the field of film replication and digital post-production worldwide. Through the partnership, film producers and directors in France will be able to benefit from state-of-the art technology.

Quinta will draw on the technical expertise of TechnicolorTM and Grass ValleyTM to offer its customers the highest quality services in the film industry. This arrangement will reinforce Quinta’s position in the French market and strengthen its ability to adapt to the industry’s fast-changing technological environment.

That is why people kept coming up to me at ShoWest and asking if Gwendal is out of a job. What is clear is that this must be the end for the go-it-alone digital cinema strategy of Éclair. There are a lot of smart people at Technicolor, though they are outnumbered by the not-so-smart-people, with the latter too often in charge of digital cinema strategy in the past. Technicolor and Tarak would do well to keep Gwendal and his expertise on board. But that is not always how these things work.

One thing is for sure and that is that digital cinema just got a whole lot more interesting in France, which I had previously predicted would one of the last countires in Europe to go digital.