Post-Expo summary of European situation

I'm too lazy and busy to do a post-Cinema Expo summary, but fortunately FJI's new digital cinema editor Bill Mead has already done the work for me in this article. It is an excellent snapshot of where things stand in Europe:

Nowhere else in the world is the digital-cinema rollout more complex than in Europe. Compared to the U.S., where similar virtual print fee (VPF) arrangements have prompted an initial first wave of installations from exhibitors, Europe has more difficulty finding the common ground among the exhibitors, distributors, and digital-cinema providers on which equitable financial sharing arrangements can be built. In Europe, as elsewhere, the question of "who will pay" has evolved into a series of follow-up questions about how to develop equitable cost-benefit sharing deals that are fair today and are sustainable in the future.

Europe is a diverse market. Not only are there cultural factors but business and economic factors contributing to rollout complexity. There are more than 800 distributors operating in Europe and the mix of Hollywood studio and locally produced content varies by country, typically averaging around 70% imported titles. 35mm prints tend to be crossed-over between theatres more than in the U.S., so any print savings have to be spread across multiple theatres. There are also more theatres which are either part-time or with a relatively low annual number of admissions. Overall lower screen counts result in lower economy of scale from creating digital copies.

The article doesn't include details of AAM's two VPF deals, but I'm sure that will come in a future issue. For now, hats off to FJI's new digital cinema editor for a strong start. Andreas Fuchs has pulled the heavy European digital cart at FJI all by himself for too long.