Dark rooms have rarely been so empty.
A record drop of 34.7% in attendance was recorded in September according to the CNC.
This is at its lowest for... forty years.
To counter this trend, Jérôme Seydoux, the influential president of Pathé, takes the opposite view of those who consider that it is necessary to think about lowering the price of tickets.
“The cinema must go upmarket in services, it must go upmarket in comfort
”, insisted on France Inter, Wednesday, Jérôme Seydoux, who had detailed his strategy on this subject last April.
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"
Today, cheap cinema is television
," he explains to Léa Salamé and Nicolas Demorand
.
The French see five films on television for one film in theaters.
This is a minority of films seen by the French.
The room, opposite the platforms and the TV, which has made a lot of progress, must therefore go upmarket.
" When Nicolas Demorand asks him if
"the places will be even more expensive"
, Jérôme Seydoux assures that, from experience, when the spectators go to see a film which is close to their heart, the most expensive are those which
"leave the fastest" .
Consumption habits
“We have to challenge ourselves. We have to evolve. We can't always wait for Santa Claus, or wait for the state to make magnificent decisions
, ”continues the octogenarian, who regularly castigates the conservatism of the French film industry.
“In the 90s, there was the multiplex revolution.
They have revived attendance worldwide.
Help is one thing.
The quality of entrepreneurs, producers and directors is another.”
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Jérôme Seydoux recalled in April in
Le Figaro
that consumption habits have evolved.
"Tomorrow, the platforms will choose to release a few films for a reduced operating window of 30 to 60 days, because they need to highlight their productions (...).
The Covid crisis has broken the habits of spectators.
It is up to us to recover them by offering them an enticing experience.”
After having bought Gaumont, Europacorp and more recently CinéAlpes, Pathé has more than a hundred cinemas in France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Tunisia.