Russian cinema failed to compensate for the departure of "Batman" and "Minions"

Foreign studios, which occupied 80% of the Russian film market, did not bring to us the films that became the highest-grossing films in 2022. What did the Russians watch after the departure of the "Hollywood Five"

The mass exodus from RUSSIA of the "giants" of world film production, primarily the five largest Hollywood studios Warner Bros., Sony, Disney, Universal and Paramount, deprived Russians of the opportunity, at least the official one, to watch the latest and, in particular, to see those that have become the most box office in 2022. The Russian premieres of Batman sequels, animated Minions (Minions: Gruvitation), Top Gun (Top Gun 2: Maverick), Jurassic Park (Jurassic World: Dominance), "Fantastic Beasts" ("Secrets of Dumbledore") and other films that have collected millions of dollars at the worldwide box office.

Will domestic filmmakers be able to ensure the occupancy of cinemas on their own and supply the market with releases in the required volume? So far, most likely not. Sales of tickets for Russian premieres and previously accounted for a little more than 27% of the market. And for the full development of film distribution in Russia, it is necessary that a premiere come out on the screens at least once a month, capable of collecting more than 1 billion rubles. This is not expected from Russian films that are being prepared for release.

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No Western spectacles - less fees

The decision of Hollywood film studios not only deprived Russians of the pleasure of watching world premieres on the big screen, but also dealt a blow to the national film distribution market. Its total collections promise to be less than in the “post-COVID” 2021, and only the top 10 highest-grossing ones - and those who did not make it to Russia - collected more than $ 7.9 billion at the end of the year. Another problem, although predictable, was dependence domestic market from Hollywood production: it is not yet possible to completely replace it.

“The first conclusion that can be drawn based on the results of 2022 is that there was nothing to replace Hollywood productions. Because of this, the box office collapsed. Cinema revenue in 2022 will be significantly lower than in 2021. At the same time, in 2021, let me remind you, film distribution continued to experience the negative consequences of the pandemic and faced a shortage of major Hollywood productions, ”Alexander Nechaev, editor-in-chief of the Film Distributor Bulletin, told RBC.

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On the night of March 1, 2022, large foreign companies began to report on the cancellation of film premieres and film distribution in Russia due to the operation in Ukraine. First , The Walt Disney Company announced that it would stop the release and distribution of all its films, including the premiere of Pixar's I'm Blushing, which was scheduled for March 10. Following her film studio Warner Bros. the day before the premiere (was scheduled for March 2) canceled the rental in Russia of "Batman" with Robert Pattinson. Following the suspension of the rental of their films, Sony announced . Including the company canceled the premiere of "Morbius" with Jared Leto, which was supposed to take place on March 24. Paramount also removed films from Russian film distribution :The release of The Lost City (April 7) with Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe and Brad Pitt in the lead roles and the second part of Sonic the Movie (March 31) were canceled. The last major Hollywood studio, Universal Pictures , followed suit on March 2, announcing the cancellation of premieres. Russian cinemas were supposed to show the cartoon "Bad Boys" (March 24) and the film "ER" by Michael Bay (April 7).

Warner Bros., Sony, Disney, Universal and Paramount accounted for 80% of the Russian film market . As Alexander Nechaev, editor-in-chief of the Film Distributor's Bulletin, noted at the time, the possible losses of Russian cinemas due to the cancellation of rentals could amount to 5 billion rubles. According to his forecasts, if Western companies do not return to the Russian market for a long time, film distribution will be significantly reduced in terms of money, and the number of participants in this market will also decrease.

Slow import substitution

As Nechaev notes, this year Russian distributors, in an attempt to replace the departed Western content, have released a large number of domestic films aimed at family audiences. “Such a volume of full-length children's production of Russian production can be called a record. It is important to emphasize that this segment is mainly represented by medium-budget films - the cost of their production is no more than 150 million rubles,” he said.

The editor-in-chief of the publication explained this by the fact that Russian producers and distributors, seeing that the most devoted audience of cinemas are still parents with children, have relied on such films. Nechaev noted that it is no coincidence that in recent years in Russia the highest-grossing films have been Disney films, a product that meets all quality standards for a family audience.

“As a result, in the first months after the cancellation of Western premieres, Russian films in this segment collected much more estimates: for example, the film Artek: The Big Journey (became one of the highest-grossing Russian films, earning, according to UAIS, about 328 million rubles .) But towards the end of the year, the public was tired of monotonous family premieres, and it began to be more selective in choosing films, ”the expert said.

The viewer will demand higher quality

Next year, the audience will make much more demands on the quality of such products, and films similar in quality to the premieres of 2022 are unlikely to “work” at the same level, Nechaev believes. “We will have to raise the standards, and not expect that the audience, which was cut off from Hollywood productions in cinemas, turned out to be completely cut off from it,” the expert said.

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“Fortunately, we are not yet in the Soviet Union, where the general public had no idea what Hollywood cinema was. Now, despite the lack of official distribution, Western blockbusters are leaking into pirate distribution. In this sense, the competition for Russian producers with Hollywood has not gone away: the viewer knows “what they are wearing now,” the editor-in-chief added.

The New Year holidays will become a new challenge for domestic film distributors. According to Nechaev, Russian producers managed to scrape together releases for the New Year's battle. According to preliminary estimates of the Film Distributor's Bulletin, the size of the box office during the holidays will reach 4 billion rubles. “This is a little less than last year, but expectations are affected by the share of closed cinemas and, again, the lack of Hollywood production. There is an audience that basically does not go to Russian films, and you will not do anything about it, it must be admitted, ”said RBC’s interlocutor.

Market prospects for the coming year Nechaev called uncertain. “Cinema theaters will obviously live normally through December, January and February. But what happens next is the big question. The schedule of releases for the first half of the year raises concerns: we still do not see premieres in February and beyond, which will collect more than 1 billion rubles. And for the ideal development of Russian film distribution, it is necessary that at least one release be released every month, which alone would collect 1 billion rubles,” he said.

In 2021, according to the Cinema Fund, the total box office receipts of domestic film distribution amounted to 40.7 billion rubles, of which 25.6% came from ticket sales for screenings of Russian films. In total, 145.7 million tickets were sold for screenings, only 27.2% for domestic premieres.

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The highest-grossing films of 2021 in Russia (according to the Bulletin of the Film Distributor)

"Venom-2" - 2.3 billion rubles. "The Last Hero: The Root of Evil" - 2.11 billion rubles. "Spider-Man: No Way Home" - 2.09 billion rubles. "Dune" - 1.5 billion rubles. "Soul" - 1.4 billion rubles. "Fast and the Furious 9" - 1.3 billion rubles. "Humpbacked Horse" - 1.2 billion rubles. "Boss Baby 2" - 1 billion rubles. "Human Wrath" - 969 million rubles. "Raya and the Last Dragon" - 949 million rubles. Melting libraries of online cinemas

The departure of Hollywood studios has also affected online cinemas, which are losing the opportunity to show films already licensed for Russia. If the studio’s refusal to bring premieres to Russia was announced in March, then in the summer, old films and foreign-made TV series began to disappear from the libraries of online cinemas. For example, the series Friends, the films 1+1, Interstellar, The Lord of the Rings and The Mask became unavailable on Kinopoisk.

Online movie theaters have tried to replace Western premieres with South Korean, Indian and Turkish content. But, despite the increased supply, such projects remained niche. Only Korean dramas were in the top 10 for most services in the summer. In isolated cases, platforms manage to release Western novelties, referring to previously concluded agreements. For example, new episodes of the Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, were aired on Amediateka, although Warner Bros. Discovery (before merging with the Discovery TV channel in April 2022 was known as WarnerMedia), which owns the HBO TV channel, has suspended its activities in Russia.

According to TelecomDaily, six months after Hollywood studios stopped working in Russia, the majority of Russian streaming sites, including ivi, Okko and Kinopoisk, showed negative dynamics for the first time in their existence: the depth of library volume decline on different platforms ranged from 5 to 42%.

The information and analytical agency TelecomDaily, at the request of RBC, has calculated the volume of libraries of the leading Russian online cinemas (data as of October 11).

The largest reduction in the library over the past six months occurred at the Ivi online cinema (until September 8 it was known as ivi), the drop was 42%, to 8.5 thousand films and series in the third quarter of 2022. Kion was in second place in terms of content reduction dynamics among the largest Russian platforms; according to the results of the third quarter of 2022, 10.1 thousand titles remained in the service’s library, a drop of almost 11%. The Okko online cinema has lost 5% of its content in six months, now there are 15.5 thousand films and series available in the streaming library. A similar trend is observed in Kinopoisk: 11.1 thousand titles at the end of September 2022 versus 11.7 thousand at the end of March. The only service that over the past six months has not reduced, but increased the amount of content in the library, was Wink: in the third quarter, it offered customers 10.3 thousand books.

The Ministry of Culture refused to rent the series "Monastery" because of the position of the Russian Orthodox Church Society Internal losses

In 2022, several Russian films and series did not appear on the screens. The reason for this was the refusal of the Ministry of Culture to issue rental certificates to the tapes. It is currently known that they were not received by the film "Empire V", based on the novel by Viktor Pelevin (the release was planned on March 31), the dystopia "We" based on the novel of the same name by Yevgeny Zamyatin (the release was planned for December 1) and the series "Monastery". The latter caused complaints from the Russian Orthodox Church, which stated that "the film forms a distorted, caricatured idea of ​​Russian monasticism among the general public."

Also in 2022, according to the Bulletin of the Film Distributor, a film about Stalinist repressions Captain Volkogonov escaped (it was planned to be released on April 7) and Nuuccia, a film about a Russian convict who seizes the house of a Yakut family (it was planned release on December 1).

There is currently no information about the cancellation or postponement of premieres due to the law that has entered into force in Russia banning LGBT propaganda and gender reassignment.

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Gray zone: Pirates and "private" screenings

Despite the fact that officially Western premieres do not appear on Russian screens, the Russians have not lost de facto Hollywood cinema. Access to foreign premieres and series, often with little difference between premiere and watchable release, has been preserved by the spread of internet piracy and partly by private business.

At present, it is extremely difficult to establish audience coverage and ratings for foreign series that Russians continued to watch after streaming platforms left Russia, including one of the largest streaming platforms, Netflix. The reason for this is the complexity of collecting and systematizing statistics. However, one factor can be noted: in 2022, Russians have increased interest in pirated content.

According to data released in July by cybersecurity company Group-IB, this happened in the context of the departure of foreign market participants, as well as in connection with the development of high-speed mobile Internet. “The departure of foreign streaming platforms from Russia and the “freezing” of world film premieres in domestic cinemas further spurred interest in illegal content: if in March 2020 the number of requests to watch “pirates” in a popular search engine was 5 billion, then in March 2021 it was already 6 billion,” the company said.

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Interest in illegal content has grown throughout the year not only online. Group-IB reported that since May 2022, “private” illegal screenings of Hollywood films have begun in Russia, which were not officially brought into the country. “On the Web, you can find offers to package pirated copies in special DCP packages (a digital format used by film distributors to distribute and show films in cinemas) and even a collaboration of a pirated release group with legal business has been recorded. <...> The legalization of Internet piracy remains only at the level of talk, but the emerging "initiatives" cannot but be alarming. All this looks like dangerous signals, ”Andrey Busargin, DIRECTOR of Group-IB in the direction of protection against digital risks, was quoted in the message.

As early as April, Esquire (currently published under the Rules of Life brand) reported on “private” screenings of foreign films in Russia. In particular, in some cinemas in Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Ivanovo, Chita and other Russian cities, foreign films were screened, the distribution of which was canceled after the start of a military special operation in Ukraine. In most cases, the halls were rented for private viewings.

In particular, on April 21, in a Moscow cinema, VIP viewers were allegedly shown the Batman movie by Matt Rizv, downloaded from a pirated website, and filmed by Warner Bros. A similar situation occurred, according to the portal "E1", in the cinemas "Greenwich Cinema" and "Passage Cinema" in Yekaterinburg. In all cases, the screenings were held unofficially. At that time, the Association of Cinema Owners (AVK) stated that a film screening held without a license or a rental certificate is qualified as illegal and falls under several articles of the Administrative and Civil Codes: Art. 7.12 and Art. 14.58 of the Code of Administrative Offenses; Art. 1252, 1301, 1311 GK.

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In one of the major cinema chains, these reports were commented on by stating that such screenings are not held, but halls and equipment are rented out, and at “private” screenings it is sometimes difficult to track the demonstration of pirated content.

In June, it became known that the leading Russian cinema chains stopped paying the largest Hollywood film companies a share of the distribution of films already released in Russia. They called this decision a response to the cessation of production of Western premieres in Russia. At the same time, a number of cinemas - members of the Association of Cinema Owners still planned to show the film "Batman" on the basis of previously concluded licensing agreements, and one of them filed a lawsuit. Representatives of the Irkutsk cinema New Cinema represented by Cinema-Media LLC were able to convince the Moscow Arbitration COURT to satisfy the claim against the Russian legal entity Universal Pictures (Universal Pictures International LLC) in the amount of 2.9 million rubles. as compensation for the canceled screenings of the new "Batman".

In mid-summer, news of "private" screenings began to appear more and more often. In particular, on July 25, RBC Petersburg announced the screenings of pirated copies of Hollywood films in cinemas of one of the chains in St. Petersburg, Pskov, Petrozavodsk, Veliky Novgorod, Murmansk, Arkhangelsk and other cities of the North-West. However, the films, including "Batman" and the cartoon "I'm blushing", were shown not by the network itself, but by the To Kino! company, to which the cinema halls were rented.

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In July and August, first regional and then metropolitan cinemas in Russia began to provide viewers with “pre-screening” services, when, before a Russian film was shown, the audience was shown a Hollywood blockbuster that had not reached our country. The first idea was to hold such a screening in Perm, then they began to do so in the cinema halls of Kazan, St. Petersburg, Ufa, the Volgograd Region, the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Saratov Region and the Republic of Mari El. Viewers report that Hollywood films are played in good quality and with official dubbing. According to one version, cinema halls use copies sent to Kazakhstan and other CIS countries.

After the first such screenings in July, the Association of Cinema Owners asked the government to release cinemas from liability for showing films without the consent of Western studios, as this could open a "window of opportunity for showing Hollywood content."

In autumn, voices began to be heard in Russia in support of the legalization of content that is inaccessible to Russians, the need for this was stated by the deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy, the authorized body that will collect such illegal content. “This should not be a spontaneous action, when someone is into something much - someone could steal something, download it and then show it. This should be an authorized body that will centrally collect content without any royalties and respect for the intellectual property of those countries that harm Russia to the maximum. And only then sell the collected content to our colleagues who will use it,” Kiryanov told TASS.

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He believes that in Russia one should not be afraid "to take responsibility for the fact that we really will have this content one way or another." Thus, according to Kiryanov, users will pay not to copyright holders or pirates, but to the state, and the business will operate "in a legal space."

A similar initiative regarding pirated software was not supported by the Ministry of Digital Development in the spring. Back in early March, the Kommersant publication reported that Russia intends to abolish liability for the use of unlicensed software. However, the ministry said that they did not offer this and are in favor of stimulating the transition to Russian software.