Italy: Film industry condemns Paramount’s EU antitrust deal

Leaders in the Italian film industry say Paramount’s proposed actions will threaten the very core of the European audiovisual industry.

The Italian film industry has condemned Paramount for offering concessions to the EU in an ongoing antitrust case. It joins the ranks of leaders in the European audiovisual industry who claim that the studio’s recent actions threaten their very existence.

Last summer in Brussels, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition (COMP) filed an antitrust complaint against the big six studios – Paramount, Disney, NBCUniversal, Sony, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. – for illegal agreements with Sky U.K. which blocked EU consumers from accessing pay-TV content and services from outside the U.K. and Ireland.

Paramount is the first studio to offer the EU a deal, which would broaden the licensing access Sky U.K has with Paramount films, in exchange for dropping the probe into their European film licensing deals. It’s a step in the direction of creating a single digital market across the EU which ultimately would break down the country-by-country licensing rules that regulate the sale of pay-TV content.

But the European film industry is not happy with Paramount’s move.

“In Brussels we made it very clear how we finance and produce our films,” said Lucky Red’s Andrea Occhipinti, president of ANICA Distributors. “We don’t understand Paramount’s decision. Probably for them, Europe is just another market for films that are already produced and financed elsewhere.”

Full Content: Hollywood Reporter

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