FilmFour sued for £6 million

net1

FilmFour, a unit of Channel 4, is being sued for £6m (E8.7 million) according to Eurofilm & Media Ltd, a subsidiary of Germany's Senator Entertainment group. Senator is one of Germany's leading film producers, which says it has launched the action.

According to Eurofilm in 1999 it entered into an agreement with FilmFour to co-finance a series of at least 21 feature films as part of a long-term partnership to develop high quality films. Productions released under the agreement included "Charlotte Gray", "Crush" and "Lucky Break".

But, says Eurofilm, in July 2002 when Channel Four suddenly announced that it was closing its distribution and international sales arms, as well as slashing its production budget it failed to make payments due under the deal to Eurofilm from world sales revenues that FilmFour had already received.

war head

Well FilmFour was always onto a loser

The kind of market they were aiming for just doesn't exist

jimbo

Oh I think it does exist war head but only in a small minority. The kind of films they showed were the sort you see at the small independent cinemas and some are really good. Unfortunately the few do not generate the necessary income required for the smaller providers. Shame.

Jimbo

rolfw

There will always be an audience for these films, but probably increasingly so in the DVD market, the odd one will make it to a cinema release, but the studios and distributors only want to go for safe bets. Take the Mel Gibson film made in aramaic with subtitles, nobody was interested, bet they are now.

Many of these art house films are the inspiration for hollywood blockbusters and when watched after the fact are actually a lot better.

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jimbo

Exactly Rolf.

Jimbo

war head

I would no doubt enjoy some of Film 4's output, it's just the rigmarole of subscribing that puts me off. Plus i can obtain plenty of obscure French films for free on channels like Arte and TPS. And everyone's seen Trainspotting a 100 times anyway.

For most of us, the only way to obtain the channel is with a Sky dish. The typical perceived Film 4 viewer is an intelligent, politically correct but free-thinking, left-of centre individual. Possibly bearded, possibly lesbian. More likely than not, a vegetarian.

Well rightly or wrongly, a lot of people fitting this particular demographic profile wouldn't touch anything to do with Sky, on principle. Some of these people don't even own a telly.

The 'average' Sky viewer, on the other hand, is probably more into sport and the block buster hollywood movies, so unlikely to subscribe to a channel they would find unstimulating.

Perhaps Film4 would do better as a top-up subscription channel on terrestrial digital?

ha ha ha

Channel Hopper

Neve seen FilmFour show anything similar to the Soho offerings Jimbo

Seriously the straight to DVD/video or even TV market shows whether a film really has the stamina to become a classic offering, the financial implications of getting an 'alternative' film onto the cinema circle usually stops many of the independent production companies from going down the route in the first place.

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"