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On today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, Variety’s Elsa Keslassy explains the battle that is brewing in France between Netflix and other streamers over the country’s programming quotas and its theatrical movie
windowing rules.
Keslassy, who is Variety‘s international editor based in Paris, says France has a “love-hate relationship” with Netflix. The streamer has invested millions of dollars in French content but it is chafing at new regulations imposed in 2022 by the European Union that made a 20% quota of locally-produced programming for Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and other streamers active in the country.”
Netflix executives have been particularly vocal about what they see as arbitrary regulations on how and how much Netflix can invest in movies and TV programs produced in France.
“We have a love-hate relationship with Netflix in France. They are the number one streaming service. Everyone now has Netflix in France. But the issue is that we also want them to invest a lot of money in French content, because they’re popular here. So the French industry says, well, you’re making money off of our market, so you need to invest in French content, French series, French movies. Just like Canal+, for instance, which is the leading pay TV service in France, is investing a lot of money in local content,” Keslassy explains. “So the whole thing comes from this mentality that every player in France needs to invest in local content.”
The regulations are structured so as to ensure that Netflix doesn’t spend that entire quota on a handful of costly titles. There are new stipulations about investing in a range of genres, from animation to documentaries in addition to narrative and unscripted TV and movies.
“They’ve set up new quotas for Netflix, which requires them to invest in animation and documentaries within the 20 percent that they have to invest. So they’re not even free to invest everything they want within those percentages,” Keslassy says. “They have to invest in certain type of content. [Netflix] feels like it’s very, very restrictive and it’s basically breaching the editorial freedom that they must have.”
Meanwhile, Keslassy details the brinksmanship afoot between the state, Canal+ and the major streamers. Canal+ gets an advantageous TV window for French theatrical releases while the streamers have to wait some 15 months.
“Canal+ actually has a six-month window after theatrical release. And they have that window in exchange for a greater investment in local production. They’re investing 230 million Euros per year on French movies. They’re spending that much money because they can have a six-month window to theatrically released movies,” Keslassy says. “Canal+ has said that if Netflix was going to get a window as good as their window, they would stop investing in French movies.”
(Pictured: Netflix’s popular French series “Lupin”)
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