As reported rbc Russian movie producers (Sergey Selyanov from “STV”, Fedor Bondarchuk and Dmitry Rudkovsky from Art Pictures, Timur Vainstein from “Vaite Media”, Gevond Andreasyan from “Enjoy Movies” and George Shabanov from “All Media”) have signed and sent collective letter to Russian ministry of culture. The letter is addressed to Russian minister of culture Vladimir Medinsky. They aim to get support from Russian ministry of culture in distribution of their movies. They concerns about New Year competition with foreign movies. Some of these companies have produced movies with support of governmental Movie Fund. These movies will be released on 31st of December 2015 and 1st of January 2016. A few foreign films will be also released in Russia on the same dates. Russian producers have concerns that it will be pretty hard to earn money on distribution of certain Russian movies in order to cover expenditures spent on production of these movies if these films will compete with foreign films. Therefore signers asked for state support in relation to certain films produced by their companies.
Producers propose to make a rule that foreign movies will be released in Russia on a day of their worldwide release. Authors of letter believe this rule could bring an order in Russian movie market. Russian producers could choose effective date for movie release, what, in its turn, can result in increase of revenue share in distribution of Russian movies in internal market. Hollywood studios would understand it. Also has been proposed an alternative. Company could choose date for release of a foreign movie within a minimal term, few months prior to date of release. It could allow Russian companies more easily to choose date for release of their films. Russian ministry of culture referred this letter to main distributors of foreign movies with request to state their position.