The newest Russian 'gold rush'? To the silver screen!
16.07.2006
Moscow Deck and Heth are the creative and technical advisers on "Trackman," a thriller set here, filmed in Russian and aimed at millions of eager moviegoers across the former Soviet republics. It is the first local-language film for Monumental Pictures, a joint venture of Sony Pictures Entertainment and Patton Media Group, a production company backed in part by American investors.
A primary task for the two men is to instill a studio-style work ethic on the "Trackman" set and make sure that the movie is delivered on time and on budget. When the film's director, Igor Shavlak, tells Deck that cameras will roll in 30 minutes, Deck raises a good-natured eyebrow. "Promise?" he asked. Shavlak welcomes the prodding. "The idea is to absorb the American experience" making films, he said later. "It is common knowledge we are lagging far behind."
But not, it would appear, for long. Russia's movie industry, following a torpid decade that mirrored the social, political and economic turbulence after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, is in the midst of a creative renaissance and box office boom. And Hollywood - whose producers, distributors and exhibitors rarely pass up a chance to exploit an opportunity - is spending millions on theaters, distributors and movies themselves.
"It's like a gold rush right now," said Michael Lynton, chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment. "There is a long history of good filmmaking; there are actors and directors who know what they are doing. The trick is getting in at the ground level."
Russia, of course, is a land where a rush for gold is a perennial pastime. It is also an unpredictable, unwieldy place that in recent years has routinely rewarded and then confounded many fortune hunters. Even so, analysts and film executives all say the movie business here looks more promising and more vibrant than it has in many years.
Box office receipts in Russia increased 20 percent last year to $331 million, with PricewaterhouseCoopers, the American accounting firm, predicting double-digit growth in each of the next five years. Other hot growth markets, based on preliminary data, are Turkey and China. By contrast, almost every other major West and East European country had box office declines last year, as did the United States, where revenue slid 5.7 percent to $9 billion.
The number of tickets sold in Russia jumped 19 percent in 2005 to 125 million, while movie admissions in the rest of Europe, the United States and much of Asia were either flat or down, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Russia's biggest movie distributor is Gemini Film, which 20th Century Fox, a unit of News Corp., bought in April. Michael Schlicht, a native of the former East Germany, heads Gemini's Moscow office, and he says serious, creative film companies would ignore Russia at their own peril.
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Hollywood's biggest challenge in Russia is a well-known culprit: film piracy. DVDs are sold on the street for as little as $2 to $5 on the same day as - and sometimes before - a movie's theatrical debut. Many are copied directly from movie theater prints, suggesting the work of local industry insiders, not enterprising pirates seated in the back of a movie theater carrying camcorders. Schlicht estimated that movie studios and producers lose about 90 percent of potential Russian box office revenue because of rampant piracy. But even that is not deterring the most intrepid investors.
"Russia is a hot market right now because things are actually happening," said Tomas Jegeus, co-president of Fox's international theatrical distribution division. "It is not just a promise of good fortune to come, like in so many other countries."
Source:
The New York Times
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