France continues to throw its weight at studios and training with cultural minister Rima Abdul Malak unveiling the 68 projects selected for its €350m ’The Great Image Factory’ initiative in Cannes on Friday (May 19).
The selected projects, chosen from 175, include 11 film studios, 12 animation studios, 6 video game studios, five VFX and post-production studios and 34 training and educational facilities, and span 12 regions from Lille to Nantes to Guadeloupe and Martinique.
’The Great Image Factory’ is part of the French government’s €54bn France 2030 plan and has already seen investments upwards of €2.4bn in French production in 2022 in addition to €600m in spending on international shoots, 48% more than in 2021 as France ramps up its effort efforts to transform into a major international production and locations hub.
“Our objective is to become a world leader and to double the surface of our studios in France,” Abdul Malak said during a rain-drenched, crowded CNC beachside event, adding: “we’re in a new golden age of cinema and audiovisual production. It’s an exceptional moment of opportunity for France… we need the industry to be solid and adapted to the future.”
The investment will allow France to double the surface of its film sets to 153,000m2 and nearly quadruple the surface area of its backlots to 187,000m2, making France a leader in continental Europe should all of the projects be completed by 2030.
The cultural minister was joined by The Stronghold and November filmmaker Cedric Jimenez, who heads up one of the selection committees and said that while today, French filmmaking expertise is “of very high quality, the number of sets and the capacity to accommodate filming remain somewhat low,” adding that series’ need studio space for longer shoots and that “feature films are also turning more and more to the studio. This was not the case twenty years ago.”
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