Association of movie theaters' owners questions right of distributors of Hollywood studios to release Russian films

MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - The association of owners of movie theaters has urged the Russian Culture Ministry to take measures against distribution companies representing interests of foreign studios that have stopped releasing films in Russia.

"We believe that the distribution companies representing interests of foreign studios that have stopped releasing films in Russia should not release Russian films, especially those films that received support from the state. In a situation where representatives of Hollywood film studios simultaneously possess the rights to release Russian films, movie theaters cannot even sever contracts with such distributors over the unilateral refusal of such studios to release films by Hollywood studios," the association said in an open letter to Culture Minister Olga Lyubimova.

Since March 2000, movie theaters have worked amid serious restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic "and are actually on the edge of subsistence," and the start of 2022 showed that "the situation in the movie demonstration sector is very likely to worsen disastrously this year" in view of the cancellation of the release of films of such foreign studios as the Walt Disney Company, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., Paramount, and Universal, it said.

The Russian office of the Walt Disney Company has banned the release of the film The Last Warrior: The Messenger of Darkness "produced by a Russian movie director on Russian money allocated under the program of state support for the production of Russian films," and it is not planning to conclude new contracts for the release of Russian films shown before, it said.

The association has asked the ministry to influence Russian producers and studios, which have decided to postpone the premieres of their films, and to qualify such actions as unacceptable.

The association also proposed supporting the promotion of the release of new films produced in 2021 or completing production in 2022.