Alexey Vasin Biography

Alexey Vasyasin: “It is required to decide: we choose the path of complete struggle or the full legalization of alternative rental” Alexei Vasin: “We need to determine: we choose the path of complete struggle or the full legalization of alternative rental” Author: Nikita Nikitin on February 2, General Director of the United Cinema Summed the results of the New Year's Battle of BC and the BCC of the BCC and the years I met with the General Director of the United Cinema Aleksey Vasyasin to talk about the results of the past “New Year’s battle” and the whole year, the current availability of equipment for the film location and the problem of illegal content, which still remains at the hearing.

Please tell us how the New Year's battle took place on your network? Are you satisfied with the results? I have two impressions. On the one hand, there is growth in money. At the same time, there is almost no growth in the audience. It is clear that from a commercial point of view, the money is primary, but if you look deeper, I would very much like that the industry is growing plumber, that is, an increase in the number of tickets sold only lag behind the growth of box office.

In the meantime, the cash desk greatly overtakes, which may be associated with inflation and other factors, but the number of tickets should not be significantly lagging behind. According to some representatives of cinemas, the share of Pushkin’s Card in the record New Year's “Pie” of 5.8 billion rubles is at least a third. Do you agree with this assessment? According to my estimates, its share was from 15 to 30 percent of the fees.

Depends on the regions. Where is the competition for the money of the Pushkin Card above Moscow, St. Petersburg, there the percentage is lower. I would not call it some particularly important factor in the survival of the industry, but of course, a significant tool for maintaining the life of cinemas-yes, of course. But the quality of the content, the presence of its genre diversity, the availability of show technologies, and so on, are more important to me.

The most important thing here is the continuation of the development of national cinema. The industry felt an important direction of development-family and sheer cinema-and thereby closed the requests of parents with children. But the youth who used to watch Marvel remained not covered. This spectator segment has not yet been closed with anything. An excellent, in my opinion, the film Call was just a good attempt to offer a cool modern attraction for an advanced audience.

But it turned out that, relatively speaking, grandmothers and grandchildren came to him. That is, there was a certain gap, the older and youngest generation came, and the middle segment was not closed. The serf 2 is from the same direction, but in general this is not enough. Here there is a huge field for work at the industry. The industry knows that in the Central Council they wanted to collect 7 billion with two films.

Congratulations to colleagues from the CPSH, they worked perfectly. It seems to me that the films will be fine, they will get their own. Surely you know that some distributors provide a number of regional cinemas “Keys” from their projects for only two days with the aim of stimulating them not to show pirate releases until January 24. How do you feel about this? I fully support any actions on the obstacle to the expansion of pirate content.

On the other hand, the situation in the spirit “while my movie is going on, you do not show the“ pirate ”, and after me - at least the grass is not to grow”, of course, I don’t like it. That is, the question must be posed wider. We need to determine, we are for red or white. It is necessary not in words, but with deeds to fight pirate content. You show the "pirates" you do not get legal content.

You do not show them-you get some preferences, including on the commercial part. That is, I support the first step on preventing the pirate content, but the first should follow the first. So in small steps we will go in the right direction. How are things with the average ticket price in your network and what, according to your forecasts, will happen to her in the near future?

Cinemas were forced to raise prices, since by the current moment almost everything went up very much. If we talk about the cost of equipment and its maintenance, then for individual spare parts prices rose seven times. In general, the cost of maintaining the technical combat readiness of cinemas has increased sharply. We are also forced to index the level of wages to both line personnel and employees of the management company, although we are still inferior in terms of salaries to some retail or, for example, restaurants.

I'm silent about the communal apartment. Also, the clining has risen in price and safety. Sooner or later, it was necessary to significantly raise prices for cinemas. The same applies to bars. Grain, the oil has risen in price. Accordingly, the cost of finished products increased in the same proportion. What are the prospects for resolving the issue with equipment in conditions of increasing sanctions?

I repeat, to ensure the quality of the film screening every day is becoming more and more difficult. The availability of servers, sound racks, boards and other things steadily decreases.And this happens constantly, not with every month, namely every day. In the long run, I see one of the possibilities in full rejection of DCP format. I raised this issue about six months ago, but so far the market is not even ready to discuss it.

The future is still not for film projectors, but for LED panels. To buy a certified five-meter DCP panel, hundreds of thousands of dollars will need. For a similar LED panel with the same resolution and other important functions, only tens of thousands will be required. And this applies to the rest, servers and other things. Therefore, the prospect of two or three years is preparations for the refusal of DCP and the development of a different way of showing with ensuring copy guarantees so that copies of good quality films can not be delivered from cinemas.

How do you generally evaluate the past year for the film science industry? Perhaps my assessment will be dispersed from the official position of relevant ministries, but in general, I evaluate the results of GO satisfactorily. A year ago, it might seem that it would pass darker, but the result was better than one could assume. But you can’t call them good either. According to my estimates, from gross 39 billion rubles 20 percent is a gray import.

If we look at the rating of the best fees in the year, then in fourth place we will find a short film “Three good deeds”, which allegedly raised one and a half billion rubles. This is a negative factor that has its influence. That is, 30 billion remains clean. This is better than the result of the year when about 23 billion has gained, but this is still much worse than 55 billion, when the industry felt much better, and the cost of the whole film location was completely different.

What exactly is it necessary to make industries for the further growth of the box office? First of all, of course, the state needs to put an end to the issue of alternative rental. It is required to decide: we choose the path of complete struggle or the full legalization of alternative rental. As a temporary measure that can be aimed at collecting and further redistributing income in support of domestic rental, this has the right to exist.

You can, for example, think over taxes, the introduction of VAT from the show according to parallel imports. If we are not able to prevent the ban on foreign content, then we can lead the process to form the rules of the game in this segment. Or if we are against it, then it is definitely required to prohibit, and the sites that are engaged in gray imports on an ongoing basis, close, suspend their activities for 90 days for an administrative offense.

There are these laws, but they are not executed. There is a well -known principle of Dura Lex Sed Lex - "The law is harsh, but this is the law." Finding a whole market in the gray zone is the worst that can be today. And the state, together with the industry, needs to do a great job and put an end to what path we will go. There are two roads, but instead we are constantly driving off -road.

Secondly, with the departure from the IMAX, Screenx and others market, our manufacturers need to learn how to shoot in these formats. Until recently, we could say that in Russia all the advanced technologies of the film science are presented.

But now there are many technological things due to sanctions in the air. If all the premium formats return to duty, the price for the ticket will grow up a little again, but it will be justified. This will be a fee for technology, for a deeper immersion, for a more genuine emotion. What can we say about the banal 3D: there are equipment, but there are no films.

It is also necessary to continue to develop the initiative in the spirit of the Pushkin map. Young people, for example, are covered, you can now think about pensioners or other groups of socially unprotected citizens who also need to provide easier access to the cinema. For some time, there was talk about the map in honor of Dostoevsky or about something like that. Moreover, there are more and more different Russian cinema.

Based on this, the development of initiatives to stimulate cinemas to show Russian cinema. Just as done in France. This is a lot about this, but there are no specific movements in this direction. Especially if the parallel rental is legalized. Some cinemas will show foreign content, and the part of the funds that will come from them can be redistributed in favor of others - those who demonstrate Russian films.

They can be supported by the ruble. There are many more ideas, including purely technical. For example, why make a strict reporting form for each ticket?