[MifuneFan]

Originally Posted by Angry Virginian

What's the deal with CODA and Italy? Eagle Pictures also released a BR of the movie in February. The BR was not released elsewhere in the world.

Eagle Pictures helped fund the film, securing their rights well before Apple acquired "global rights" for $25 million at Sundance. They have licensing in Italy for it for 20 years.

https://variety.com/2021/film/spotli...da-1234898672/

Included in the budget was roughly $6 million in foreign territory presales, brokered by Pathé, which presented an obstacle to any player looking to take global rights to the film (a common requirement for streaming services who need to feed content to worldwide subscribers). Buying back foreign distribution rights is messy work that can quickly become expensive, one dealmaker unrelated to this transaction said — especially when some of those international rights holders say they were blindsided by Pathé, and only learned of Apple’s acquisition of “CODA” in trade publications like Variety.

That’s the case with Eagle Pictures, Italy’s leading independent distribution company (presided by Tarak Ben Ammar), as well as Tripictures in Spain.

Andrea Goretti, the CEO of Eagle Pictures, told Variety that the company was still planning to release “CODA” for Christmas and has already sold Pay TV and free TV rights in Italy. Goretti said he received a call from Pathé on Feb. 1 to inquire on their willingness to sell back the Italian rights, he said. Goretti said the deal — which gives Eagle Pictures the Italian rights to the film for 20 years — was finalized on Jan. 7, and the company just processed the down payment.

“This is a film which was financed in large parts thanks to well-established independent distributors like Eagle Pictures, who read the script and put the risk when no one was there,” said Goretti. “We have no intention to give back these rights now because we love the film, we think it’s got a strong potential and we’ll stick to our plan to give it a big release on Christmas.” He added that Pathé, which is also a indie player, should understand the importance of preserving long-term relationships with independent distributors around the world. In Scandinavia, Nordisk confirmed it had pre-bought the film and declined to comment on the deal with Apple and potential talks with Pathé.