Column by Yulia Yurasova about online cinema projects for 2025
The first month of autumn has passed, and with it the presentations of new seasons of online cinemas have died down. From the orderly series of successive parties, only “Ivy” and Okko stood out: these market participants announced new projects either last year or at industrial festivals. And the presentation of the new season of Kion was completely disguised as the premiere of “Cupid” - an original online cinema series with the support of the Internet Development Institute. Thus, before the screening of “October,” a five-minute video was shown on the screen in which actor Yuri Kolokolnikov spoke about the main achievements of the platform and projects planned for release in 2025. The “classic” presentation format was implemented only by Kinopoisk and Premier.
As a result, the new season of online cinemas featured at least ten original projects on each platform. Premier and the already mentioned Kion became record holders: next year, streaming services will release 25 projects each. For comparison, the constant market leader, Kinopoisk, has only 13 original projects announced. As at any film festival of life, after watching the presentations on the sidelines, the guests began to discuss an issue that haunts content producers not only in Russia, but throughout the world. We are talking about increasingly accelerating prices for content.
Top managers of online cinemas have repeatedly spoken about the need to curb production inflation. Among them are Wink CEO Anton Volodkin (in an interview with RBC in February) and Content Director of the Yandex Plus and Fantech division Olga Filipuk (in an interview with Kommersant in June). “In Russia, prices for the production of TV series are increasing by 40% annually,” noted Ms. Filipuk. She promised that Kinopoisk would gradually reduce the number of original projects in favor of partner ones. And, as the new season showed, the platform kept its promise. The rest of the market participants continue to churn out projects in pursuit of the golden calf - their “Boy's Word”. The project increased Wink's audience fivefold last year.
The content race of services can lead to a production crisis on the market, my interlocutors in the media industry say: the cost of a season of a series of eight episodes can now range from 150 million to 300 million rubles. And although market participants publicly talk about a decrease in the number of projects being released, they continue to inflate prices, offering a higher rate for “that same” director, screenwriter, cameraman, etc. Thus, we can only wait until rising prices force Russian streaming services to start merging , especially since there are already examples in foreign practice: HBO Max and Discovery Plus work within the framework of a single Max platform.
