WesternRus stops selling access to Hollywood movies to Russian cinemas

WesternRus, which provided Russian cinemas with access to showing foreign films, has decided to suspend its activities due to the high level of piracy, according to a message published on its Telegram channel. The industry publication was the first to draw attention to this. “ProfiCinema”.

The delivery was carried out using Telegram: the company handed over the keys (special equipment with which you can turn on the film a certain number of times) to the showcases for a weekly show, the publication notes. The cost of such keys averaged 100 thousand rubles. during the “premiere” period, then the price decreased depending on the “relevance and freshness of the content”. The WesternRus report clarifies that the decision was also influenced by the low payback of releases and the low cost of selling a key per room.

After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, the largest Hollywood rights holders, such as Universal, Disney, Sony, Warner, suspended their work in the Russian Federation and began to withdraw licenses to show their films. As a result, many cinemas have introduced a “pre-screening” mechanism, while others trying to attract audience with new content.

“WesternRus could not stand such a long struggle with the Russian dubbing studio RedHeadSound,” says Kommersant’s interlocutor in the industry. The latter’s official website claims that the team owns the copyright to the audio tracks that are used during inconsistent screenings.

About how unfriendly copyright holders want to freeze access to the courts, read the material “Kommersant” “Get up, the movie is on!”.

Julia Yurasova