MPD sale, Directors, Producers urge Harper to pay attention

Must read Saturday morning news.

From The Globe:

"On the brink of closing one of the biggest deals in the history of Canadian entertainment – the sale of Alliance Atlantis's Motion Picture Distribution arm, also known as MPD, to Manhattan-based investment house Goldman Sachs – many of the most powerful names in Canadian film and TV are claiming that the sale of such a heavyweight distributor to a foreign company could decimate the industry here. And they're demanding Ottawa do something about it.

Directors David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan, actor Paul Gross, producers Robert Lantos, Denise Robert and Kevin Tierney – as well as English and French associations across the industry – are calling on Stephen Harper's government to closely monitor the transaction, in which a U.S. financial player is buying a 51-per-cent stake in MPD, Canada's most powerful distributor."

Not only is this very disturbing, but the article notes "just 20 years ago, movie distributors had a market share in Canada so small that it barely existed. Two decades later, Canadian distributors have carved out a share of the domestic box office that hovers between 25 and 30 per cent."

Atom Egoyan notes in the article: "not upholding the policy [the 1988 foreign distribution policy, which limits foreign ownership of Canadian distributors to 30 per cent.] will reduce Canadian distribution to essentially a handful of boutique companies again. We'll end up with a bunch of new American companies who do nothing but distribute and send money back home, who don't get involved with Canadian films, or do so rarely."

We should all be up in arms. If it gets any worse, Canadian filmmakers should just relocate below the border and hope for the best.

Read the article linked below, it's informative and frightening.

[Globe and Mail - Crisis for Canadian Film]