The CGR Group is looking for a new shareholder

According to our colleagues Boxoffice ProThe CGR Group is looking for a new shareholder.

Jocelyn Buissie, Managing Director of CGR Cinémas, recently announced the decision of family shareholders, Luke and Charles Raymond, to explore the sale of the entire La Rochelle Group.

CGR Cinémas is the second largest cinematographer in France and the sixth largest in Europe with 74 cinemas and more than 700 rooms throughout France.

In addition to distribution, the group created premium ICE (Immersive Cinema Experience) theaters in 2016, which are now equipped with more than thirty network cinemas. Note that despite the current crisis, the group has opened 2 ICE Theaters in Saudi Arabia and is working on opening a hall in Los Angeles and the first ICE Theater in Spain.

CGR Cinémas has also expanded its film distribution business to distribution company Apollo Films (recently released by La Brigade by Louis Julien Petit) and CGR Events, which specializes in alternative or additional content. Anime broadcasters including Jujutsu Kaisen 0, My Hero Academia – World Heroes’ Mission or Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba – Movie: The Infinity Train.

Jocelyn Bouyssy spoke with Julien Marcel from Box Office Pro On the development and ambitions of the provincial circle that became the leading French and European player.

He explains: “uc and Charles Raymond, the successors of founding president George Raymond, decided to transfer. The page is turned and we enter the first phase of the group evaluation.

Historical shareholders, on the other hand, want to join us in this transition, with a will that everyone shares, to find the most passionate partners in our history who want to help us not only continue it, but develop it. .“

Sell ​​in a crisis situation.

But due to the recent COVID crisis and changes in habits, cinema is struggling to recover from the turbulence zone, so finding a new shareholder is not the easiest thing to do.

Still, the group’s CEO is quite optimistic: “This crisis has taught us a lot. We were afraid of a change in the economic model. We’ve seen platforms come, but there is a media chronology in France. This is a specific and very special country, where as a sign of easing tensions, a contract has just been signed with Netflix. We realize that now everything is self-regulating. “

And the success of Spider-Man: No Way Home and Batman’s recent box office has made things so much better. Jocelyn Buoys also notes that young audiences return to theaters thanks to these films and animated films.

“We found that young people are returning to the movies, probably more so than before, as soon as it reopened in May with the incredible start of Demon Killer. This generation dependent on smartphones, which can watch TV series on a 12cm diagonal screen, responds when a sentence talks about them.

Of course, the older audience needed more time to come back, and that’s normal. They were the most vulnerable population to the virus and we can not deny the worrying side of all health measures. And yet, sometimes just the insolence of a lone man like the movie, the bet, and Kevin Adams is enough to bring them back and unite them with the younger generations around a comedy like The Elderly House.. ”

Cinema is an emotion, it is social connections.

He adds: “I often say: cinema is an emotion, it is social connections. As soon as we offer material, i.e. in our sector, movies, people come. Our problem, regardless of the platforms, was to lag behind the release of certain distributors; And I can not blame them! But after a while we need movies to “structure” the calendar. When the virtuous circle is renewed, everything is interconnected. This is one of the reasons why I am globally optimistic.“

According to the latter, therefore, everything should slowly return to normal for cinemas. Regarding the specific case of the CGR group, Jocelyn Buoys emphasizes that the family and the provincial circle were able to maintain contact with the spectators during the crisis.

“My optimism lies in the strength of our DNA and the closeness we have maintained to our viewers over the past two years. We have worked a lot on digital, be it booking or website.”

The closeness to the community that the group wants to maintain at all costs. “The profession has its eye on Paris, but we must never forget that the vast majority of admissions take place in the provinces…

And because we have a diversified country, a country of regions, there are performances whose performances focus on their areas of origin and that does not prevent them from operating in France. Who dares to say that Danny Bunn’s films only work in the North? Cinema is a popular pastime throughout France. This is the DNA of the group we want to preserve ! “

This ambitious and strong-minded person sets out the group’s goals in finding new shareholders: “We start by focusing on day-to-day management, so I actually work twice as much in the time I have left. We continue to develop, I still have three projects completed, and we also have that big ambition for the Ice Theater, which I think could become a global format. “Unpretentious, we know we can blow ice abroad.”

And the latter to conclude, “I want to continue writing history with the men around me, because I do not deny anything we have been able to do for decades and I dare to think that we still have a lot to do!“