Cinecittà, the hole, the crisis. Stars are not enough to revive the studios

The resignation of the president of Cinecittà Chiara Sbarigia , officially to concentrate on her role as head of the producers (Apa) and to commit herself more and more to the Italian global festival , but which would hide political tensions between Minister Giuli and Sbarigia's office, they come at the most delicate moment.

Today Giuli is in Cinecittà to present the new theaters built thanks to the Pnrr and a new course of international productions is ready to bring Hollywood back to the Tiber. Mel Gibson is expected in August to shoot his Resurrection (sequel to that Passion of the Christ of 2004), what convinced him to reverse the course from Malta to Italy was the new theater 22, a good 7 meters higher than Fellini's. Ridley Scott is shooting his apocalyptic film The Dog Stars at the Eur and the studios and theaters are booked until the end of 2025. This is not the time to make mistakes.

The serious crisis that hit the studios, and for which accusations of bad governance have bounced from one administration to another, exploded at the end of 2024. In the folds of the accounts last December a hole of 6.7 million euros had emerged, equal to about a third of the share capital . The pandemic, the Hollywood crisis with the long period of strikes, finally the tax credit reform wanted by this government that has effectively paralyzed the sector for a long time, are all elements that have contributed to the crisis that Cinecittà has experienced for many months. "I arrived in the darkest hour - said a month ago the current CEO Manuela Cacciamani who takes credit for the success of having brought Gibson and Scott back to the studios on Via Tuscolana - in July of last year there were no confirmed commercial negotiations and none on the horizon".

The investment of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan for Cinecittà was 230 million euros, by 2026 the work of another 9 high-tech theaters should be completed to reach 25 sound stages including a virtual theater by the end of 2026. It is essential that those theaters are full, that the 344 people who work in the studios have a guarantee for their future. The industrial plan for the five-year period 2025-2029 is very ambitious: the goal is to obtain commercial and institutional activity revenues equal to 51.9 million euros compared to 26.7 million in 2024. For this reason, the moment is delicate and there can be no mistakes, political tensions between administrators must not blow up the agreements with large international productions.