The Europe-Hollywood Coopetition: Cooperation and Competition in the Global Film Industry

Abstract

Along the first century of cinema, the history of the relationship between Europe and Hollywood has been one of ‘love’ and ‘hate’. Nowadays, thanks to the effects of globalization on the film production process —internationalization of capital, talent and infrastructures—, it has become a ‘marriage of convenience’. In fact, this peculiar romance is sustained by paradoxical strategies of cooperation and competition —especially in the case of Europe. This book identifies these two series of cooperative and competitive strategies developed by Hollywood and the European film industries during the last decade, and attempts to figure out whether it could be considered a case of ‘coopetition’, as it is understood by the business management theory. Distribution partnerships, financial co-productions, runaway productions, European ‘blockbusters’, European public and private financial initiatives and the promotion of national or local cinema are just some of the tactics explored in these pages. Far from being balanced, these relationships between Europe and Hollywood are asymmetrically evolving on a global scenario, adopting new forms under the cooperation-competition dynamic. The quid of the question, of course, is to determine up to what point this ‘marriage of convenience’ is really based on mutual reciprocity or if it could be described more like a kind of ‘sleeping with the enemy’ situation.