* Largest-ever-built film studios in France open
* Aims to attract big-budget Hollywood productions
* Investment totalled 170 mln euros
PARIS, Sept 21 (Reuters) - French director Luc Besson has
realised his dream of building a world class film complex on the
banks of the Seine. Now the only question is whether big-budget
Hollywood productions will take the bait.
Cite du Cinema, the largest film studio facility ever built
in France, at a cost of 170 million euros ($200 million), opens
this weekend aiming to attract foreign productions with
facilities to match those in Hollywood.
But while the complex offers modern equipment and facilities
to compare with studios in Berlin, London and Rome - Europe's
three largest film centres - France's lower tax breaks for
international productions could still reduce its appeal.
Located on the grounds of a former 1930s power station in
Seine-Saint-Denis, a working class neighbourhood just outside
Paris, the Cite du Cinema is the creation of director and
producer Besson, who discovered the disused Art Deco-style site
when shooting exteriors in the 1990s for his movies "Leon" and
"Nikita".
The site houses nine film studios, workshops for building
film sets, office space for production companies and a film
school in a 62,000 square metres site.
"The attractiveness of Cite du Cinema, which is indisputable
on a technical level, will be weighed down by the fact that our
financial attractiveness for very large budgets is now
lower than that of our neighbours," said Patrick Lamassoure,
managing director of Film France, a non-profit agency which
promotes France as a location for film and television shoots.
Foreign production companies spend around 2 billion euros a
year on shooting and post production in Europe every year, with
Britain taking around half of this. France only gets 3 to 4
percent.
Although France has introduced tax rebates of 20 percent to
attract more big-budget film projects, these have been capped at
4 million euros per production.
Britain offers a similar 20 percent rebate but without
financial caps, which has made Pinewood and Shepperton studios
the preferred choice for Hollywood productions, in addition to
the lack of language barriers.
"European countries are engaged in fierce competition to
attract foreign productions. It's absurd to impose caps,"
Christophe Lambert, the chief executive of Besson's production
company EuropaCorp, told Reuters.
If tax advantages are better elsewhere, large foreign
productions might be tempted not to shoot in France, or shoot
exteriors there until they reach the tax credit limit, and then
move to another country to take advantage of its tax credit,
Lamassoure said.
HOLLYWOOD-SUR-SEINE
Besson first had the idea of creating a large film complex
in the late 1990s when he had to shoot his first major
international project, "The Fifth Element", starring Bruce
Willis and Milla Jovovich, in London for the lack of sizable
studios in France.
The project, which locals have dubbed Hollywood-sur-Seine,
began taking shape after the French government's investment arm,
Caisse des Depots et Consignations (CDC), provided financial
backing along with Vinci Immobilier, the real estate unit of
French construction company Vinci.
CDC and Vinci Immobilier own most of the buildings except
the studios, which are owned by EuropaCorp.
According to EuropaCorp, the studios would need to lure
just one foreign production a year to at least break even.
"We need to attract a large foreign production, which
usually book studios for four or five months, every year as well
as a dozen French films, large and small," said Lambert.
By contrast, Rome's famed Cinecitta studios, which once
hosted major Hollywood productions like the biblical epic "Ben
Hur," have managed to attract only three major U.S. productions
in the last ten years, the last one being Woody Allen's "To Rome
With Love".
Cinecitta, founded by Mussolini in 1937, has been partly
damaged by fire and hit by a series of staff strikes after
losing out to cheaper facilities in Eastern Europe and
better-equipped studios in London and Berlin.
($1 = 0.7699 euros)
(Reporting by Elena Berton; Editing by Giles Elgood)