An Interview with Pathé President Jérôme Seydoux by Julien Marcel, Chief Executive Officer, CineGroup and Boxoffice Pro France
Pathé Cinémas, the largest French circuit and fourth-largest exhibition chain in Europe, will receive the International Exhibitor of the Year award at CineEurope 2025. A pioneer and early titan of the cinema industry, Pathé currently operates 1,318 screens across 129 theaters in the EMEA region. It also serves as one of the biggest film producers in Europe and is a major player in the film distribution market. Boxoffice Pro France’s Julien Marcel recently sat down with Jérôme Seydoux, the president of Pathé, to discuss the current state of the film industry, why the French cinema market is unique, and what the future holds for the iconic entertainment brand.
This award comes at an extraordinary time for Pathé, marking a great cycle of innovations, but also a complicated time for the industry as a whole. What is your take on the current situation?
It is indeed a difficult time for the industry. We have not fully recovered from Covid and the Hollywood strikes, nor have we fully come to term with the fact that our biggest competitors today are streaming platforms. If the films we show in our theaters are good, people will turn out in great numbers. But there is still a lot more work to be done because the audience, particularly younger moviegoers, is becoming more difficult to reach.
Pathé will celebrate its 130th anniversary next year. During those first 30 years in the industry, led by Charles Pathé, it was a dominant force in the global industry. Can you say a few words about this period?
Pathé, before World War I, was the world leader in cinema, including in the United States, where its market share was around 50 percent. You could say that Pathé was the Google of the time! Then cinema experienced a certain slowdown in 1908. And in 1918, when Charles Pathé returned from the United States, he was aware that the Americans were working much more on their scripts—a lot more than we were back in France—and saw they would overtake us in the industry. That’s precisely what happened after World War I—Hollywood overtook Paris.
Which did not prevent Charles Pathé from inventing many essential things …
Charles Pathé made two rather extraordinary inventions. Rather than selling copies of films to theaters, as was the case in the United States, he opted for renting copies—a system that hasn’t changed since! The second is that long before our time, Charles Pathé had already invented home entertainment with Pathé Baby projectors. With a Pathé Baby subscription, you received newsreels and films at your home. He was a true pioneer in that sense.
Looking back at the more recent past, Pathé’s last decade has been marked by evolution, notably with digital transformation and premium formats. Can you say a few words about the vision that guided this evolution of your theater network?
The evolution of our theaters is linked to the evolution of the films being made. Imax, 4DX, Dolby Cinema : These auditoriums are designed to the speficifications of large-scale spectacles. These films are almost exclusively American. Unfortunately, there are no truly French films being made for these premium formats. This is a transformation we’ve undergone to acommodate American films, which is a handicap for Pathé, because we lose part of our capacity when we have French films performing well in the market that can’t perform well in these auditoriums.
With The Count of Monte Cristo last year, we saw that large-scale French films can also work well in premium auditoriums.
We should have more of those titles, but today there are relatively few French producers ready to invest in productions on that scale. The Count of Monte Cristo has indeed demonstrated that a large-scale French film can be acclaimed by moviegoers of every generation. I’ve had people tell me they went to see it five or six times in the theater!
How do you explain that even a domestic box office hit like The Count of Monte Cristo failed to conquer the American market?
If Pathé wants to win back the American audience, we have to make films in English with actors who speak English. Why didn’t Monte Cristo perform outside of France? Because French actors are not known outside of France. If French cinema wants a wider audience, the films need to be better adapted to that audience. Anatomy of a Fall—which is half in French, half in English, with European actors who are known internationally—is an example of a film that performed well outside of France. That’s because it’s a good film, but we also have to credit the casting.
At CinemaCon this year, we were reminded that the biggest challenge for American cinemas today is a lack of films destined for theaters and a lack of diversity among the films that do hit theaters.
The French love to talk about our own crises, but the real crisis in our industry today is in Hollywood! And it’s a crisis of its own creation. After many years of success with the Marvel model, Hollywood needs to rethink and change a number of things. It has always shown an ability to reinvent itself; it’s just going to take a little time. I suspect we’re still few years away from Hollywood redefining the keys to success again.
Between the time you joined Pathé in 1990 and today, what has really changed for cinemas in France?
We may complain about the 180 million admissions last year, but I say it’s a very good figure! We keep on talking about 200 million as a past benchmark, but we must remember that at the beginning of the ‘90s, when I took over at Pathé, we were only at 120 million admissions.
When I was a student in Paris, there was an exhibitor in the Latin Quarter named Boris Gourevitch. He would install an auditorium wherever there was space, even inside a bathroom. So there were very small theaters, with very small seats, and it worked very well because at the time, people wanted a great diversity of films. But today, nobody would want these “Gourevitch theaters,” which were slums. Fortunately, the quality of the screens, seats, and projection in today’s theaters has notably improved.
Which leads us to a recurring theme for Pathé: finding the right balance between charging premium prices and encouraging greater attendance.
I don’t think ticket prices are a factor. Consider that 50 years ago, ticket prices were higher than today [when adjusted for inflation]. People don’t go to the cinema because of the price ; they go to the cinema for the film. And when a movie delivers, you won’t hear anyone complain about how much they paid.
For example, Pathé Palace is one of the most expensive cinemas in France, but it is also the one location among all our cinemas in Paris with the youngest audience. Young people are attracted by the extraordinary. They go to the cinema to be entertained in a comfortable setting. Meanwhile, older audiences may be less satisfied with less comfortable theaters at lower prices.
How much of an advantage is it for a company like Pathé to have a hand in film production, distribution, and exhibition?
It’s a unique characteristic of French cinema that the big exhibitors act as exhibitor-producers. I believe it is one of our strengths. France is the only country in Europe that does not have foreign circuits; the entire exhibition sector is driven by French companies, whether they are small, medium, or large.
It is true that, apart from Kinepolis, there are no leading multinational circuits setting up shop in France. Is that a positive or a negative situation? What would your reaction be if AMC or Cinemark began opening theaters in the French territory?
I wouldn’t see it as a problem. Originally, our multiplex in Dunkirk was an AMC. We have bought cinemas from Village Roadshow, which was associated with Warner Bros., in the past. Going back to our history chat, before World War I, France was said to be a world leader in two industries: aviation and cinema. There’s still some truth to that. In aviation, we are still very good, and in cinema, we continue to be less-bad than others.
Pathé has an international presence in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and across various African territories. Is this global presence an important element of Pathé’s strategy?
We are more international than the other leading French exhibitors and less international than the other leading global exhibitors. That being said, as an exhibitor, our growth will occur outside of France. As we are number one in France, we can hardly make a significant acquisition there : Competitive regulations wouldn’t allow it. The opportunities for growth are in territories to be developed, like Africa. We have just signed an agreement with a Moroccan group [Marjane] to develop in Morocco, where, for the moment, we have only one cinema, in Casablanca, which is working very well and proves that Moroccans are just as attracted to premium cinema experiences as the French.
Pathé has been a pioneer in alternative programming and event cinema for many years through your work with the Comédie-Française and eSports, and you’ve recently broadcast football matches in your theaters. Do you believe there will be more demand for these kinds of experiences in the future?
I could see us trying our hand at operating a cinema entertainment center, where the cinema is complemented by other activities like bowling and an arcade, but it’s a completely different business model. It’s not the direction we’re currently headed. The new cinemas we’ll be breaking ground on—and we don’t plan on inaugurating many new sites, at least in Europe—they will all be hyper premium. The next cinema we are planning to open in France, scheduled for the beginning of 2026 on the Île Seguin, will be the sort of site people will have memories of visiting.
In a few days, you will be on stage in Barcelona to receive the International Exhibitor of the Year award at CineEurope. Without revealing what you will say at that moment, what are the key messages that you want to pass on to the European industry?
The key message is that I strongly believe in the theatrical experience. I strongly believe the best place to watch a film is at a movie theater. The only difficulty we face in this industry—and it’s an immense challenge—is that we need quality films.
It is amusing to recall that even the Lumière brothers, who are the origin of cinema as a medium, did not believe movie theaters would last very long. Even a great filmmaker like Jean-Pierre Melville said movie theaters had another 50 years in their life expectancy, and that was about 70 years ago now? Even today, many people think moviegoing will disappear. They are wrong. They are wrong because people will always feel the need to come together, and that is something television and streaming platforms fail to accomplish. Home entertainment is at the service of the individual; it is the very opposite of a collective experience. We offer an experience that you will never be able to get from your screen at home.
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