Cinecittà, full theaters and positive accounts returned a year early

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Going through the gates of Cinecittà, at 1055 in via Tuscolana in Rome, gives the immediate impression of having entered a place from the past. After all, here, in this structure born in 1937, the history of cinema was made and the full weight of those glorious pasts is felt. Venusia – the huge sculpture imagined for the film “Il Casanova” by Federico Fellini – as well as the giant rocking horse and the carriage of the Blue Fairy, both made for Roberto Benigni’s “Pinocchio”, placed at the entrance give back all the evocative power of what for Federico Fellini was the ideal city in which he would have wanted to live and which has given life to over 3,000 films, including 51 films that won the Oscar.

It is enough to delve a little to understand that there is not only the past. Because, right now, it’s all a swarm of moving vehicles, carpentry at full capacity, various crews at work in the theaters to complete the sets. Which out of nowhere reproduce the headquarters of the Popolo d’Italia from the years of Mussolini, as in the series “M Il Figlio del Secolo” based on the novels by Antonio Scurati, or a medieval setting for the “Decameron”, a Netflix series. One theatre, the T18, was also equipped with a ledwall for virtual shooting. And in this specific area it is the largest in Europe.

Great movement, therefore, because behind, confirms al Only 24 Hours the CEO of Cinecittà, Nicola Maccanico, there is an explosion of the audiovisual business. «At the end of the year we should arrive at revenues of around 39 million. More than double the 16 million in 2021 and more than what was achieved in previous years anyway ». In short, summarizes Maccanico – a past in Sky as a front-line manager as well as managing director of Vision Distribution (a distribution company headed by Sky) and at the helm of Cinecittà since 2021 – «Cinecittà has a past, but also a bright present. And look to the future.”

It is quite clear that a helping hand – even a decisive one given that business inevitably fails without a successful sector – has come from the new course of the audiovisual sector with a lot of boom in requests favored by the irruption of on-demand platforms battle it out with original content. «That this is an improvement in the core business – Maccanico points out – can also be understood from the split in revenues, which for around 32 million come from the use of theaters and scenography. The rest is for events and post-production». The final result is “a profit that we expect to be in the order of 900 thousand euros and which arrives a year earlier than envisaged in the 2021-26 Plan”.

But now is the time for development to accompany this increased demand. The leverage can come from the millions of the Pnrr for a plan that provides for the modernization of 4 of the 19 existing studios and the construction of 5 from scratch. The Court of Auditors intervened with findings, to which the Ministry of Culture replied on 3 February, to what is Only 24 Hours. «As far as we are concerned – Maccanico points out – we have published the calls for tenders for the 9 theaters and we are fully on schedule. For one of these, Teatro 22 which will be built from scratch, we have already awarded the tender. For the other tenders we will be on schedule with assignments by June 2023″.