Luc Besson will no longer be the CEO of EuropaCorp. The film production and distribution company, created by the director in 1992, had been accumulating debts and financial difficulties for some time, notably following the failure of the film Valerian . Following a restructuring finalized at the end of July, the Vine and Falcon funds refinanced the company to the tune of 192 million euros. Vine took 60.15% of the capital and Falcon 6.29%.
Luc Besson will remain artistic director
The former shareholders, the filmmaker Luc Besson as well as Front Line and Lambert Capital jointly still hold 13% of the capital. On Saturday, the company announced that a new chief executive would take things in hand in early September. It is Axel Duroux, ex-vice-president of the company Endemol, ex-boss of RTL, ex-ephemeral number 2 of TF1.
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Luc Besson will retain the non-executive chairmanship of the board of directors, "in order to focus henceforth, as announced on February 28, 2020, on the artistic activities of the group as artistic director," EuropaCorp said in a statement to the resulting from a meeting of the board of directors. For the next few months, the production company will therefore focus on projects presenting little economic risk and launch into series production aimed at the international market.