Paris (AFP)

A US investment fund rather than a French group? EuropaCorp, Luc Besson's company in great financial difficulties, confirmed Sunday that the fund Vine, one of its creditors, discussed a stake in the group.

The Sunday Newspaper revealed this information on Sunday morning when, in late May, it was the group Pathé who had expressed interest in the company producing and distributing films and series. But the pathé track failed because of lack of agreement with creditors, according to the press.

Any investment will have to include "an agreement on the restructuring of the existing debts of the group", explained Europacorp in May. At September 30, 2018, the company's net debt amounted to 222 million euros, according to the group's annual report, with maturities in October 2019 for the senior debt and April 2020 for the subordinated debt.

According to the JDD, Luc Besson preferred to entrust the destiny of EuropaCorp to Vine, with whom he was heavily indebted, rather than Pathé. Solicited by AFP, Pathé and Vine could not be joined Sunday.

The Vine group "has expressed interest in a possible acquisition of equity in the company," writes Sunday EuropaCorp in a statement sent to AFP. "Discussions are currently underway on the modalities of this possible operation and the group's financing for the future".

However, "the group can give no assurance as to the outcome of this operation," says EuropaCorp. Indeed, "the possible implementation of this operation requires the search for an agreement with senior lenders and the presentation of a backup plan at the Commercial Court of Bobigny".

EuropaCorp has been in the process of safeguarding since mid-May, for an initial period of 6 months.

- Mixed reception for "Anna" -

The company that Luc Besson created in 1999 had a fourth consecutive year in the red in 2018-19, with losses of 109.9 million euros between March 2018 and March 2019. That is more than the 82 million losses recorded in the previous financial year.

After several asset disposals - notably its multiplexes (Cinéma d'Aéroville in Tremblay-en-France and La Joliette in Marseille) to the Gaumont-Pathé group in 2016, or its television production division in Mediawan in 2018 - and redundancies (22 jobs out of 79 in France in 2018), EuropaCorp remains essentially its catalog and its ability to produce other films.

However, his latest film, "Anna", had a disappointing fate in the United States, where he had collected July 5 that $ 6.7 million revenue for North America. A faint result for this film with a budget of more than 30 million dollars, far behind the 238.7 million recipes of "Toy Story 4", released at the same time.

It has also been entitled to more than mixed reviews for this new opus, which starring Russian actress and model Sasha Luss in the role of Anna.

The 27-year-old actress plays her first major role after appearing in "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets", Luc Besson's previous film, the biggest budget of French cinema, including the American box-office performance. had sealed the accounts of Europacorp.

© 2019 AFP