TORONTO – Cinecitta’s CEO Nicola Maccanico has recently stepped down from the position, opting not to continue his role, which began in 2021. The resignation has turned a few heads because it was during Maccanico’s leadership that the Studio found a significant, almost historic resurgence, going from 30% to full capacity. 

As a matter of fact, in the past two fiscal years during Maccanico’s tenure, Cinecitta turned a profit – a significant feat given that the Studio ran a deficit for decades. Impressively, Cinecitta has attracted more than 50 major productions since 2021 and built new sound stages to help accommodate the growing demand for international and domestic projects.

The head of Italy’s biggest Indie Distribution Company – Eagle Pictures – doesn’t believe Cinecitta can shoulder the demand alone, however. While speaking at the Audio-visual Producers Summit this year, Eagle Pictures Owner Tarak Ben Amar informed of his plans to invest 50 million dollars to build a new studio complex in Rome, 12 sound stages to be exact, by the end of October 2024.

Ben Amar also owns the Studios de Paris, in which the hit series “Emily in Paris” was filmed. “We feel Italy and France don’t have enough studios…[but] Italy and France now have a better tax credit which is attracting Hollywood to France and Italy”. The reality for Studio shoots in Italy is that Productions have to reserve at least a year in advance.

Another Italian Media Entrepreneur Andrea Iervolino and his partner Monika Bacardi, recently announced plans to build a massive Studio Complex in Tuscany – which will become the largest VR facility in Italy. Bacardi is of course the 6th wife of the heir to the great Cuban Rum Dynasty (the late Luis Bacardi), so there is ample funding at their disposal. Since their launch in 2013, Bacardi and Iervolino have made their production company AMBI pictures into a consortium of vertically integrated film development, production, finance and distribution companies – with offices in Toronto as well as Los Angeles and Europe.

Their latest plans for a studio also include a hotel at the same complex along with production offices and a public movie theatre. “The hotel will be a luxury resort designed to accommodate the actors who will come to film at our studios. It will also be open to private customers. At the same time we will organize visits to the surrounding area, to wine estates. We plan to connect quality tourism with film production”, says Iervolino.

Italy’s recent film boom or renaissance, in large part, has been made possible through its generous tax credit of 40%, enticing large tent-pole productions from the US specifically, to stage their cinema in the beautiful peninsula. Rome’s Mayor Roberto Gualtieri: “In 2023 we gave permission to shoot outside [in the city]. Which means that every day there are six shoots in the streets of Rome at the same time. Eighty-three films and 66 series shot in Rome in 2023 because of this authorization”.

Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix