Pierre Lescure, president of the Cannes Film Festival, has hit back at yesterday’s trade reports about the coronavirus and its impact on the famed cinematic gala event.
Screen Daily reports that Lescure spoke with French newspaper Le Figaro on Tuesday and he says the festival’s management team is “reasonably optimistic” the coronavirus outbreak will die out in time for the festival’s 2020 edition from May 12th-23rd.
Lescure also addressed the Variety report yesterday suggesting the festival had turned down an offer made late February by its insurance company Circle Group to take a buy-back option to cover it for epidemics and pandemics which aren’t normally covered.
Lescure explains that there was good reason to turn it down: “This offer was made to us some 12 days ago but it was totally disproportionate. They were only offering to cover us to the limit of two million euros ($2.2m) when our budget is 32million euro ($36m). It was peanuts. The company was playing at being bounty hunters and of course we turned down this offer.”
Lescure goes on to say the festival, which is financed by state funds and private sponsors, has enough reserves to survive a financial fall-out if 2020’s edition is cancelled: “The endowment funds we have put in place allow us to cope with a year without revenue.”
Speculation continues to swirl over whether the festival will go ahead as the French government announced on the weekend a fresh measure banning gatherings of more than 1,000 people until further notice in a bid to slow down the spread of the pathogen.
As of Tuesday evening, there had been 1,784 confirmed cases of coronavirus in France and 33 related deaths according to health ministry figures.
