The A Contracorriente Films service reaches the market with more than 400 titles and with the aim of bringing to the internet all those films from the distributor that are not available on other platforms
The around 1,600 films that make up the catalog of A Contracorriente Films “simultaneously” will not be there. Not even half. “What’s more, we hope that there are not many more than 500, because it would mean that there are more than 1,000 on other platforms,” says Adolfo Blanco, head of the most important independent distributor in the country. “We want those films that we own that are not available on other platforms to be on the service. It is about pirates not being able to say that, as such a film is not available, then I download it ». With this desire, perhaps not very ambitious, acontra+ arrives on the market, the new cinema platform that the company has just launched and that in two of its three subscription models also offers one ticket per month to go to any of the more than fifty cinemas that have joined the platform and that are distributed throughout the Spanish territory.
The service is born with a 14-day free trial period and with an important launch offer until summer: it will be at half price in all subscription plans (3.99 euros for the basic plan; 4.99 for the premium, with the entry, and an annual fee of 49.99) and for life. Eduardo Escudero, partner and business manager of A Contracorriente Films, tells us that acontra+ was born after the company’s experience with Salavirtualdecine.com, a project that emerged in full confinement as a “tool at the service of cinemas”, to try to reach viewers in their living rooms and “build their loyalty”. That virtual movie theater, which proposed a rental model for films that would otherwise have reached theaters, was the “learning” for this new model that allows you to subscribe to the entire catalog or rent the films independently. “It comes with a completely new technology to give the best experience, but it maintains that spirit of connection with the cinemas. In fact, through acontra+ we would like the experience of movie theaters to be valued and to generate moviegoers and fans that become traffic for movie theaters. We do not perceive that our platform is an enemy, quite the opposite. We are an ally”, explained Escudero from the Verdi Cinemas in Madrid, which is managed by the company itself and which has served as a presentation to the platform. Not surprisingly, in these twelve years the company, which has legs throughout the sector’s value chain – production, distribution and exhibition – has brought more than thirty million viewers to cinemas.
Acontra+ arrives with more than 400 titles, at the moment in 1080p, although from the platform they hope to start uploading content in 4k throughout this year, which will be expanded weekly “until reaching more than 600 at the end of the year” , announces Marta Carrasco, responsible for the platform. And although at the moment there are only titles from A Contracorriente Films, they open the doors of the service to any work. «It is organized by genre, we also have collections that range from period films to romantic films, which we have included in a collection called ‘Love is in the Air’, including family films, ‘feel good’ films or disaster films. And also great directors where Bergman, Chaplin or Rhomer stand out », she affirms. The platform will have some of them exclusively. This is the case of Akira Kurosawa. “Whoever wants to see his movies will have no choice but to subscribe to acontra +,” explains Blanco. The service will also exclusively feature all art documentaries, as well as operas and ballets. And there will also be series, but as a complement, making it clear that the cinema is the center of the offer.
“We had to take this step, which is the only step that guarantees us that any of our films will be accessible to viewers,” says Blanco. «We saw that if we didn’t do it, that the films were accessible to the viewer would depend on a third party and that didn’t seem smart to us when the bet is so important in the world of content. Now we were seeing that a film like ‘The Hairdresser’s Husband’ is not there because nobody has asked for it and it will be against it+. For example. There are many of the 1,600 who are standing in limbo and will enter here, little by little, and gradually.
Blanco makes it clear that the company will continue to work with all platforms, but now that it is looking to attract customers, it makes it clear that when they have the opportunity they will include a movie like ‘Untouchable’ on the service exclusively. «What we do not want is for them to remain in a limbo, which is what happened before. And we will have to see how they are exploited in a coherent way. There will be times that the titles are simultaneously on many platforms, other times they will be exclusive. In this sense, he assures that they do not aspire “to surpass Netflix”, so “if our platform is going to have fewer subscribers than Netflix, our obligation is to try to get our films on Netflix as soon as possible and if for this we have to remove them from acontra+ , we will do it”, he affirms emphatically. Nor, he jokes, “we aspire to be a Filmin 2. We auteur cinema just do it, everything is great cinema, but cinema that is weird, depressing, that has Golden Bears, just enough to fulfill.”