Summer 2024. Paris hosts the World Triathlon Championships on the banks of the Seine for the first time. Sophia, a brilliant scientist, discovers that a large shark is swimming in the depths of the river. What are we talking about? It is the plot of the film In the depths of the Seine, the first filmed in the City of Light after its reopening after a decade of closure, which premieres on June 5 on the Netflix platform.
The film complex is already taking advantage of one of its most coveted facilities, the large water tank that received the best possible marketing campaign with the success of The Impossible, the film about the terrible 2004 tsunami that Juan Antonio Bayona filmed in Alicante .
Fermín Crespo, general director of the public organization that manages what specialists consider the best film studio in Europe, confirms that this aquatic infrastructure “is in high demand.” In the still short time that he has led the organization, Crespo has been able to verify the great expectations that the return of Ciudad de la Luz has aroused in the competitive international film sector.
The first “litmus test” at the highest level has been to host for almost four months – between pre-production, filming and post-production – a blockbuster like Venom, the last dance, which after the great box office obtained by the first two films in the saga opted by the Alicante studios to carry out the third. With the British Tom Hardy as the big star, along with Juno Temple and Chiwetel Ejiofor, the Sony, Marvel Entertainment and Columbia Pictures production sent a team of 600 people to Alicante for nearly two months, with subsequent overnight stays in hotels and city apartments and the natural induced consumption in hospitality and commerce.
Also scheduled for release on Netflix, The Bad Influence arrived, from the Valencian producer and president of the Association of Valencian Audiovisual Producers, Kiko Martínez. The film, directed by Rober Gual (The Disorder You Leave), with a script by Antón Goenechea and a budget of five million euros, is scheduled to premiere on the big screen in Spain in the first half of 2025.
Another Spanish director of international prestige, Alejandro Amenábar, is these days immersed in his new project, El cautivo, which has found in Ciudad de la Luz the perfect center to manage all the complexity of a shoot for which hundreds of extras have been selected. and various locations in various towns in the Valencian Community, such as Santa Pola, the Santa Bárbara castle, in Alicante, Anna, Pedreguer or Bocairent.
In addition to these large productions, since its reopening the cinema complex has been hosting other “small productions, advertising and other kinds,” explains Fermín Crespo, “because we are not reserved only for cinema; Everything that has to do with the audiovisual industry is on our radar, and we are on yours.”
Aware that the future of the City of Light requires a maximum level of professionalization, the Valencian Government sought, through public tender, the incorporation of a large private company – “a traveling companion that will help us above all in the relationship with the producers, in adapting the facilities to the future and in marketing”–. The contest was won by the American multinational MBS Group, but the appeal of another aspiring firm has delayed its incorporation. Which does not alter the plans of the complex and its management team, which while the matter is resolved continues its dissemination work both at festivals and using the Ivace external network. In addition, and thanks to an agreement with the Higher School of Cinema and Audiovisuals of Catalonia, Ciudad de la Luz offers courses to train the specialized personnel that its activity will require.
