France’s Film and TV Industry Faces Funding Squeeze as Netflix Becomes Leading Private Investor in French Content

Merely seven months before a fateful presidential election which has the far right leading polls, the French TV and film industry is in shambles.

Despite recent efforts led by French President Emmanuel Macron to showcase and export France’s unique cultural model overseas — notably during the Lumiere Summit co-organized by the South Korean president — the country is currently battling over clashing agendas, with Netflix and other streaming services on a crusade to limit investment obligations in French content; broadcaster France Televisions struggling to cope with declining advertising revenues and fresh budget cuts; and pay TV group Canal+ striving to hold on to its favorable position in the country’s windowing schedule while resisting larger investments in French cinema.

While these battles have been brewing for some time, two recent reports released this week have served as catalysts for the current situation.

France Televisions’ president Delphine Ernotte Cunci revealed in an interview with Le Monde that the French government is planning a €47 million cut in funding for 2027 as part of its Finance Law (setting the national government’s budget), and a further €47 million cut in subsidies. These would be leaving the broadcaster with a total shortfall of €90 million next year. In addition to these budget cuts, the group is also facing a 20% decline in advertising revenues.

Ernotte Cunci said she saw these reductions as a “threat to the funding of French cultural production,” reinforcing the sector’s dependency on U.S. streaming services, which have now become crucial to financing ambitious French series.

“I’m sounding the alarm about preserving our cultural model. What’s becoming clear is that foreign platforms will soon be making the largest investments in French creative production. Do we want this kind of subservience?” said Ernotte Cunci. “In other words, TV series and films conceived, financed, cast, written, and produced by Americans or the Chinese? Do we want to weaken this creative, freedom-driven industry, which employs more people than the automotive industry? We’ve already outsourced steel—are we going to outsource culture as well? I call for collective vigilance.”

Meanwhile, French broadcasting authority ARCOM released a report highlighting the dramatic shift in the balance of power, with Netflix becoming France’s largest private contributor to local creation for the first time in 2025, investing €308 million, including €250 million in audiovisual production and €58 million in cinema.

While Canal+ remains the country’s biggest financier of cinema alone, with €156 million invested last year, Netflix now surpasses any private French group when film and audiovisual spending are combined.

France Télévisions remains ahead with €476 million invested across film and TV, but ARCOM points out that by 2030, Netflix could surpass France Télévisions. Canal+ Group, on the other hand, has pledged to invest nearly $1.1 billion in French and European films between 2028 and 2032.

Netflix, like Amazon Prime Video and Disney+, has lodged an appeal to France’s highest court, the Council of State (Conseil d’Etat), to protest against new sub-quota investment obligations in documentary and animation. Netflix’s VP of content in France Pauline Dauvin, who has been calling out the country’s “disproportionate and discriminatory” regulatory framework in recent op-eds published in Le Monde, doubled down during a TV festival in La Rochelle, warning that the French industry was becoming too dependent on Netflix to finance content and renewing the streamer’s demand for a cap on investments.

“If nothing is done, if nothing changes, Netflix by 2030 will be the leading investor in French creation, ahead of France Télévisions. And that is sustainable neither for the sector nor for Netflix. That is why we are asking for a cap on our obligations, in order to make our commitments to French creation sustainable and ensure they reflect both the reality of the industry in which we operate and the demand from our audience,” Dauvin said during a keynote at the La Rochelle TV festival.

Against the backdrop of these recent developments, French film and TV orgs are up in arms about the proposed cuts to French public broadcasting at a time when the industry is already overly dependent on streaming services.

In an open letter called The Bleeding of Public Broadcasting: A Disgrace to the Republic, French orgs said, “Audiovisual and film production is a strategic asset for France, and with this financial decision, our government is demonstrating that it fails to grasp the significance of this issue.”

“Worse still, it is undermining a common good of the French people and the production of our collective narratives. A 20% cut in France Télévisions’ funding for film production in a single year is a blow to creativity and a serious loss for all citizens and viewers,” read the letter signed by The Civil Society of Authors, Directors, and Producers (ARP), The Union of Film Producers (UPC), The Independent Production Union (SPI), The Society of Film Directors (SRF) and the European Association of Independent Distributors (DIRE), among others.

The orgs also criticized Macron for “welcoming American streaming platforms with great fanfare at the Lumière Summit.” “He spoke to us of a ‘civilizational challenge’; just a few days later we learned that public broadcasting faces an unprecedented threat—and with it, our cultural sovereignty. It is unacceptable that American subscription-based streaming platforms should one day become one of the primary sources of funding for French cinema,” they wrote. They are demanding that the government abandon the proposed budget cut.

But the French industry is also wrestling with a broader paradox as different fractions of the entertainment and political arenas, from Macron himself to TF1 president Rodolphe Belmer, are pushing for video-sharing services such as YouTube to start investing a percentage of their local turnover in French content, like streaming services do — which would leave French production even more dependent on financing from U.S.-owned digital platforms.

The rising power of streaming services in France was one of the hot topics discussed at the Lumiere Summit. During one of the panels, Belmer talked about TF1’s decision to put its channels and AVOD service TF1+ inside Netflix. Prime Video has a similar partnership with France Télévisions, while Disney+ just made a deal with the country’s second largest commercial channel, M6, to start carrying some of its hit shows.

During that same panel, Isabelle Degeorges, who runs Gaumont Televisions and works with streamers on most of its productions (including “Lupin” with Netflix) acknowledged the risk of dependency and the urgent need to resist pressures from populist and far right parties who are currently attacking the French cultural eco-system. “We’re at risk. That’s why our government, everybody, has to fight. We have to fight to remain, to keep this sovereignty.”