Nicolas Chartier

Nicolas Chartier (born in 1974) is a French film sales agent and film producer. Chartier is partners with American film producer Dean Devlin in the sales and production company, Voltage Pictures. Voltage's first produced independent feature film was The Hurt Locker (2009) directed by Kathryn Bigelow. The film was picked up for wide theatrical release in the United States by Summit Entertainment and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Voltage also produced Dallas Buyers Club. [1] Chartier used to be head of U.S. sales for Sydney-based Arclight Films.[2]

Chartier had cofounded Vortex Pictures for Gold Circle Films.[3] Chartier was a sales agent for the distribution of Academy Award-winning film, Crash, directed by Paul Haggis.

Comments on unions

In April 2014, Anthony D'Alessandro reported on the Independent Film & Television Alliance Production Conference for Deadline.com, where Nicolas Chartier appeared on a panel on "indie finance and production". The article reported that unions were cited as the biggest roadblocks to getting independent films made. It quoted Nicolas Chartier as saying, “I get it that stars like Bruce Willis are getting paid the big money, they are the driving force behind these films getting made, but I don’t get the guys who pull cables that make $100,000 a year.” The article also quoted him as having issues with having to deposit money in advance to guarantee residual payments for actors working under SAG-AFTRA agreements and having to do more paperwork. [4]

Academy Award controversy

In February 2010, Chartier emailed a group of Academy Award voters in an attempt to sway them to vote for The Hurt Locker instead of "a $500M film" (referring to Avatar) for the Best Picture award. He later issued a public apology, saying that it was "out of line and not in the spirit of the celebration of cinema that this acknowledgment is".[5] The Academy banned him from attending the award ceremony, the first time the Academy has ever banned an individual nominee.[6]

Filmography as producer

Impulsive emails

On occasion, Chartier personally sends out email to the general public stating strong opinions. Boing Boing, a popular blog, has described these as "impulsive emails".[7]

Justification of BitTorrent user lawsuit

In 2010, he created some controversy after once again sending an abrasive letter to a person criticizing him for a plan to sue BitTorrent users that shared his movie. This was featured on the widely read blog BoingBoing.[7] The letter went on to call the author of the original email a "moron", wished him to have is house robbed, and continued to say "I hope your family and your kids end up in jail one day for stealing".[8]

This lawsuit, and the one initiated by his production company Voltage Pictures for the prior film Far Cry, are now being contested by the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation on the grounds that it violates personal jurisdiction laws, lack of evidence, and improper joinder.[9] CNET featured an article about one of the people who received a formal demand for cash in which the man (who claims to have never downloaded the film or even know how to secure his own router) described the suit as "an obvious intimidation scam".[10]

References

  1. ↑ TheWrap.com
  2. ↑ "Devlin, Chartier Turn on Voltage" by Liza Foreman, The Hollywood Reporter, March 10, 2005
  3. ↑ Film Finders Sydney Buzz, April 22, 2003
  4. ↑ D'Alessandro, Anthony. "Unions Are Biggest Obstacle In Indie Film Production, Film Execs Say". Deadline. Retrieved April 25, 2014.
  5. ↑ Hammond, Pete (2010-02-25). "'Hurt Letter' plot thickens after producer offers mea culpa". Los Angeles Times. Notes on a Season. Archived from the original on February 28, 2010. Retrieved February 25, 2010.
  6. ↑ Zeitchik, Steven (2010-03-03). "'Hurt Locker' producer banned from Oscars". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 6, 2010.
  7. 1 2 Xeni Jardin (18 May 2010). "Hurt Locker producer: criticizing our lawsuits makes you a moron and a thief". Boing Boing. Happy Mutants. Retrieved 18 May 2010.
  8. ↑ http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/18/voltage-pictures-pre.html
  9. ↑ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/aclu-eff-seek-to-sever-gigantic-p2p-lawsuits.ars
  10. ↑ http://news.cnet.com/2300-1023_3-10003610-4.html?tag=mncol

External links

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