Relive the Monaco Streaming Festival this week

In July, the Monaco Streaming Film Festival (MCSFF) took its first steps on the red carpet and successfully launched its inaugural year at the Grimaldi forum while livestreamed worldwide for a global audience to partake in the action on the ground.

Those who missed it are in luck as this Tuesday 24th and Wednesday 25th August the festival will livestream a free all-access reprise of the best keynote speeches and panel discussions from the conference half of the original four-day event, along with highlights from the awards night.

In collaboration with entertainment media partner Variety and other partners, the two-day event is chock-full of content worth tuning in to and intake all of the valuable industry insight. The hybrid summit-meets-film festival in July brought together film, media, technology leaders and talent to discuss everything surrounding the technology-driven streaming industry as it stands and where it is headed.

The Monaco Streaming Film Festival – in conjunction with Grundy Media Ltd. (The Reg Grundy Innovation Award), The Princess Grace Foundation, The White Feather Foundation and The GEMA Foundation, was born out of the fact that there was no international festival in existence that celebrated and centered the conversation around the dominating streaming sector. Nor was there a festival that leveraged the power of streaming technology to bring it to the masses of film and content lovers worldwide in real-time. The annual awards in Hollywood – the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards – have been churning out Netflix, HBO Max, and Amazon Studios nominations and wins.

The streaming sector deserved a festival of its own to reflect the sign of the times and to flow with the ever-evolving content landscape. The festival has also taken a new, more dynamic approach by including other channels of content storytelling including YouTube and social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.

“For the first festival of its kind we are delighted that it turned out to be such a success with so many participating in-person and online,” says Christian Moore, the festival’s Co-Founder and Founder of GEMA Foundation.  “We aim to draw on the experience and make our next festivals even more beneficial and impactful.”

The Monaco Streaming Film Festival and Grundy Media, an iconic brand in global entertainment, have joined forces with a shared belief that bold vision and precise execution can forever enhance the media industry to move people on a global scale.

​​“From the start, we envisioned a media event that would be as modern and connective as the world of streaming and was totally in line with Reg Grundy’s personal visions,” said Jo Cullen-Cronshaw, CEO of RG Capital Group and Director of Grundy Media Ltd.  “We couldn’t be more pleased with the level of success the Festival and our Reg Grundy Innovation Award achieved. It’s exciting to connect with an even larger audience who we hope to see live at the Festival in 2022.”

Economically speaking, the Principality of Monaco has the potential to greatly benefit from the festival by not only drawing in local business and tourism surrounding the in-person festival every year, but also on a global scale through the festival’s streaming platform open to a worldwide audience.

“The film industry has undergone a significant shift as the streaming services sector continues to grow its market share. Streaming services have become a viewer’s preferred way to experience favourite films, shows and documentaries, to watch YouTube and to create or engage with social media content. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated streaming dominance due to the global community being hunkered down at home for the bulk of the past one and a half years.

The market for streaming services grew by 37% in 2020, with most of the growth coming from Disney+ which hit over 73 million subscribers in its first year. The global video streaming market was valued at USD 39.610 billion in the year 2018, USD 50.11 billion in 2020, and is expected to reach USD 102.0971 billion by 2023, growing at 20.8% CAGR.  Innovations, such as blockchain technology and artificial intelligence, to improve video quality are expected to boost the market growth.

‘No Time To Die’ premier in London and Monaco

Actor Daniel Craig has a lot to be happy about these days, partly thanks to his alter-ego James Bond, and partly because of his streaming platform-related projects and successes.
Firstly, the Bond part: the long-awaited world premiere of ‘No Time To Die’ – the 25th film from the Bond franchise – will at last take place in London on 28th September. We are most certain that Craig is breathing a sigh of relief along with Bond film lovers worldwide that his final act as 007 is finally coming to light after one and a half years of several premiere date delays due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The next day on 29th September, Monaco will play host to an exclusive screening of the film followed by a Casino Royale Dinatoire at the Casino de Monte-Carlo. The exclusive 007 Monaco evening – deemed ‘The World’s Most Immersive James Bond Experience’ – will celebrate the film’s Director and Princess Grace Award Winner Cary Joji Fukunaga as Guest of Honour, while also celebrating the life of former Bond and long-time Monaco resident Sir Roger Moore who passed away in 2017.

Proceeds from the evening will benefit the Princess Grace Foundation-USA. The event is sponsored by and partnered with the Société des Bains de Mer, Blackwell Rum and the Monaco Ambassadors Club, and proudly supported by Monaco Life as a media partner.

Daniel Craig capitalising on streaming

Daniel Craig is cashing in big-time as of late thanks to the streaming sector. It goes without saying that James Bond films, which release only in cinemas, are always massive box office successes revenue-wise. Craig’s streaming platform projects are raking in the dough even more so. According to Variety last week, he has reportedly made to-date a cool $100-million just from the yet-to-be-released sequels to Rian Johnson’s Netflix film Knives Out.

Netflix compensates movie stars for the projected back-end box office participation they would reap if their movies were released exclusively in theaters. This combined with all of his other year-to-date earnings have made him the world’s highest-paid actor this year.

The streaming sector is worth investing time into, learning about, and taking part in as it is clearly thriving and its future is so blindingly bright.

Most poignantly: streaming content has the constant attention of billions of people worldwide morning, noon and night, and attention is one of the most valuable currencies.
Register here and watch (for free) the best takeaways from the Monaco Streaming Film Festival’s inaugural year for free this Tuesday and Wednesday: https://live.streamingff.com/

Katie Lister is the Monaco Streaming Festival’s founding Head of Marketing and Partnerships.