France’s state-supported film and television financing ecosystem, based on investment commitments for all content distributors and strict media chronology laws, is a source of envy for audiovisual professionals around the world.

But not everyone is a fan.

Disney’s EMEA boss Jan Koeppen appeared almost angry about the French protection system in an interview with the FT on Friday and outlined his plans for $5 billion in content investments for Europe.

He went into detail about the specificities of the different areas of the region and praised Spain for its “tax advantages and investments in infrastructure”, but was cool towards France.

He described the country’s audiovisual landscape as “uniquely complicated and complex”, adding: “It limits competition and it limits consumer choice… Normally we want to make our content available to customers in the way that they can best enjoy it.”

Under current window rules in France, global platforms such as Disney and Amazon have a 17-month gap between a feature film’s theatrical and online release, while Netflix has negotiated a 15-month window in return for additional investment in local films. Before the new rules, the window was 36 months.

The French pay-TV giant, which has a deal with Disney to broadcast its films, has negotiated a six-month window in return for an investment of $690 million in local and European content over three years.

Disney has been fighting against these windows for years.

Most recently, the situation came to a head in the wake of the pandemic, when theatrical releases came under pressure. The studio announced in June 2022 that it would postpone the theatrical release of Strange world in France to put it directly on Disney Plus due to the chronology rules. It also threatened to go the same way with Black Panther but then he gave in.

The Strange World was released in theaters in the United States and much of the rest of the world in November 2022, and online in France in early 2023.

Koeppen told FT that Disney was in talks with French authorities to see if the system could be “modernised”.

“We will work with the various parties to see if that is possible,” he said.

The current windowing law, which came into force in February 2022, took more than a decade to negotiate and was designed to last for three years from that point.

Any move to shorten windows in favor of global platforms is likely to face resistance from France’s powerful cinema sector, which says the gaps are key to maintaining strong box office revenues.