“We were completely overwhelmed. In thirty years of operation, I have never seen that. Laurent Brunet, director of the Ciné-Centre multiplex in Dreux (Eure-et-Loir), will long remember the general fight that broke out on Saturday March 4 during the end credits of Creed III at the 9:30 p.m. The brawl, which continued between various individuals in the lobby of the cinema and then in the parking lot, forced the cinema employees to call the police, who quickly dispersed the belligerents, without making any arrests.
“The staff present that evening were traumatized. We have from time to time small ruckus that we always manage to manage, but there, the various incivilities had started from the 7:30 p.m. session, until it degenerated into a fight, at the end of that of 9:00 p.m. h 30″, confides the operator. “I don’t know why it happens on this Creed, we had no problems on the first two. The phenomenon began on the Wednesday evening of the film’s release in certain Parisian cinemas. I heard that a challenge on TikTok had been launched [who will film the best fight – Editor’s note], but I think above all that it is enough for a spectator to tell another to be quiet during the film, that a bird name be uttered for it to be escalation. »
The Ciné-Centre de Dreux is one of the three cinemas which have decided to withdraw Creed III from their programming, while the film was shown in two rooms with 300 and 400 seats respectively. Since Sunday, it has been replaced by sessions of Alibi.com 2 and Asterix and Obelix: the middle empire. Laurent Brunet and his team have planned to meet this Friday to “debrief” the incident and think about the measures to be taken to prevent such events from happening again.
Released in France on March 1 on 587 screens, Creed III has just passed the 1,105,921 admissions: a great success, as in the United States, but, on this side of the Atlantic, the excesses at the end of the session are tarnishing its balance sheet. In Thionville, Charleville-Mézières, Saint-Étienne, Sarreguemines, Villeneuve-la-Garenne, Annemasse, Tours, Ivry-sur-Seine (at the Pathé Quai d’Ivry complex), other fights broke out on the sidelines of the film, resulting in sometimes the evacuation of the rooms concerned.
The daily Var-Matin also reports several scandals, in Saint-Raphaël, Sainte-Maxime and Cogolin. In the latter town, the mayor, Marc-Étienne Lansade, even issued an order banning the film following a highly disrupted session in the local cinema: “In the room, it was the Wild West with jets confectionery and the like in every way. The screening was interrupted and the affair continued outside at one against six! “continues the city councilor with our colleagues.
Contacted by us, Warner Bros. Discovery France, distributor of Creed III, refuses to comment, but, according to Laurent Brunet, the studio is “dismayed and understanding vis-à-vis the rooms which have withdrawn the film from the poster”. The National Federation of French Cinemas (FNCF) for its part relativizes the facts and its general delegate, Marc-Olivier Sebbag, affirms, on the France Info site, that, of the 2,500 daily screenings of Creed III in France, only one thirty incidents have been recorded.
Alexandre Hellman, general manager of the Grand Rex in Paris (which programs Creed III), ensures that he has not had any fights since March 1, as does Cédric Aubry, owner of the Cinéma confluences network (eight cinemas in Sens, Montereau, Mennecy, Bar-le-Duc or even Sarlat). Both point to the disproportionate media attention given to the case and the harmful role of social networks, which amplify the phenomenon more than reason.
In terms of admissions, Creed III in any case continues its course and, according to Éric Marti, general manager of the Comscore France institute, “the fights of recent days have no negative impact on the overall admissions of the film”. Nevertheless: for Laurent Brunet, even if there are only about thirty incidents, “that’s still thirty too many” and the incivilities observed in theaters during certain genre films, beyond the case of Creed III, spoil the recovery for some cinemas, which, in the wake of the health crisis, really do not need this kind of bad publicity.
