Tarak Ben Ammar on His Big Italian Job(s) and Why He Owes His Career to Roberto Rossellini
Ben Ammar’s Eagle Pictures is already Italy’s top indie distributor and the Tunisian-French mogul has big plans to build a $50 million studio complex in Rome.
AUGUST 3, 2023
Tarak Ben Ammar has big plans for Italy. The Franco-Tunisian film and TV mogul is already a major player in the Italian industry thanks to Eagle Pictures, the production and distribution group he acquired in 2007 that is now Italy’s largest independent distributor due to exclusive distribution deals with Paramount and Sony Pictures for the territory. Ben Ammar joined Tom Cruise on the Rome red carpet for the June 19 world premiere of Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and later introduced Cruise to new Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni. “The meeting [between Cruise and Meloni] was very interesting. The prime minister knows a lot about cinema,” says Ben Ammar about the far-right leader.
Alongside Eagle’s distribution deals, the company has also partnered with Sony to co-produce six films together, including The Equalizer 3, the latest in Antoine Fuqua’s action franchise starring Denzel Washington that was shot entirely in Italy. Ben Ammar boosted his Italian production operations with the acquisition of local shingle 302 Original Content, rebranded Eagle Original Content, and most recently, by taking a majority stake in unscripted TV company Blu Yazmine. He’s also in advanced talks to build a $50 million-plus studio complex in Rome.
“Today, Italy is so sexy and in demand,” he said. “I see the reaction every time I say to directors: Let’s make the film in Italy! For example [the film’s producers] wanted to shoot The Equalizer 3 in another country but I immediately said to Denzel Washington and the director, Antoine Fuqua, ‘Let’s shoot it in Italy on the Amalfi Coast. Let’s do it in Naples.’ It wasn’t difficult to convince them.”
The demand to shoot in Italy is such, Ben Ammar argues, that Cinecittà, Rome’s legendary backlot, can’t keep up.
“I noticed that Cinecittà is too small. Talking to producers, I realized there is a huge demand for studio [space], yet there are not enough of them. And since it’s an economic rule to go where the demand is strongest, we set up a project to build another film studio.”
The veteran producer, who has racked up some 68 films credits over a 40-year career, says he’s already spoken with Meloni’s government on the plan, which would see a new studio erected on the outskirts of the Italian capital. He said he aims to have at least 12 sound stages operational by October 2024. Ben Ammar said he is also pushing for the Lazio Region, where the studio will be based, to set up a film school to train the next generation of film and TV artists.
“We talked with the government and the Lazio Region and I told them: ‘Be careful, because today the [Italian] workforce can only handle three major Italian or American films [simultaneously]. We need to invest in training young people… because if we don’t train the future generation of artists, the cinema and television industry will disappear.”
Ben Ammar knows the importance of giving young talent a leg up. He recalls how a chance encounter with legendary Italian film director Roberto Rossellini (Rome, Open City) transformed his life.
“I always wanted to make films, but [I was] living in this small country, Tunisia [and] I had no experience and no money,” he recalls. “Then I saw him [Rossellini] at the airport. I went straight to him and said, ‘Maestro, I would like to make films.’ Rossellini, with a unique generosity said: ‘Oh yeah? Where are you from?’ I told him Tunisia. He said: ‘I have a film that’s shooting there.’ That’s how I got my first job as a producer. So my first job as producer was [on Rossellini’s 1975 feature] The Messiah, which shot entirely in my country. Rossellini was the one who introduced me to Franco Zeffirelli, with whom I later did Jesus of Nazareth, La Traviata and The Young Toscanini. And then he introduced me to Francesco Rosi, with whom I made The Mattei Affair.
Inspired by the example of Rome’s Cinecittà, Ben Ammar decided to copy the film studio model in Tunisia.
“I didn’t reinvent anything,” he notes. “In the 1950s and 1960s, Italy and Spain were the places where Americans went to shoot their films. They were fleeing from California to find new locations. I thought Tunisia could follow the Italian example. And thanks in part to Italian filmmakers and workers, I created a film industry in my homeland, employing a million people.”
Alongside his work as local production coordinator on such films as Life of Brian and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ben Ammar expanded into original production, producing films like Roman Polanski’s Pirates (1986), Brian De Palma’s Femme Fatale (2002) and Peter Webber’s Hannibal Rising (2007).
Through it all, he says, he never forgot how it all started and the debt he owned to Italy.
“I owe everything to Italy. Meeting Rossellini in that airport, he could have simply signed an autograph for me and instead became my godfather. Thanks to his generosity, I had everything.”