Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Culture Elena Drapeko believes that the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) should intervene in the situation with screenings of foreign films in Russian cinemas without a distribution certificate and the consent of rights holders. She stated this in a conversation with NSN on August 25. This concerns, in particular, the film "Spider-Man: A New Day," which is being shown as part of pre-screening service.
The deputy gave the exact wording: "I think the MVD should intervene in this situation, since we are talking about illegal entrepreneurship. This is a criminal offense. The MVD should track this situation. The Ministry of Culture can monitor what is happening through its subordinate organizations. They do not transmit data to the EAIS because the film is being distributed illegally. This information can quite easily be forwarded to law enforcement agencies."
EAIS is the Unified Automated Information System for accounting cinema ticket sales, where cinemas are required to submit data for every officially sold ticket.
How the scheme works
Tickets are formally sold for short films with a valid distribution certificate—for example, for "Farewell." Before the screening of such a short film, a new foreign release that has not officially been distributed in Russia is shown in the auditorium.
According to NSN data, "Spider-Man: A New Day" collected almost 900 million rubles on its first weekend in unofficial distribution. Since the film is shown outside the official system, box office receipts are estimated by the difference between the cinemas' overall gross indicators and the data that enters the EAIS.
What threatens violators
- Criminal liability under Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation — in case of damage exceeding 500,000 rubles
- Administrative liability — in less significant cases
- Civil liability to rights holders
Drapeko believes that the Ministry of Culture is capable of tracking such screenings through its subordinate organizations and transferring the data to law enforcement agencies. For now, information about the scale of shadow distribution comes mainly from calculations based on box office receipts, not from the official EAIS statistics.
AI Opinion
From the point of view of machine data analysis, the situation with "Spider-Man" is not an isolated case, but part of a trend that the state has been recording for a year. Back in August 2025, the cabinet of ministers approved a decision to empower the Ministry of Culture to investigate shadow film distribution—this shows that the topic has been discussed at the government level for much longer than the story of one film.
The macroeconomic connection here is obvious: the higher the prices for official tickets and the rarer Hollywood premieres are, the more attractive the gray scheme is for the cinemas themselves—these box office receipts directly compete with the distribution of domestic films. A technical nuance that remains off-screen: the EAIS system physically does not record such screenings, so damage assessment is based on the difference in box office indicators, not on direct data from the registry. Whether this initiative will remain declarative or turn into real criminal cases is a question, the answer to which will appear in the coming months.
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