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Feature Danni Lowinski and The Last Cop,” he adds. “We have also recently secured the rights to a hit comedy from Belgian creator Tim van Aelst called Safety First.” Danni Lowinski, which has aired for five seasons on Sat.1 in Germany, has been remade for SBS6 in the Netherlands and also licensed to Russia and the Ukraine. “As for The Last Cop, there was a successful remake for TF1 in France,” Pabst says. “Our US production company Fabrik Entertainment is now working with Sylvester Stallone on a US remake for cable channel TNT.” The same logic that has led to growth in scripted formats has also led to a boom in film-toTV adaptations. Recent examples include Atlantique Production’s Transporter and Gaumont International TV’s Hannibal, both of which have which been distributed widely around the world. Film studio Relativity Media has also been heading down this road, with projects including Act Of Valor and Limitless also in the process of being converted from films to TV series. While English-language drama still tends to grab the headlines, demand for quality drama is also benefiting the leading non-English players. Italy’s Rai Trade ended MIPCOM with around $2.5m worth of deals, with drama playing a key part in that success. Among the drama titles that attracted attention were It’s Never Too Late, which sold to markets including France (France TV), Poland (TVP), Spain (TVE), Japan (NHK) and Australia (SBS); and The Veiled Lady, which sold to China, Poland, Ukraine and Greece, among others. There was also continued demand for the leading Rai crime titles Antidrug Squad and Montalbano. There is also an upbeat assessment of the market from France Televisions Distribution. CEO Yann Chapellon reports strong demand for drama, saying: “Ready-made series based on novels by Mary Higgins Clark and Agatha Christie are still strong in our catalogue. Coming through, we have dramas in areas like dramedy and the detective genre. Usually, we have high demand in Central Europe and Russia and, more surprisingly, the Netherlands. China is also showing renewed interest in French drama.” Echoing other developments, there is also some evidence of interest in formats: “Our core business historically is to negotiate ready-made content, but we are also experiencing more format negotiations for factual and drama,” Chapellon reports.
HBO, Starz, A MC and Netf lix can all take some credit for the new dynamism in the drama genre. But A+E Networks also played a pivotal part when it decided
to put scripted shows on US factual channel History. The success of, among others, Hatfields & McCoys, Vikings and The Bible persuaded dozens of other networks
SONY POWERS UP PLAYSTATION THE NEW wave of digital/on-demand players is playing an important role in the drama market. There is no doubt that Hulu and Netflix’s willingness to experiment with non-mainstream drama has helped transform the acquisitions and scriptedformats markets by showing that audiences are bolder than broadcasters gave them credit for. Along with Amazon, they have also become commissioners of new shows such as House Of Cards, Orange Is The New Black and Bosch. No less interesting is the role of the gaming platforms. Ahead of MIPCOM 2014, for example, Sony PlayStation unveiled plans for its own content-origination slate. Among the first projects to be given the greenlight was Powers, a 10-hour series based on a graphic novel about detectives who investigate supernatural crimes committed by God-like beings. Powers will be produced by Sony Pictures Television (SPT) with Circle of Confusion. One rationale for this move is that Sony wants its new PlayStation 4 console to be more than just a gaming platform. Already, huge numbers of PS users download video content. Sony reckons that up to 3.2 billion pieces of content have been downloaded via PS devices since 2006, so it is keen to take advantage of this fact during the course of its PS4 rollout. Some observers may wonder why Sony is going this route at exactly the same time that Microsoft is shuttering its Xbox Entertainment Studios division. But there is a difference between the two companies. While Xbox was trying to develop a TV content arm from scratch, Sony is a well-established player in the production, channels and distribution businesses. Any content it makes for PS4 can be used on its other platforms or licensed to third parties. It is no accident, for example, that SPT (Sony Pictures Television) has the distribution rights to Powers. For content creators, this raises the prospect of a new scripted-content investor. Bosch, at MIPCOM with Red Arrow International
preview magazine I September 2014 I www.mipcom.com