KIDS_0415_COPROS_EUR_1006_ELLENDER 3/26/15 2:00 PM Page 2
36
TV KIDS
eOne Family struck a co-pro deal in Australia on the Canadian-originated series Winston Steinburger & Sir Dudley Ding Dong.
Sissmann says he is not averse to doing a co-production with any country in the world, but there are various checks that need to be made in advance. “You need to be sure that the people you are working with are reliable and accountable, so reputation can matter a lot. You also need to think about any differences in process that might affect your production. To give a small example, we are working on a co-pro with a big U.S. partner. The time we’ve taken on the contract is probably two to three times what it would have been for an E.U. partner, so you need to be aware of how international practices can vary.” Breakthrough Entertainment has access to production incentives designed to encourage work to take place in Canada. “But, accessing those wouldn’t be our first consideration when putting together a co-production,” says Joan Lambur, executive VP of family entertainment at Breakthrough. “We’re very talentdriven, so if we meet someone we want to work with, we start by building a team with them, then develop an idea organically that would work for both territories. Our view is that you really need to be sure about your partner if you’re going to spend the next three to four years working with them.”
BIG BREAKS Ira Levy, executive producer and partner at Breakthrough, says this was the approach the company took with My Big Big Friend, a preschool co-production with 2D Lab in Brazil. “They were making a beautiful show, and we came in as a creative co-production partner. We co-developed the show and decided we would figure out the financing model afterwards.” Shows that meet official co-production criteria can access Canada’s attractive incentives. This can be financially worthwhile, says Lambur, but producers need to think carefully about how this might impact the overall appeal of a project. “We’re making a live-action comedy, Max & Shred, for YTV and Nickelodeon. Maybe we could have done that as an official co-pro with the U.K. or Australia, but then we wouldn’t have been able to use our U.S. showrunner
246 World Screen 4/15
[George Doty IV]. We felt he was more important than making the production fit 100 percent within the treaty coproduction rules.” Of course, it would be wrong to suggest that the creative and commercial aspects of co-pro can’t work in harmony, adds Levy. He cites the example of Rocket Monkeys, an animated series that started with a New York studio before coming to Breakthrough for development. The show has turned out to be a hit series for TELETOON in Canada and has also been picked up by Nickelodeon for use on its worldwide network, including in the U.S. Moving the production to Canada meant the show was creatively improved as well as able to take advantage of support from the Shaw Rocket Fund and from state-based incentives. “The studio we used was British Columbia–based Atomic Cartoons,” says Levy. “They gave the show the right creative sensibility, but also opened up access to B.C.-based incentives.”
MAKING CONNECTIONS Olivier Dumont, the managing director of Entertainment One (eOne) Family, notes that it is often possible to marry content and commercial requirements. “Our priority is to create global brands, so that would always be at the forefront of our decision-making,” he says. “But, as a Canadian firm, we are well-placed to construct official co-productions. A good example is our 2D animation series Winston Steinburger & Sir Dudley Ding Dong. We placed it with TELETOON in Canada, but that wasn’t enough to cover the budget, so we did an official co-production with Australia, bringing in Sticky Pictures as studio and ABC3 as broadcaster.” Underlining the diversity of co-pro models, however, Dumont points to another animation project that eOne Family is attached to, Zak Storm. “In this case, the show will be produced by Method Animation (France), Zagtoon (France) and SAMG (Korea), and broadcast on Gulli. Because of the existing structure, there was no need for us to be directly involved as a production partner or bring in a Canadian broadcaster to