World Screen MIPCOM 2015

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THE MAGAZINE OF INTERNATIONAL MEDIA • OCTOBER 2015

www.worldscreen.com

MIPCOM Edition

JULIANNA MARGULIES THE GOOD WIFE MICHAEL SHEEN MASTERS OF SEX ANDREW LINCOLN THE WALKING DEAD PETER CAPALDI DOCTOR WHO TATIANA MASLANY ORPHAN BLACK KATHY BATES AMERICAN HORROR STORY DOMINIC WEST THE AFFAIR JEFFREY TAMBOR TRANSPARENT BEN MCKENZIE GOTHAM TÉA LEONI MADAM SECRETARY MIREILLE ENOS THE CATCH PRIYANKA CHOPRA QUANTICO GREG BERLANTI ANDREW DAVIES BERTRAM VAN MUNSTER JEFFREY BEWKES TIME WARNER GARY NEWMAN & DANA WALDEN FOX TELEVISION GROUP CARLOS HENRIQUE SCHRODER GLOBO THOMAS BELLUT ZDF YOSHIO OKUBO NIPPON TV SOPHIE TURNER LAING ENDEMOL SHINE GROUP

PLUS: 2015 TRENDSETTER AWARDS

milia EClarke

+

Bear Grylls, Brian Cox, Idris Elba & Gwen Stefani

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CONTENTS

OCTOBER 2015/MIPCOM EDITION DEPARTMENTS WORLD VIEW

Publisher Ricardo Seguin Guise

32

By Anna Carugati.

Group Editorial Director Anna Carugati

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

34

Editor Mansha Daswani

By Bruce Paisner.

VIEWPOINT

Executive Editor Kristin Brzoznowski

36

By Jérôme Delhaye.

MARKET WATCH

Associate Editors Joanna Padovano Sara Alessi

38

Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Elizabeth Bowen-Tombari

By Jean M. Prewitt.

UPFRONTS What’s new for MIPCOM.

ANDREW LINCOLN

IN THE NEWS

92

Endemol Shine Group’s Sophie Turner Laing.

96

AMC Networks’s Ed Carroll.

100

Paul Anderson and Beverley McGarvey on Ten’s 50th anniversary.

CONTENT TRENDSETTERS

146 TATIANA MASLANY

156 JEFFREY TAMBOR

SPECIAL REPORT

106

A look at this year’s recipients of World Screen Content Trendsetter Awards.

ADVERTISERS’ INDEX

727

WORLD’S END

730

In the stars.

This special report on the wealth of high-end talent working in television today includes interviews with Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke, The Good Wife’s Julianna Margulies, Masters of Sex ’s Michael Sheen, The Walking Dead ’s Andrew Lincoln, Doctor Who’s Peter Capaldi, Orphan Black ’s Tatiana Maslany, American Horror Story’s Kathy Bates, The Affair’s Dominic West, Transparent ’s Jeffrey Tambor, Gotham’s Ben McKenzie, Madam Secretary ’s Téa Leoni, The Catch’s Mireille Enos and Quantico’s Priyanka Chopra.

—Elizabeth Guider, Anna Carugati, Mansha Daswani & Kristin Brzoznowski

ONE-ON-ONE

201 TIME WARNER’S JEFFREY BEWKES The conglomerate’s chairman and CEO is confident that its focus on producing and distributing film and TV content for all platforms will ensure a prosperous future for the company.

—Anna Carugati

Front Cover: Emilia Clarke in Game of Thrones, courtesy of HBO.

Associate Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Jessica Rodríguez Assistant Editor Joel Marino Contributing Editor Elizabeth Guider

116 STAR POWER

GLOBAL NETS

MILESTONES

138

44

ON THE RECORD

379 FOX TELEVISION GROUP’S

Special Projects Editor Bob Jenkins Production & Design Director Victor L. Cuevas Online Director Simon Weaver Art Director Phyllis Q. Busell Sales & Marketing Managers Alberto Rodriguez Dana Mattison Business Affairs Manager Terry Acunzo Contributing Writers Steve Clarke Andy Fry Jane Marlow Joanna Stephens Jay Stuart David Wood Copy Editors Daniel Ellis-Ferris Maddy Kloss Kate Norris Jeff Tone Stacey Wujcik

GARY NEWMAN & DANA WALDEN

This year’s MIPCOM Personalities of the Year discuss their shared commitment to taking risks as they lead both a studio and a broadcast network.

—Anna Carugati

IN CONVERSATION

439 GLOBO’S CARLOS HENRIQUE SCHRODER WORLD SCREEN is published ten times per year: January, February, March, April, May, June/July, September, October, November and December.

Annual subscription price: Inside the U.S.: $90.00 Outside the U.S.: $160.00 Send checks, company information and address corrections to: WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, Suite 1207 New York, NY 10010, U.S.A. For a free subscription to our newsletters, please visit www.subscriptions.ws.

The Brazilian broadcaster is readying itself to host the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. —Anna Carugati

EXECUTIVE BRIEFING

511 BBC WORLDWIDE’S TIM DAVIE The CEO highlights the company’s key accomplishments in the last year and explains the potential for growth he sees in several areas.

—Anna Carugati 22 World Screen 10/15

Ricardo Seguin Guise President Anna Carugati Executive VP Mansha Daswani Associate Publisher & VP of Strategic Development WORLD SCREEN is a registered trademark of WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, Suite 1207 New York, NY 10010, U.S.A. Phone: (212) 924-7620 Fax: (212) 924-6940 Website: www.worldscreen.com ©2015 WSN INC. Printed by Fry Communications No part of this publication can be used, reprinted, copied or stored in any medium without the publisher’s authorization.

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CONTENTS

OCTOBER 2015/MIPCOM EDITION THESE TARGETED MAGAZINES APPEAR BOTH INSIDE WORLD SCREEN AND AS SEPARATE PUBLICATIONS:

U.K. TAX INCENTIVES TURKISH CONTENT FRANCE MARKET PROFILE ZDF’S THOMAS BELLUT UKTV’S DARREN CHILDS

172 178 186 192 196

CYBER GROUP TURNS 10 MONDO TV AT 50 PRESCHOOL SHOWS MOVIES & SPECIALS CANADA VIACOM’S CYMA ZARGHAMI

241 273 286 296 304 316

DRAMA COMMISSIONERS REBOOTS & REMAKES GREG BERLANTI WAR AND PEACE ’S ANDREW DAVIES & SIMON VAUGHAN

408 416 422

FORMAT BUYERS GAME SHOWS THE AMAZING RACE ’S BERTRAM VAN MUNSTER FREMANTLEMEDIA’S ROB CLARK NEXT TOP MODEL’S KEN MOK

476 484 494 498 504

DOC COMMISSIONERS MOTORING & ADVENTURE SHOWS BRIAN COX BEAR GRYLLS IDRIS ELBA NAT GEO’S COURTENEY MONROE

536 546 554 558 562 564

OTT PLATFORMS NIPPON TV’S YOSHIO OKUBO ABS-CBN’S CHARO SANTOS-CONCIO

586 597 603

PAY TV OSN’S DAVID BUTORAC

612 618

LATIN AMERICAN DRAMAS ANDRÉS PARRA

642 650

LISTINGS FOR 155 DISTRIBUTORS ATTENDING MIPCOM 687

26 World Screen 10/15

434

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WORLD VIEW

BY ANNA CARUGATI

Toward Greater Understanding Some years are marked by joyous events: a graduation, promotion, wedding or birth. Other years are darker, maybe because of a breakup, the loss of a job, or the passing of a loved one.

In many years, we are influenced directly or indirectly by large events beyond our control. A drought affects the cost of produce; unrest in the Middle East causes gas prices to surge; El Niño alters weather patterns. But in addition to these events, every year, and in each of the 365 days in it, it’s the minutiae of our lives that impact us the most. A word of encouragement from a boss, a misunderstanding with a spouse, the kindness of a stranger, an argument with a co-worker, the fever of a child, a migraine, a bad commute—all these small events become the threads in the fabric of our lives.

Prompted by two events in my life—one new and the other recurring—I’ve been overtaken by constant introspection and reflection on human nature. What’s the essence of character? What motivates behavior? What’s the core of identity? Someone very close to me came out earlier this year and his recounting of the self-loathing he felt as a teen broke my heart. I told him that his sexual orientation has no impact on his overwhelmingly kind heart and his enviable accomplishments.

This conversation was fresh in my mind when I interviewed Jeffrey Tambor for this issue’s special feature about the talented actors currently gracing the small screen. In our conversation about his groundbreaking role as a transgender woman in Transparent, Tambor, who is delightful beyond words, told me that the main message of the series is this: If I change, will you still love me?

Wow, that struck a chord. I told him of my personal experience and he was deeply moved—so much so that he called me back after the interview to talk some more!

Another person close to me continues to struggle with the emotional wreckage wrought by an abusive father.

Since abuse is not something I have experienced firsthand, I feel handicapped when trying to support this friend. In my interview with Michael Sheen, who plays Dr. William Masters in Masters of Sex, Sheen shed light on the impact of abusive fathers with an incisiveness that no psychologist or textbook ever had for me. Masters was abused by his father as a child, and the abuse was like a poison. It destroyed Masters’s relationship with his own son, whom he kept at such a distance—out of fear that that he might perpetuate that cycle of abuse— that he wound up neglecting him (tragically, another form of abuse). Masters was also excessively controlling of his wife and collaborators; he needed to control his relationships, his environment and his own impulses to maintain what he perceived as order in his world—lest someone hurt him again.

The very best [shows]

illuminate the

motivations behind human behavior

32 World Screen 10/15

Two TV series this year deeply resonated with moments of profound understanding and awareness in my personal life. The very best do exactly that; they illuminate the motivations behind human behavior. They exhibit the variability of our complex humanity through masterful writing, acting and dialogue, and even more often, simply through glances and gestures. Along with major drives like power, greed, insecurity or righteousness, dramas and comedies capture the tiny moments, the actions and the silences—the minutiae of our days—that have such an acute affect on us.

In this issue, we offer a stellar lineup of actors. In addition to Sheen and Tambor, we have Julianna Margulies, Peter Capaldi, Emilia Clarke, Tatiana Maslany, Andrew Lincoln, Kathy Bates, Ben McKenzie, Téa Leoni, Mireille Enos and Priyanka Chopra. We feature an equally impressive roster of executives and TV personalities, which includes Jeffrey Bewkes, Dana Walden and Gary Newman, Carlos Henrique Schroder, Tim Davie, Sophie Turner Laing, Ed Carroll, Paul Anderson, Thomas Bellut, Darren Childs, Greg Berlanti, Andrew Davies, Bear Grylls, Courteney Monroe, Brian Cox, Rob Clark, Bertram Van Munster and Cyma Zarghami.

For the fifth consecutive year, World Screen is partnering with MIPCOM to present Content Trendsetter Awards to individuals who have made significant contributions to the television industry. This year’s honorees are Modern Times Group’s Jakob Mejlhede, FOX International Channels’s Jason Simms, Viacom International Media Networks U.K.’s Katie Keenan, Amazon’s Jason Ropell and SVT’s Christian Wikander. Join me on Wednesday, October 7, at 12:15 p.m., in the Grand Auditorium of the Palais des Festivals, as I talk with these executives during the Acquisition Superpanel: What Do Buyers Want? This year we are also paying tribute to executives in the children’s TV business. Following the panel View from the Top: What Do Buyers Want? at MIPJunior on Sunday, October 4, at 9:45 a.m., at the Hotel Martinez, Kids’ Content Trendsetter Awards will be given to Nickelodeon’s Jules Borkent, Cartoon Network’s Adina Pitt, Disney Channels Worldwide’s Karen K. Miller, Lagardère Active’s Caroline Cochaux and KiKA’s Sebastian Debertin.

Let’s not forget how precious and impressionable children are and the responsibility kids’ content buyers have. And let’s not lose sight of the winning, forward-thinking, risk-taking strategies that programming executives implement in choosing dramas and comedies that make us think, look inside ourselves and understand each other better.

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GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

BY BRUCE L. PAISNER

The Pony Express & New Technology My favorite example of a new technology being lapped by the next thing is the fabled Pony Express. Launched by three entrepreneurs right before the American Civil War, it was a breathtaking advance—a way to get letters and packages across the United States in an unheard-of ten days. It was three times faster than the stagecoach that preceded it.

For all the romance associated with it, though, the Pony Express lasted only 19 months. In 1861, workers finished linking Samuel Morse’s telegraph from the East Coast to California, and the Pony Express was history. The founders, by the way, went bankrupt.

The fate of the Pony Express is a good thing to keep in mind as we watch the interplay among broadcast, cable and internet streaming take on sudden and gamechanging ferocity. We’ve never seen this kind of speed in the media industry. The Civil War, which was really America’s industrial revolution, changed many things: railroads, factories and even automobiles all came of age in the second half of the 19th century. But the communications business was immune to change, except for the telegraph, and then gradually, Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. The first step in mass media was radio, and it did not show up until the 1920s. Had it not been for World War II, television would have evolved sooner, but after the war, there was no stopping it, with nothing interfering with the broadcast networks and their affiliate stations for nearly 25 years until the emergence of cable program networks in the early 1970s. With that, technological change froze again, and cable networks, coexisting with their broadcasting cousins, dominated an extremely lucrative landscape for the next 35 years.

Cable networks and their system transmission partners did not have much affinity for each other, but they did have a mutual need, and for that whole period of time they successfully fought off all attempts to broaden customer options in a long and successful fight to stop the government from ordering à la carte service. Netflix took care of that. Using new and higher powered technology, Netflix found a way around the cable monopoly, usually by using the cable companies’ own transmission lines and the network companies’ programs.

What looked like a distant and not really very worrisome problem—think of the telegraph line reaching only to Utah—suddenly became a huge threat about a year and a half ago. Now Netflix has many imitators, including an increasing number of cable programmers.

Anything invented after you’re 35 is against the

natural order of things

34 World Screen 10/15

In just the last 12 months, hugely successful legacy organizations, from HBO to CBS, announced that they, too, will provide digital services. It is hard to imagine anything but a radically changed television landscape five years from now. Will television advertising survive or find other forms and outlets? Will most television consumption be paid for by the consumer? Is the era of scheduled network programming, which began with such success in the late 1940s, about to be over? Add to these questions the pervasive effect of exploding technological change, and it’s not easy to see the future.

But technology—and an organization’s or industry’s ability to cope with and profit from it—will depend in part on new thinking in older institutions. At the International Academy’s Academy Day meeting in Jerusalem last year, one keynote speaker made this point by quoting the following from the late Douglas Adams’ book The Salmon of Doubt: “I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reaction to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things.”

One reason it’s hard to know how things will turn out is that not all organizations grasp these rules and hire and promote accordingly. What is required is not only an understanding of current technological opportunities, but a sense of what their limitations might eventually be.

Just ask the inventors of the Pony Express.

Many of these topics were discussed at the Academy’s International Academy Day in Rio, which took place this past June in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Under the direction of Grupo Globo, various panels and speeches explored the state of the media today and where it might be going.

The keynote address at the opening banquet was given

by President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and was a ringing and articulate defense of democracy and freedom of the press. Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes led participants on a tour of the rapidly developing site of the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Bruce L. Paisner is the president and CEO of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

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VIEWPOINT

BY JÉRÔME DELHAYE

Creative Excellence at MIPCOM Some 13,600 TV executives from 100 countries, including about 4,500 program buyers, will attend MIPCOM this year, where the focus will be on the radically changing distribution environment and the importance of producing exceptionally creative content across all genres in order to attract increasingly empowered audiences.

In today’s multiplatform entertainment environment, with the rapid growth of OTT, SVOD and streaming services, MIPCOM is introducing a new, innovative conference program titled Into the Stream. Senior executives from Turner, FOX International Channels, Spotify, A+E Networks and Roku, among others, will debate the radical shift in business models and strategies brought on by the digital developments.

In business terms, OTT offers huge revenue potential and opportunities for content creators, while also challenging existing free- and pay-TV companies to come up with new distribution practices and the kind of content that will keep viewers loyal. According to Digital TV Research, OTT live and VOD services will generate some $26 billion in revenues this year (in a global TV market estimated to be worth some $290 billion), rising to $56 billion in 2020, of which $21.6 billion is expected to come from SVOD services as opposed to ad-driven offers.

Faced with competition from the likes of Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu, major broadcasters, cable and satellite platforms and telco companies are getting into the OTT business. With broadcasters either launching their own OTT services, partnering with SVOD providers or adopting a wait-andsee approach, MIPCOM will provide a forum for examining the key issues related to the changing video ecosystem.

With competition for viewer attention at a peak, the value of compelling storytelling has rarely been higher and MIPCOM will see a host of premium drama projects brought to market. Among them, the MIPCOM Opening Night World Premiere TV Screening of Sky Atlantic and CANAL+’s The Last Panthers; the MIPCOM Tuesday World Premiere TV Screening of FOX’s The X-Files revival; exclusive footage of upcoming event drama War and Peace, produced by The Weinstein Company and the BBC; Sony Pictures Television’s The Player and The Art of More; CANAL+ and SVT’s latest high-concept thriller Midnight Sun, produced by Atlantique Productions, Nice Drama and Filmpool Nord; ITV Studios’ Beowulf; Endemol Shine Group’s The Frankenstein Chronicles; The Girlfriend Experience from Starz; and CBS Studios International’s Billions.

MIPCOM 2015 will clearly reflect the geographical diversity of program production. From the fast-developing

MIPCOM 2015 will clearly reflect the

geographical diversity of

program production

36 World Screen 10/15

world of “superseries” (the extension of the telenovela concept with fewer episodes and superior production values), Telemundo and Chile’s TVN are unveiling Masters of Paradise. Gaumont International Television’s tale of the rise of drug baron Pablo Escobar, Narcos, has debuted on Netflix. HBO Asia is in production on its third original English-language series, Halfworlds (shot mainly in English and Bahasa Indonesia), and Korean public broadcaster KBS is hoping to follow a string of international hits with its latest period drama The Merchant: Gaekju 2015.

According to international research company The WIT, five key themes and production approaches are shaping this year’s crop of drama productions with international ambitions. They are: missing children stories, drug trafficking, scripted formats, drama based on books and themes that are country-agnostic.

Two executives who have pushed forward the boundaries of storytelling and introduced business models that have become industry norms are MIPCOM’s Personalities of the Year, Fox Television Group Chairmen and CEOs Dana Walden and Gary Newman. They will be fêted at a MIPCOM gala tribute dinner on October 7.

Walden and Newman are part of a stellar MIPCOM conference speaker lineup that includes ITV Chief Executive Adam Crozier; Endemol Shine Group CEO Sophie Turner Laing; award-winning film and TV producer Mark Gordon; Lionsgate’s president of worldwide TV and digital distribution, Jim Packer; Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins; Discovery Networks International President JB Perrette; Dori Media Group CEO and President Nadav Palti; Rudy Tanoesoedibjo, CEO and president director of PT MNC Sky Vision; Fullscreen’s founder and CEO, George Strompolos; AOL’s president of content and consumer brands, Jimmy Maymann; Shahrzad Rafati, founder and CEO of BroadbandTV; Armando Nuñez, president and CEO of CBS Global Distribution Group; David Nevins, the president of Showtime Networks; Nicola Mendelsohn, the VP for EMEA at Facebook; and Dermot McCormack, AOL’s president of video.

MIPCOM 2015 is also shining the spotlight on Turkey, the event’s Country of Honour. Turkish TV drama exports are now estimated to be worth some $200 million annually.

International hits include costume drama Magnificent Century. The country is developing expertise in animation and unscripted formats and will be the focus of a Fresh TV report from The WIT. Jérôme Delhaye is the director of the entertainment division at Reed MIDEM.

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MARKET WATCH

BY JEAN M. PREWITT

Seeking Xanadu in Today’s China Headlines proclaiming the astounding growth of China’s entertainment sector are everywhere, but for the independent film and television industry, marketplace rewards are still hostage to China’s restrictions on Chinese distributors and imported programming.

Much of the hype is real: China by the numbers is the second-largest market for films and television programming, and its audience’s tastes are increasingly a factor in project selection. However, despite the glowing statistics, many independents still face an uphill battle with Chinese regulations to gain market entry.

Frequent public attention is paid to China’s film quota, which limits how many foreign films can be released on a box-office-revenue-sharing basis through China Film Group (CFG). Under the 2012 agreement negotiated by the U.S., China increased that quota to 34. More significantly, China committed to substantial changes for all other imported films distributed theatrically by Chinese distributors on a nonbox-office-revenue-sharing basis. Chief among these was a commitment to permit Chinese distributors to control theatrical distribution of these additional imported films without relying on CFG. China’s compliance with the 2012 agreement involves only increasing box-office revenue share to 25 percent for 34 films.

Far from implementing other agreement provisions, China has taken steps to enforce new barriers that are hitting the independent industry the hardest.

Independent producers have successfully worked with Chinese distributors to theatrically release films on a nonrevenue-share basis. Films such as Twilight and The Expendables have reached Chinese audiences through these deals. But these opportunities are shrinking as unwritten rules are employed to block certain imports.

China also now appears to have an “informal” quota limiting the total number of non-box-office-revenuesharing imported films, so as to maintain the total number of theatrically distributed imported films at about 60. Through CFG, it also manipulates release dates and creates blackout periods to ensure that Chinese films generate at least 51 percent of the box-office revenue in China. These machinations fall most heavily on foreign independent producers and private Chinese distributors. In fact, on average, the annual box-office share attributable to imported independent films—all foreign films outside of the titles released by the six major U.S. studios—has been below 8 percent of total

It is critical that the

Chinese government build an open and

transparent marketplace

38 World Screen 10/15

box-office revenues in China for the past six years. The U.S. independent share recently hit its lowest point in that period.

While China has officially recommitted to the promise to open theatrical distribution of imported films to private Chinese companies and to limit CFG’s role in those relationships, independent producers for the moment still face being shut out of China’s theatrical sector through other officially sanctioned measures.

Chinese television channels, including CCTV, have always presented opportunities for foreign producers, even though a television quota for imported programming is in place. Online distribution is promising in a country that today expects virtually parallel release of popular U.S. television series on certain platforms. But these distribution avenues are increasingly problematic for imported programming, as the government has moved in to ramp up control on content and availability. Websites offering content for streaming or downloading must now comply with new regulations implemented in April 2015 requiring upfront registration of television series and proof of prior censorship if already released in China.

While these registration and censorship requirements may seem benign, they have chilled, or in some cases frozen solid, deals with local buyers. In addition to the uncertainty of securing a theatrical release of a foreign film, a Chinese all-rights buyer now faces question marks on the availability of other distribution outlets through which to recoup investment. There is also the potential for devastating piracy during the inevitable delays in complying with new regulations.

China has made some strides “on paper” to lower trade barriers and introduce some transparency, but in practice, it indulges barriers that are wholly inconsistent with its position as a thriving economy with an almost unrivaled entertainment infrastructure and audience. These barriers undermine its own industry as it seeks to forge relationships with the global film and television industry.

The Chinese government must implement the film agreement in its entirety, but this alone is insufficient.

Consistent with the spirit of the film agreement and other trade agreements, it is critical that the Chinese government step up and build an open and transparent marketplace in which both Chinese and independent film producers can fully participate.

Jean M. Prewitt is president and CEO of the Independent Film & Television Alliance.

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UPFRONTS

108 Media Hostile / Nobu’s Japan / Small Things, Big Things This MIPCOM, 108 Media plans to unveil the new horror/ thriller film Hostile, which is the tale of a lonely woman who adopts two daughters possessed by a mysterious presence. On the lighter side, the company is representing the series Nobu’s Japan, which travels to various regions of Japan to celebrate the culture and history of each locale. Each episode, hosted by Nobu Matsuhisa, features celebrity chefs, including José Andrés, Thomas Keller, Eric Ripert, Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Daniel Boulud. Additionally, 108 Media will be presenting Small Things, Big Things, a documentary chronicling a day in the life of underprivileged children in an alternative-education school in India. “The optimism in the children’s eyes makes for a compelling and heartwarming film,” says Sharon Lee, international sales executive at 108 Media.

“108 Media prides itself on being an innovator, and always strives to bring fresh and unique content to every market.”

—Sharon Lee Nobu’s Japan

AFL Productions Curse of the Diamonds / Naked & Funny / Outrageous & Hilarious AFL Productions, which has long represented popular clip shows such as Naked & Funny and 2Rude4UTube, is making a move toward the miniseries market. The company is presenting Curse of the Diamonds at MIPCOM, a historical title that weaves together a top-secret mining program, international espionage and an epic love triangle, as well as a scheme involving millions of dollars in missing gems. The production is especially timely due to the many World War II anniversaries that have been recently commemorated, says Yuri Volodarsky, AFL’s head of development and distribution. The company will continue to showcase the blooper-reel shows it’s known for, introducing international buyers to Outrageous & Hilarious, which offers a collection of embarrassing moments caught on tape by real people.

“Curse of the Diamonds is a dramatic new miniseries brimming with intrigue, action and mystery.”

—Yuri Volodarsky Curse of the Diamonds

Alfred Haber Distribution 2015 Miss Universe Pageant / 2016 58th Annual Grammy Awards / Top 20 Funniest Women from all over the world will take to the stage to compete in the 2015 Miss Universe Pageant, which Alfred Haber Distribution is making available for international broadcasters. The company is offering other special events, including the 2016 Grammy Awards, in addition to Top 20 Funniest. “Having distributed reality-clip shows for many years now, it’s always satisfying to have a solid performer like Top 20 Funniest,” says Alfred Haber, the company’s president. “This popular Nash Entertainment series has done pretty well in the U.S. on truTV and is now in its third season; meanwhile, the show never stopped growing internationally and is one of our most successful series.” Haber adds, “Our core focus remains on the programming for which we’re known: annual events and reality series.”

“Special events like the Grammy Awards, Miss Universe, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, the SAG Awards and the Film Independent Spirit Awards always draw big interest and viewership, while reality shows continue to drive TV programming worldwide.”

—Alfred Haber

Top 20 Funniest 44 World Screen 10/15

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American Cinema International The Ultimate Legacy / Love Finds You in Valentine / Strangers in Amish Country American Cinema International (ACI) is presenting the final story in its Ultimate trilogy, The Ultimate Legacy. The movie concludes the story of The Ultimate Gift and The Ultimate Life, which ACI will also have available at the market.

Another highlight is Love Finds You in Valentine, which is the third movie in the company’s Love Finds You franchise. “We are also thrilled to announce a project with Hallmark Channel, Strangers in Amish Country, which has mystery and romance and was written by Serena B. Miller, the writer of Love Finds You in Sugarcreek,” says Chevonne O’Shaughnessy, the company’s president. Additionally, O’Shaughnessy highlights the launch of ACI Inspires, “which houses our inspirational titles that the whole family can enjoy together.”

“These titles are appealing for international buyers because they are inspirational stories that do not have violence, sex or obscenities.”

—Chevonne O’Shaughnessy Love Finds You in Valentine

Applicaster Live Feed / Sports Feed A provider of cross-screen TV experiences, Applicaster has been working with broadcasters, format creators and the like to foster deeper engagement with audiences. The latest services from the company are the Live Feed and Sports Feed offerings. The Live Feed enables the ability to show the opinion of the live audience and even influence the course of a live event. It has been used in such formats as The Voice and Germany’s Next Topmodel. The Sports Feed includes predictions, an elaborate system of gamification and sports information about matches and championships. “It’s applicable to all sporting events as a tool for comparison of information and play,” says Laura Tapias, the VP for Spain and Latin America at Applicaster.

“Applicaster’s sports product has been used during the last Copa América, with outstanding results.”

—Laura Tapias Applicaster’s Sports Feed

Arab Telemedia Group The Invasion / Shahrazad / The Sons of Al Rashid Over the last 30-plus years, Arab Telemedia Group has produced more than 5,000 hours of programming, most of which has aired on major broadcasters across the Middle East. The company is headed to MIPCOM to spread this content even further in the global marketplace. Talal Awamleh, the CEO and executive producer at Arab Telemedia Group, says that one of the main objectives for attending MIPCOM is to penetrate new markets and meet with potential clients. Awamleh believes that the content in the company’s portfolio will appeal to global buyers because it features topics tied to historical, political and social issues. Program highlights include The Invasion, a story about the love between a young Palestinian fugitive and the Israeli woman he rescues, as well as Shahrazad, The Sons of Al Rashid and Balqis.

“As an Emmy Awardwinning company, our productions feature variety and diversity in genres that appeal to regional and international audiences.”

—Talal Awamleh The Sons of Al Rashid 46 World Screen 10/15

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Artist View Entertainment The Architect / Girl on the Edge / Marry Me Alberta Eric McCormack stars in the romantic comedy The Architect, about a couple who hires an architect who is more interested in building the home of his dreams than theirs. Another film in Artist View Entertainment’s queue is Girl on the Edge, in which a teenager is cyber-bullied and moves to a private ranch to reestablish her life. The protagonist in the thriller Desiree must regain his memory and discover the past before the crime lords for whom he once worked reach him. In the lifestyle category, there’s the wedding destination title Marry Me Alberta, among others, which encompass cooking and fitness. Scott Jones, the president of Artist View Entertainment, says, “The market is much more sophisticated than in years gone by and we believe these high-level productions will appeal to the marketplace.”

“Artist View is very proud to be in its 25th year of operation. The company is pleased to offer a strong catalogue of feature films, covering a wide variety of genres.”

—Scott Jones The Architect

ATV Orphan Flowers / Eskiya Dunya’ya Hukumdar Olmaz / Stolen Life With Turkey as MIPCOM’s Country of Honour this year, ATV is looking forward to having the country’s content in the spotlight of the global market. “ATV is proud that Turkish content will be talked about more and will have the opportunity to spread even further,” says Muhammed Ziyad Varol, the company’s head of sales. ATV has two brand-new titles for MIPCOM buyers: Orphan Flowers (Kirgin Cicekler) and Eskiya Dunya’ya Hukumdar Olmaz.

There will also be new episodes of the returning drama hit Stolen Life available. “Along with our new titles, classic bestsellers such as Sila, Unforgettable and Becoming a Lady will continue to be the stars,” Varol says, noting that he would like to expand the presence of these series into new markets.

“The high production values, wide range of content choices and distinctive story lines of ATV dramas will be the most appealing factors for buyers.”

—Muhammed Ziyad Varol Orphan Flowers

Azteca Tanto Amor / Once I Loved You / Así En El Barrio Como En El Cielo The Azteca telenovela Tanto Amor tells the story of Alberto and Mia, whose long and eventful journey leads to romance and happiness in the midst of tragedy and betrayal. An equally strong sense of justice drives these two characters as they fight for a love marked by absence, says Marcel Vinay Jr., the CEO of Comarex, which distributes titles for Azteca. Once I Loved You, another Azteca novela and MIPCOM highlight, is also a story of love and betrayal, where money permeates the lives of all those who live in a prosperous and fertile wine-producing valley. Meanwhile, the telenovela Así En El Barrio Como En El Cielo shows what happens when chance leaves the rich impoverished and turns the poor into millionaires.

“Así En El Barrio Como En El Cielo is a potpourri of passion, love, laughter, hate and retaliation, with the odd miracle thrown in for good measure.”

—Marcel Vinay Jr. Así En El Barrio Como En El Cielo 48 World Screen 10/15

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Band Content Distribution Skivvy Man / Wacky TV / 50 x 1 Brazil-based Band Content Distribution arrives at MIPCOM hoping to strengthen its relationships with existing customers while attracting new partnerships by offering content for different platforms, says Elisa Ayub, Band’s director of international content. Among the highlights is Wacky TV, a cartoon spoof on popular network fare featuring parodies of news broadcasts, talk shows and even infomercials. Additionally, the company is presenting the travel series 50 x 1, featuring an entire season focused on cities that have hosted the Olympics.

The animated show Skivvy Man, about an antihero who charges to help people, is targeted to young adults. “We are bringing Brazilian productions with great diversity and style,” says Ayub. “That’s what makes us a television company ready to attend to a variety of requests.”

“We want to establish Band Content Distribution…as a major reference point in the international content-distribution business.”

—Elisa Ayub Wacky TV

BBC Worldwide War and Peace / Dickensian / The Big Catch Two of the top dramas in BBC Worldwide’s MIPCOM catalogue draw on classic literature. Andrew Davies is behind the new TV adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Tony Jordan is taking viewers back to a Victorian London populated by Charles Dickens’ most compelling characters with Dickensian. “These two dramas are among the most ambitious the BBC has ever produced, both in terms of vision and scale and, of course, are based on well-known and internationally popular books,” says Paul Dempsey, the president of global markets at BBC Worldwide. Meanwhile, producers Tim Martin (Natural World) and Samantha Beddoes (The Great British Bake Off) have joined forces to create the high-stakes fishing competition show The Big Catch.

“Dickens’ novels have been successfully adapted numerous times for the screen, so the characters in Dickensian will be familiar to viewers.”

—Paul Dempsey Dickensian

Beyond Distribution Love It or List It UK / Chasing Monsters / Mountain Rescue The stars of Love It or List It UK are set to join Beyond Distribution at MIPCOM to help promote the show, which is the first format produced out of the original series that is now in its sixth season. “This property is so versatile that it lends itself to assorted local versioning, and it has an incredible amount of episodes that can be licensed that are already complete,” says Munia KannaKonsek, Beyond’s head of sales. The company’s catalogue also includes Chasing Monsters, in which the host seeks out colossal and dangerous underwater creatures in the most remote corners of the planet, and Mountain Rescue, about a squad trained to rescue people who have been hurt or critically injured on one of the world’s most deadly peaks.

“Beyond is celebrating 30 years in the business at MIPCOM. We have grown greatly with an emphasis on quality programming and maintaining wonderful relationships.”

—Munia Kanna-Konsek Mountain Rescue 50 World Screen 10/15

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BoPaul Media Worldwide Mussolini: The Untold Story / The Miracle Worker / The Big Big Show One priority for BoPaul Media Worldwide at MIPCOM is to launch resales for Mussolini: The Untold Story, a sevenhour miniseries starring George C. Scott that ran on NBC in 1985. The company is also representing the TV movie The Miracle Worker, originally released in 1979. “Our buyers have always been attuned to acquiring the very best in vintage films from us over the years,” says Paul Rich, the CEO and owner of BoPaul Media Worldwide. “With the latest acquisition of projects like Mussolini and The Miracle Worker, we are continuing that momentum and filling that need.” Many classic titles in the catalogue have been upconverted to HD. BoPaul Media is also showcasing a brandnew game/talent show called The Big Big Show, starring Andrew Dice Clay, Tom Green and Tara Reid.

“We seek to further expand our search for unique vintage film packages, especially ones that have been out of circulation in recent years.”

—Paul Rich The Big Big Show

Calinos Entertainment Relationship Status: It’s Complicated / Emergency Love / Miracle In the series Relationship Status: It’s Complicated, an aspiring scriptwriter meets a famous actor on a plane and the two begin a fraught romance. Calinos Entertainment is presenting this series at MIPCOM alongside Emergency Love, which centers on a young and beautiful junior doctor and her mentor. Besir Tatli, the general manager of Calinos, notes that both of these series are light on the drama, and instead have more elements of romantic comedy. The company is also promoting the movie Miracle, which tells a story in which love helps to transform a disabled man. “It catches the audience from the first moment and does not release them till the last scene,” says Tatli. He adds that the film has been a boxoffice hit in Turkey.

“We are working on different projects with international companies.”

—Besir Tatli Relationship Status: It’s Complicated

Canada Media Fund Financial support / Industry intelligence / Promotion One of the main activities of the Canada Media Fund (CMF) is that it delivers financial support to the Canadian television and digital media industry. It does so through several programs “designed as catalysts for the creation of successful content for Canadian and worldwide audiences to enjoy and to reflect Canada’s unique cultural diversity,” says Valerie Creighton, the CMF’s president and CEO. “We also provide industry intelligence on the Canadian and international audiovisual landscape, including blog posts from Canadian and international experts through the CMF Trends website and socialmedia communities.” The organization also promotes Canadian expertise and talent to international audiences at various events, including MIPCOM.

“At events like MIPCOM, the CMF promotes the wealth of talent and business opportunities that exist in Canada.”

—Valerie Creighton

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Canal 13 Sudmedia Allende / Family Holidays / Perfidy At MIPCOM, Canal 13 Sudmedia is unveiling a catalogue chockfull of Chilean movies that have premiered within the last two years. “They are commercial films ranging from comedies to dramas, and they feature compelling stories that reflect our continent’s particularities while offering global potential,” says Marina Del Canto, the VP of international sales at Canal 13. The history-based Allende recreates the last hours of former Chilean President Salvador Allende at La Moneda, the country’s government house. The comedy Family Holidays, meanwhile, follows a clan as they hide at home for a month after telling their friends that they’ve gone on a vacation abroad. On the horror front, Perfidy chronicles two lovers who, after many years apart, spend a weekend together in a remote cabin where strange things start to happen.

“We hope our slate of Chilean movies will help us develop new commercial relationships during this market.”

—Marina Del Canto Perfidy

Canal Futura Going Back / Getting to Know the Presidents of Brazil / Money in the Pocket Canal Futura enters MIPCOM in time to celebrate its 18th anniversary. One of the titles it’s presenting amid this occasion is the documentary Going Back, which follows inmates who must face their past once they return home for the Christmas season. In terms of history programming, Canal Futura is spotlighting Getting to Know the Presidents of Brazil, which is made up of two-minute shorts chronicling the highs and lows of each administration using light and humorous illustrations. The catalogue also has the game show Money in the Pocket, which aims to teach youths financial concepts. “We seek to contribute to the day-to-day life of ordinary people, offering entertainment and information that’s relevant and useful,” says Lúcia Araújo, the director of Canal Futura.

“We want to solidify our brand as a quality content distributor and we are sure MIPCOM is the perfect market for that.”

—Lúcia Araújo Money in the Pocket

Caracol TV Internacional Soul Sisters / Laura, an Extraordinary Life Two scripted series shot in 4K and spotlighting historic women are at the top of Caracol TV Internacional’s MIPCOM lineup. Soul Sisters is the tale of siblings who fought to bring attention to the Colombian musical genre known as “la carrilera.” Using their voices, the singers managed to overcome obstacles and popularize the music. Meanwhile, Laura, an Extraordinary Life follows the mission of its titular heroine to defend the less fortunate at a time when women were not expected to contribute to public society.

“These stories are about courageous women who overcame adversities to fulfill their dreams,” says María Estrella, the company’s sales executive for Asia. They were produced “with the idea of inspiring international audiences, and we are certain that they will have plenty of success abroad.”

“We have high expectations for MIPCOM as we have a diversified, attractive and complete portfolio that will definitely fulfill our clients’ demands.”

—María Estrella Soul Sisters 10/15 World Screen 53

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CBS Studios International Limitless / Billions / Crazy Ex-Girlfriend There will be a special screening for the Showtime drama Billions at MIPCOM. The series, which is being presented for international buyers by CBS Studios International (CBSSI), stars Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis. “Billions offers a compelling story with brilliant actors that will play really well in a premium pay environment,” says Barry Chamberlain, the company’s president of sales. The CBS drama Limitless, also a CBSSI highlight, is based on a feature film and stars Jake McDorman and Jennifer Carpenter. “Limitless is an established brand, being based on a feature film, with big action and a procedural element,” says Chamberlain. On the comedy side, The CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend stars newcomer Rachel Bloom. The show is “really fresh and uniquely funny,” says Chamberlain.

“MIPCOM is an important time to have face-to-face meetings with our clients as the new broadcast season begins.”

—Barry Chamberlain Limitless

Cisneros Media Distribution Separated by Love / Urban Legends / SHÄK Capitalizing on the resurgence of the horror genre, Cisneros Media Distribution is offering buyers Urban Legends. “This series is based on urban myths, which can be a great source of entertainment for young audiences tired of teen vampires struggling to abstain from draining their mortal boyfriends’ veins,” says Marcello Coltro, the executive VP of content distribution at Cisneros Media. A telenovela highlight is the new title Separated by Love, which features an international cast and is being launched with the digital space in mind. The novela was produced with a “robust structure, shorter scenes and fewer plots” in order to accommodate all digital platforms, according to Coltro. Also, the company is showcasing SHÄK, a coproduction with RMG News featuring high-speed races, police shootouts and other high-octane clips.

“Cisneros Media Distribution’s core business has evolved, as we are now focused on…establishing co-productions with our clients around the world.”

—Marcello Coltro Separated by Love

CJ E&M Corporation Three Meals a Day / Oh My Ghost / Show Me the Money The hosts of the food-themed reality show Three Meals a Day use whatever ingredients they can find in the secluded countryside to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner on a daily basis. CJ E&M Corporation is presenting the title to international buyers at the market in Cannes, along with Oh My Ghost, which is about a timid girl who finds romance after being possessed by a spirit. The scripted series combines a “supernatural ghost-possession element with sweet romantic comedy,” says Diane Min, the company’s senior sales manager. There is also Show Me the Money, the fourth installment of the popular rap competition series that takes place every year. “This muchanticipated hip-hop competition show has much to lure international audiences,” says Min.

“We are focusing on format titles and OTT sales, which are in line with the changes that are evident in today’s media industry.”

—Diane Min Oh My Ghost 54 World Screen 10/15

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Content Television Slasher / Clean Break / The Ivy The drama highlights from Content Television include the new eight-part psychological thriller Slasher, a blend of classic horror with contemporary murder mystery. It tells the story of a young woman who finds herself the centerpiece in a series of copycat murders based on the grisly killing of her parents. The company is also presenting the four-part miniseries Clean Break, a tale of love, greed, status and revenge. “Featuring a fresh young cast and impactful story with broad appeal, Clean Break explores universally relevant themes, and how money, or the lack of it, can taint people and communities,” says Jonathan Ford, the executive VP of sales and distribution at Content Television. The company’s factual slate is headlined by the one-hour special The Ivy, which goes behind the scenes of the iconic London restaurant.

“We have many shows being delivered in time for launch at MIPCOM, so broadcasters will be able to take their pick from a diverse selection of new titles alongside returning favorites.”

—Jonathan Ford Clean Break

dick clark international World’s Funniest / Fail Army / OK! TV dick clark international is offering both finished episodes and format licensing for the FOX network series World’s Funniest, hosted by Terry Crews. Bob Kennedy, the senior VP of sales and acquisitions at dick clark international, says, “We expect to announce our first format licensee for World’s Funniest at the market.” Each episode of Fail Army offers 60 viral-worthy HD clips with voiceover. The series has been licensed in more than 220 territories, and season three is on the way. Social-media promotional campaigns are also available for this show. Kennedy notes, “There are over 8 million Fail Army [YouTube channel] subscribers worldwide and FailArmy.com has over 1.5 billion views.”

Now in its third year, the entertainment news magazine OK! TV focuses on pop culture.

“Now that we have successfully established dick clark productions in the international community, we are committed to producing local versions of our most popular series.”

—Bob Kennedy World’s Funniest

Dori Media Group Mila / It Girls / His Wife Dori Media Group’s catalogue consists of successful programs that are easily adaptable around the world, says Revital Basel, the company’s VP of sales. “Dori Media is aiming constantly to be one step ahead, innovating and offering our clients the best content available,” she adds.

The romantic comedy Mila is a key title for the company.

After her own mother doubts that anybody could love her, Mila decides to find Prince Charming before her sister’s wedding. Another comedy title is His Wife, in which a husband’s boundless love for his spouse leads him to buy her a theater in order to make her a star. It Girls, on the other hand, is a docu-reality alternative that follows four young women who share every detail of their lives on social networks.

“We are coming to MIPCOM with a great number of new launches, from scripted and comedies to reality and kids’ programs.”

—Revital Basel It Girls 56 World Screen 10/15

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Electus International Separation Anxiety / Home Free / Bellator Separation Anxiety promises a new twist on the gameshow genre. The series features couples, though only one partner knows the real amount of money at stake. Electus International is also showcasing Home Free, an emotional home-renovation show that airs on FOX, and action from Bellator mixed martial arts, which broadcasts on Spike.

“Both Home Free and Bellator have had hugely successful runs on their respective networks,” says John Pollak, the president of Electus Studios and global distribution. “Each week their audiences grew and buyers internationally have really taken notice.” Other highlights include Running Wild with Bear Grylls, Mission Survive, the Jane the Virgin format, Food Fighters, Dating Naked, Twinning, World’s Funniest Videos and Crime Files: Homefront.

“Bellator, the fastest growing MMA league in the world, has become a powerful franchise for Spike in the U.S.” —John Pollak Bellator

Endemol Shine International The Frankenstein Chronicles / River / Kingdom Mary Shelley’s classic novel has been reimagined from the point of view of a detective on the trail of demonic experiments in The Frankenstein Chronicles, a lead offering from Endemol Shine International. Sean Bean stars in the 6x1-hour drama. Stellan Skarsgård leads the action as a troubled police officer in River. “River has a fresh approach to a police procedural, based on incredibly innovative scripts,” says Cathy Payne, the CEO of Endemol Shine International.

The company has a second season of Kingdom, starring Nick Jonas. “Kingdom is a riveting original serial made for DIRECTV that is starting to deliver a very strong punch for a much broader audience than one may first expect,” Payne says. “These dramas offer something different to broadcasters,” she adds.

“The renaissance of serial drama continues, and our top shows for MIPCOM all feature onscreen talent with true transatlantic crossover.”

—Cathy Payne Kingdom

Entertainment One Into the Badlands / Fear the Walking Dead / David Attenborough’s Great Barrier Reef The martial-arts series Into the Badlands features choreographed fight scenes similar to those found in film, according to Stuart Baxter, the president of Entertainment One (eOne) Television International, which is introducing the title at MIPCOM. The company is also promoting Fear the Walking Dead, the companion series to the hit horror show The Walking Dead that begins at the onset of the zombie apocalypse. The program’s summer premiere secured recordbreaking audience numbers for AMC Global. “Like the original groundbreaking series, Fear merges captivating story lines, compelling characters and edge-of-your-seat suspense; but what’s unique about this prequel is that viewers will get to see how this apocalyptic world unfolds,” says Baxter. Another highlight is David Attenborough’s Great Barrier Reef.

“We’re looking forward to meeting potential co-production partners and continuing to expand our creative partnerships with high-caliber talent and producers.”

—Stuart Baxter Into the Badlands 58 World Screen 10/15

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FremantleMedia International Modus / Soundbreaking / Simply Nigella Based on the best-selling novels by Anne Holt, Modus is a suspenseful crime show that touches on such topics as religion, human rights and love. “This series is sure to keep viewers entertained and surprised with quite a few twists in the story along the way,” says Jens Richter, the CEO of FremantleMedia International. Soundbreaking is an eightpart program featuring exclusive footage and interviews with a variety of music innovators. “The series has very broad appeal, is very promotable and would be a nice fit for TV schedules globally,” says Richter. Simply Nigella looks on as celebrity chef Nigella Lawson shares easy recipes and helpful cooking tips. “Simply Nigella is a close-ended, repeatable series fronted by a star personality; this type of factual content is universally successful,” adds Richter.

“We’re continuing to build relationships with some of the world’s best TV talent and we’re excited about working closely with them to invest in, develop and distribute their content to the world.”

—Jens Richter Modus

Globo The Party / Doomed / Merciless Miniseries are at the forefront of Globo’s MIPCOM lineup. The Party, which has already been licensed to ten countries, is a thriller set in a luxurious social event where guests hide secrets and desires. These emotions eventually come to a head when a body is found floating in a pool. Another top miniseries is Doomed, featuring a sommelier who involves himself with married women until falling in love with the daughter of his mistress. Globo also presents the serial-killer series Merciless, its first drama shot and post-produced in 4K. “Because the market increasingly needs a broader offering of products, we want to strengthen our portfolio to include quality content produced in unique and special ways, regardless of format,” says Raphael Corrêa Netto, Globo’s executive director of international business.

“The titles we are bringing to MIPCOM feature thought-provoking stories played out in breathtaking scenarios.”

—Raphael Corrêa Netto The Party

GMA Worldwide Buena Familia / Beautiful Strangers / My Faithful Husband The universal subjects of love, family and intrigue are at the center of GMA Worldwide’s dramas Buena Familia, Beautiful Strangers and My Faithful Husband. “Our dramas highlight compelling story lines, imaginative themes and feature our country’s most talented artists,” says Roxanne Barcelona, the VP of GMA Worldwide. “The three featured dramas embody these qualities. The stories revolve around common real-life conditions, from personal vendettas and acceptance (Beautiful Strangers) to family struggles and triumphs (Buena Familia) to infidelity, love and forgiveness (My Faithful Husband).” Barcelona says that she and the GMA Worldwide sales team are pursuing sales opportunities in territories that have not yet acquired Filipino programming.

“GMA’s titles appeal more and more to a wide variety of international broadcasters and viewers because of the growing exposure and appreciation of quality Filipino programming.”

—Roxanne Barcelona Beautiful Strangers 60 World Screen 10/15

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GRB Entertainment FBI Takedowns / My Big Redneck Family / Ain’t That America Elite teams of FBI agents are on a mission to hunt down the world’s most wanted criminals in GRB Entertainment’s FBI Takedowns. “FBI stories always rate well with all audiences because of the high level of real-life danger that these officers have to face every day,” says Michael Lolato, the company’s senior VP of international distribution. The series My Big Redneck Family follows the shenanigans and parenting misadventures of a wild family from down south.

“The world is always fascinated by American rednecks,” says Lolato. “It is a unique culture that is fun to watch…from afar.” In Ain’t That America, rapper and comedian Lil Duval explores the most outrageous viral videos to hit the internet. “Videos of people doing stupid and crazy things never get old,” says Lolato.

“Aside from introducing our new programs (many of them male-skewed) to buyers, we are also launching our slate of films with digital/socialmedia stars.”

—Michael Lolato My Big Redneck Family

Incendo Swept Under / Amber Alert / Crossfire In the Incendo TV movie Swept Under, a forensic cleaner uncovers evidence at a crime scene and pairs up with a rookie detective to try to solve a series of related murders.

The movie Crossfire centers on a female soldier suffering from PTSD. Detective Amber Cross is the central character in the 1x90-minute Amber Alert, which follows the action as a hijacker holds a school bus filled with children hostage. As for series highlights, Incendo worked with Zodiak Fiction and Capa Drama on the period drama Versailles. “We are looking forward to connecting with our clients at MIPCOM and growing our business by further exploring co-productions, similar to our partnership with Zodiak and Capa on the series Versailles,” says Gavin Reardon, the company’s head of international sales and co-productions.

“Incendo has produced 60 films over the last 15 years and our international partners can rely on the quality of the movies we produce.”

—Gavin Reardon Crossfire

ITV Studios Global Entertainment Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands / Jekyll and Hyde / Love Island Among the MIPCOM highlights from ITV Studios Global Entertainment (ITVS GE) are the action/adventure series Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands and Jekyll and Hyde.

The company is also offering up Love Island, an interactive dating show geared toward viewers between the ages of 18 and 34. “This was a huge success for ITV2 in the U.K. over the summer, so we are excited to be launching the U.K. version and the format at the market,” says Dan Gopal, ITVS GE’s executive VP of EMEA distribution and global digital partners. “Love Island is voyeuristic entertainment at its most indulgent, and has proven to be an instant watercooler TV classic in the U.K. Audiences relate and engage with the communal experience, with the voting putting the viewer firmly in the driver’s seat.”

“We look forward to spending time with our international buyers and understanding their needs in a constantly evolving media landscape.”

—Dan Gopal Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands 62 World Screen 10/15

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ITV-Inter Medya Endless Love Produced by Ay Yapim and distributed by ITV-Inter Medya, Endless Love is a Turkish drama that tells the story of young lovers Nihan and Kemal. The latter comes from a world where high aims don’t exist—the only goal is to make a living and survive. Because of this, the young man “doesn’t believe in miracles, especially those having to do with love,” says Can Okan, the president and CEO of ITV-Inter Medya. Kemal’s disbelief is soon tested when Nihan, a girl from a glamorous town, pops into his monotonous life. After that encounter, Kemal’s world is turned upside down and he loses control. The pair manages to remain together despite class differences, until they’re faced with a tough decision when Kemal must leave Istanbul to work in a mine.

“Regarding our lineup of Turkish dramas, Endless Love will be our big hit for MIPCOM.” —Can Okan Endless Love

Kanal D Sunshine Girls / Matter of Respect / For My Son The summer broadcast of Sunshine Girls on Turkey’s Kanal D saw strong ratings, and now the company is offering the title for international buyers to place in their schedules.

“The cast, story and production are really shiny and romantic, but the series also has a strong drama structure and exciting questions for the audience,” says Ozlem Ozsumbul, the head of sales and acquisitions at Kanal D. She calls the drama Matter of Respect, which was adapted from the Italian series L’onore e il rispetto, a “fast-moving and charming production.” Meanwhile, there’s a second season of For My Son now available, along with the daily drama Destiny, Love & Sin. In War of the Roses, another highlight from the company, two strong women are caught in a love triangle with a handsome man.

“The combination of Turkey’s creativity and brilliant production ability has made it the most important content pool for many countries.”

—Ozlem Ozsumbul Sunshine Girls

Keshet International False Flag / Who’s On Top / When Do You Get Off? The espionage thriller False Flag has already generated buzz around the world following its screenings at Berlinale, where it was part of the Special Selection, and France’s annual Series Mania festival, where it won the Grand Prize.

“Everything, from the way it’s written to the way it’s shot, is gripping and entertaining at the same time and keeps you at the edge of your seat,” says Keren Shahar, the managing director of distribution at Keshet International. “Additionally, now more than ever, audiences are keen to see foreignlanguage drama and will happily watch a subtitled original, so that may even add to its appeal.” Keshet International also has two new format highlights with Who’s On Top, a fusion of a game and variety show, and When Do You Get Off?, a dating competition.

“We have a very diverse slate, and the majority of our shows are tried and tested and will work well anywhere in the world.”

—Keren Shahar When Do You Get Off? 64 World Screen 10/15

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Legendary Television Distribution Colony / The Expanse / Electra Woman & Dyna Girl Legendary continues to focus on the one-hour dramas Colony and The Expanse, and is introducing a new female superhero comedy, Electra Woman & Dyna Girl. From Carlton Cuse (Lost, The Strain) comes Colony, which premieres on USA Network in January 2016. “Colony is USA’s newest highly anticipated drama and has generated an enormous amount of interest from buyers worldwide as the next big series from the prolific Carlton Cuse,” says Michael Grindon, the president of worldwide distribution at Legendary Television & Digital Media. YouTube stars Grace Helbig and Hannah Hart feature in the new comedy telefilm Electra Woman & Dyna Girl, an updated version of Sid and Marty Krofft’s classic ’70s series.

The Expanse, meanwhile, is set for a December 14 premiere on Syfy in the U.S. and takes place 200 years in the future.

“The Expanse is a galactic thriller based on the international bestselling book series of the same name, which Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin has called ‘interplanetary adventure the way it ought to be written.’”

—Michael Grindon

The Expanse

Lionsgate Casual / Manhattan / The Royals The half-hour comedy Casual is about a pair of siblings collectively facing the challenges of dating, love and family drama. “With its unique blend of comedy and drama, Casual is a disarming and insightful look at present-day family life,” says Peter Iacono, the president of international television and digital distribution at Lionsgate. Manhattan is set against the backdrop of the race to build the world’s first atomic bomb. “The Emmy-nominated, multiple awardwinning and critically acclaimed drama Manhattan has a distinctive look and feel, with a second season already in production,” Iacono says. There’s also a second season of The Royals, about a fictional British royal family. “The Royals is a groundbreaking series with an enticing premise and a breakout cast,” says Iacono.

“These shows are perfect examples of the distinctive and audacious programming that epitomizes the highly successful Lionsgate TV brand.”

—Peter Iacono The Royals

MarVista Entertainment The Inspectors / Asteroid: Final Impact / The Spirit of Christmas MarVista Entertainment is heading to MIPCOM with the series The Inspectors, which is scheduled to debut October 3 on CBS in its Dream Team programming block. The show is inspired by real-life crime cases handled by the United States Postal Inspection Service. “We are confident that The Inspectors will perform very well with our traditional and digital partners internationally,” says Vanessa Shapiro, MarVista’s executive VP of distribution. “Our action and disaster titles continue to perform well for our partners, and we expect strong interest for our latest title Asteroid: Final Impact,” she continues. As holiday movies remain popular globally, the company is looking forward to presenting buyers with The Spirit of Christmas.

“We have been aware of the demand in the global market for programming that can be co-viewed and enjoyed by parents and kids alike, and therefore, when we first learned about The Inspectors, we jumped on the opportunity to get involved.”

—Vanessa Shapiro

The Inspectors 66 World Screen 10/15

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MediaLogiq Systems MediaRights “The preferred choice among entertainmentindustry elite, MediaLogiq Systems is a world-class, innovative software company with agile applications for rights management and audience analytics.”

MediaLogiq Systems has noticed a continued shift away from so-called conversion aversion, “meaning we’re witnessing a lot of companies that are fatigued with their current rights management systems and are excited to explore and adopt more sophisticated technology,” says Roland Serebrakian, the company’s managing partner. “Both users and decision-makers are frustrated with legacy systems that most of the time can’t produce an accurate, conflict-free availability report. They’re looking for real-time, modern applications that can keep up with their changing business requirements, and (because they’re able to forecast the long-term benefits) they’re more willing and able to make the initial conversion investment.”

The current version of its rights management system is called MediaRights.

—Roland Serebrakian

Miramax Miramax library / Revolution Studios library / From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series Titles featured in the Miramax and Revolution Studios libraries include Pulp Fiction, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Good Will Hunting and Scream. “The Miramax and Revolution libraries are filled with iconic titles that have a strong global appeal, with films in every genre and a who’s who of international stars,” says Joe Patrick, the executive VP of worldwide television at Miramax.

The company also represents the Samuel Goldwyn and Woodfall Films libraries, with classics such as Guys & Dolls and The Entertainer. “We’ve had a very successful year in new content with the Kevin Hart comedy hit The Wedding Ringer, the critically acclaimed specialty box-office hit Mr. Holmes, starring Academy Award nominees Sir Ian McKellen and Laura Linney, and our exciting action/horror TV show From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series, now in its second season.”

“We are excited to be expanding our content offerings beyond our acclaimed library and the diverse libraries we represent.”

—Joe Patrick From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series

Multicom Entertainment Group The Winter Stallion / The Sorcerer’s Apprentice / The Little Unicorn On the heels of acquiring the Peakviewing film library, Multicom Entertainment Group’s catalogue now includes such features as The Winter Stallion, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, The Little Unicorn and Grim. The company is showcasing those titles to international buyers in Cannes, along with the new horror thriller Blood is Blood, about a young girl seeking revenge after an unexpected death; William Kelly’s War, a movie that tells the story of a heroic sniper who is awarded the Legion of Honor; and Bereave, a feature film starring Jane Seymour and Malcolm McDowell. Multicom is also promoting its proprietary film and television channels, including IndieMax, BabyBoom, FactFiction, ThrillGore, FamBrand, Streetz TV, Fact Fiction and Cold War TV, according to Irv Holender, the company’s chairman.

“We continue to look for additional content to grow our catalogues and to forge new relationships while expanding our worldwide reach.”

—Irv Holender The Little Unicorn 68 World Screen 10/15

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NBCUniversal International Distribution Heroes Reborn / Shades of Blue / The Last Kingdom From creator and executive producer Tim Kring, Heroes Reborn is an epic event series on offer from NBCUniversal International Distribution. “The original Heroes was very well received internationally, and due to this popularity, Heroes Reborn was licensed in several territories even before any footage was made available,” says Belinda Menendez, the company’s president of international distribution and networks. The singer and actress Jennifer Lopez brings her star power to the police procedural Shades of Blue. The Last Kingdom comes from the Emmy-winning executive producers of Downton Abbey, Gareth Neame and Nigel Marchant. It is a Carnival Films co-production with BBC America and was adapted from Bernard Cornwell’s best-selling novels.

“When it comes to entertainment, there are certain characteristics that tend to be universally embraced by international buyers and each of these series happen to possess these: top-notch talent (both in front of and behind the camera), strong writing, compelling characters, intriguing story lines and high production values.”

—Belinda Menendez

Heroes Reborn

Nippon TV Death Note / Matsuko-Roid / Hanasaki Mai Speaks Out Based on a popular comic, Death Note has become a wellknown brand among anime fans around the world. Now, the property has been transformed into a live-action drama series, which Nippon TV is offering. The company is also highlighting the neo-futuristic entertainment series Matsuko-Roid, a social-experiment show that tests how the public would react to life-size androids. Meanwhile, The Kindergarten has been on air in prime time on Japanese TV for more than 17 years.

“Utilizing fun tactics, including mysterious monsters, a quiz game and on-camera confessions, this show captures the most unexpected reactions of children that will bring smiles to the entire family,” says Shigeko “Cindy” Chino, Nippon’s senior director of international business development. A second season of Hanasaki Mai Speaks Out is also on offer.

“By filling our catalogue with a whole new list of titles in all genres, we believe we can increase the satisfaction level of our diverse clientele.”

—Shigeko “Cindy” Chino Hanasaki Mai Speaks Out

ORF-Enterprise Making an Ancient Forest: Kalkalpen National Park / The Woman with One Shoe / Vienna Boys’ Choir The documentary Making an Ancient Forest: Kalkalpen National Park is a highlight of the ORF-Enterprise slate.

“Unique views in Ultra HD 4K make this documentary an extraordinary visual experience for the audience,” says Marion Camus-Oberdorfer, the head of ORF-Enterprise—Content Sales International. Camus-Oberdorfer believes that the TV movie The Woman with One Shoe will capture viewers’ attention because it spotlights crime investigators who use an unconventional approach to solve a case. “Furthermore, the internationally well-known Vienna Boys’ Choir looks behind the scenes and reveals the not-quite-normal, everyday life of the singing boys in a most authentic way,” she adds. CamusOberdorfer emphasizes that a special focus is being placed on the high-quality, blue-chip ORF Universum docs.

“We are determined to keep our aim high and discover more of the many secrets and wonders kept by our planet and its inhabitants.”

—Marion Camus-Oberdorfer Making an Ancient Forest: Kalkalpen National Park 70 World Screen 10/15

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Peace Point Rights Ice Racer Showdown / Escape or Die! / Shack Attack!

Dean Gunnarson has been billed as a modern-day Houdini; his death-defying antics are chronicled in the 12x30minute series Escape or Die! from Peace Point Rights.

The company is also showcasing the 12x1-hour Ice Racer Showdown, a competition series in which everyday people challenge their driving prowess on a track made of ice. The renowned design duo of Colin McAllister and Justin Ryan return to screens in the lifestyle series Shack Attack! “Peace Point continues to grow its international business with the launch of new titles, and we are excited by our new lineup for MIPCOM,” says Les Tomlin, the company’s president and CEO. “We are also actively seeking acquisitions and co-production opportunities for world-class content.”

“International buyers will find these series appealing, as they cover multiple genres, appeal to a broad cross section of audiences and have top-notch production values.”

—Les Tomlin Shack Attack!

Pol-ka Producciones Signs / The Unique Ones / Cunning Girls Signs, a series from Argentina-based production outfit Pol-ka Producciones, is set in a town where a medical doctor seeks revenge for a childhood event by murdering 12 people according to the characteristics of their zodiac signs.

Another highlight is Cunning Girls, which follows five women who become friends after the bank in which they’d deposited their life savings closes. Unable to recover from their losses, they try to get their lives back on track, both financially and emotionally. For a younger crowd, Pol-ka offers the teen telenovela The Unique Ones, about a special unit that battles evil in order to save humanity. Meanwhile, Legacy of Revenge unfolds in a town dedicated to vineyards where a secret society claims the end of the world is drawing near.

Cunning Girls

Red Bull Media House Degrees North / Creators of Tomorrow / Amur: Asia’s Amazon This year, Red Bull Media House is looking to take both the quality and the universality of its storytelling to a new level, according to Alexander Koppel, the company’s chief commercial officer. “Storytelling is an integral part of Red Bull’s DNA,” he says. “We have a 20-year history and passion for creating, capturing and telling stories of outstanding people and beyond-the-ordinary achievements.” Among Red Bull Media House’s offerings are Degrees North, which shows the quest of professional snowboarders and skiers to find the perfect lines in the most northern parts of the globe, and Amur: Asia’s Amazon, which takes viewers to one of the planet’s ten mightiest rivers. Creators of Tomorrow tells the stories of social entrepreneurs who are using their talents and creativity to bring about positive change in poverty-stricken areas.

“To always create smart, technologically advanced, new programming with authentic, emotional stories is our biggest objective.”

—Alexander Koppel Creators of Tomorrow 72 World Screen 10/15

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Reel One Entertainment Detective McLean: Ties That Bind / The Bride He Bought Online / Her Husband’s Confession The brand-new police procedural Detective McLean: Ties That Bind leads off the Reel One Entertainment slate.

“Detective McLean is exactly what our international buyers have told us they need: a mainstream American police procedural with ‘crimes of the week’ set against an overarching family narrative,” says Louisa Cadywould, the VP and head of international distribution. She highlights the series’ “strong cast and writing, simple stories (rather than high concept), and playable/repeatable [episodes] right across the schedule.” Reel One also has a catalogue of Lifetime TV movies, among them The Bride He Bought Online and Her Husband’s Confession. “Our 12 Lifetime thriller TV movies per year are highly commercial, consistently produced, gripping and fun to watch,” says Cadywould.

“We are a dynamic, entrepreneurial company with the ability to get projects made, as well as successfully distribute content by other renowned producers.”

—Louisa Cadywould

Detective McLean: Ties That Bind

Rive Gauche Television True Supernatural / Ultimate Homes / Death By Gossip Rive Gauche Television is serving up a range of content covering the paranormal, home/lifestyle and crime categories, among other genres. CEO Jon Kramer says, “True Supernatural fits the need for paranormal programming. The series provides a team of experts who examine famous supernatural happenings using rigorous testing to put to bed any doubts of their truths.” In the lifestyle arena, Rive Gauche is offering Ultimate Homes, about people who go to great lengths to build their dream homes in the most unlikely places. “Our experience has led us to believe that clients are looking to see luxurious and unique properties, which this series delivers,” says Kramer. He notes that the company’s library contains a wealth of crime programming, including Death By Gossip, which showcases crimes fueled by rumors, false details and half-truths.

“Broadcasters are choosing from every corner of our catalogue, and we have more than 20 series with over 25 episodes.”

—Jon Kramer True Supernatural

Sato Company Ronaldinho Gaucho’s Team / Lascados / Medialand productions The legendary Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho Gaucho was the inspiration for the animated series Ronaldinho Gaucho’s Team. Sato Company is looking to shore up new sales for the show, which follows a young Ronaldinho and his friends on extraordinary adventures as their magical soccer ball leads them to new discoveries. The Sato slate also includes the movie Lascados, which had a theatrical launch in Brazil this year. Nelson Sato, the company’s CEO, believes that the film has strong potential for success in Portugal, Angola and Mozambique. Sato Co. is also home to productions from the Brazilian outfit Medialand.

“Medialand produces good content for Brazilian audiences and deserves to share their talent with the world,” says Sato.

“Marcelo Braga, the renowned Brazilian director of Lascados, did a great job with this movie.”

—Nelson Sato Lascados 74 World Screen 10/15

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Scripps Networks Interactive TVN / HGTV / Food Network The past year has seen significant growth for Scripps Networks Interactive. The company recently concluded its tender offer for all outstanding shares of TVN, a leading multiplatform media company in Poland. “TVN is a key addition to our international portfolio and a great example of our strategic approach to international expansion,” says Jim Samples, the president of international at Scripps Networks Interactive. There are further plans for entering new markets and reaching more viewers across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific and Latin America. “We will continue to focus on gaining distribution for Food Network across Latin America; HGTV continues to be a big priority for us in the Asia Pacific; and across the U.K. and EMEA, we are keen to increase our footprint for Food Network, Travel Channel and Fine Living,” says Samples.

“Our number one priority is to continue to build scale and expand the distribution of our networks internationally.”

—Jim Samples Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on Food Network

SDI Media Dubbing / Subtitling It’s no secret that digital platforms are emerging and expanding across global markets at an exponential rate, and SDI Media is keeping pace with the changing demands of the marketplace. “SDI Media has created new processes to ensure that deliverables for both quality and time-line expectations are achieved without loss,” says Roy Dvorkin, the company’s senior VP of global business development. “As linear continues to evolve and more day-and-date services become business standard, SDI Media is focused on shrinking turnaround time lines for foreign-language dubbing and subtitling while maintaining the same high-quality industry standards we are known for. Additionally, more foreign-language content is being distributed than ever before, which has dramatically increased our English-dubbing services worldwide.”

“We would like producers and distributors to know that SDI Media has global resources available to handle any digital platformdelivery needs, with dedicated managers across all distribution territories.”

—Roy Dvorkin SDI facilities

SOMOS Distribution Until I Met You / Mercy / The Poor Boy and the Rich Girl Until I Met You tells the story of noted Mexican singer Juan Gabriel, who participated in the production of the miniseries.

The project is a collaboration between SOMOS Productions and Disney Media Distribution Latin America. “This story will allow the audience to see [Juan Gabriel’s] life from childhood to superstardom,” says Luis Villanueva, the president and CEO of SOMOS Distribution. “It is a captivating story about the challenges in his life and his unparalleled artistry.” The distributor also arrives at the market with an array of Turkish dramas it hopes to sell across Latin America, including Kanal D offerings such as Mercy, Gumus and The Outsiders. Other dramas being showcased are A Love Story from Calinos and several TRT titles, among them The Poor Boy and the Rich Girl and Old Story.

“We have a wellcemented reputation as a distributor that can open markets and handle non-traditional content.”

—Luis Villanueva

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Sonar Entertainment The Shannara Chronicles / South of Hell The ten-episode The Shannara Chronicles, a fantasy drama slated to premiere on MTV in January 2016, is the focus of Sonar Entertainment’s MIPCOM lineup. “This series is epic event television with an amazing cast, stunning scenery and a thrilling cinematic feel,” says Marielle Zuccarelli, the company’s executive VP of international distribution. “We are also very excited about our supernatural thriller South of Hell, an 8x60-minute series for WE tv starring Mena Suvari.”

In it, Suvari plays a tormented exorcist who is battling her own demons. The series comes from the renowned film director Eli Roth (Hemlock Grove) and executive producer Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity). “In addition, we have an impressive slate of 15 TV movies in popular genres, including drama, romance and holiday,” Zuccarelli says.

“We continue to make substantial investments in the genres of scripted television that are most coveted in the international market, including action, supernatural thriller and fantasy.”

—Marielle Zuccarelli The Shannara Chronicles

SPI International FunBox 4K/Ultra HD SPI International, in cooperation with Eutelsat’s Hot Bird, recently launched a free-to-air satellite demo version of FunBox 4K/Ultra HD, a native 4K television channel. The encrypted, commercial version of this channel is planned for launch in December. “We are planning an extensive number of meetings and presentations regarding FunBox 4K/Ultra HD in Cannes to follow up on various leads with platforms that have already expressed interest in carrying the new channel,” says Berk Uziyel, the director of new media for SPI International.

“We are very open to discussing with new potential clients how they could enrich their existing TV offer by introducing our state-of-the art Ultra HD channel and thus give them a competitive edge.”

“The priority for SPI during MIPCOM is to promote our new projects involving 4K Ultra HD technology.”

—Berk Uziyel FunBox 4K/Ultra HD

Starz The Girlfriend Experience / Ash vs Evil Dead / Flesh and Bone Starz is hosting the World Premiere Screening of the first two episodes of its anthology series The Girlfriend Experience, about a second-year law student and intern at a prestigious firm who becomes involved with the “GFEs,” women who provide emotional and sexual services at a very high price. The star of the series, Riley Keough (Magic Mike), will attend MIPCOM. Bruce Campbell reprises his role as Ash in Ash vs Evil Dead, a series that follows up on the classic horror film franchise The Evil Dead. The original filmmakers Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert have reunited as executive producers on the show. Meanwhile, the glamorous yet dysfunctional world of ballet is exposed in the eight-part limited series Flesh and Bone, written and executive produced by Moira Walley-Beckett.

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Storybox Entertainment The Manny / Temporarily Yours / The Christmas Note New TV movies available from Storybox Entertainment include The Manny, starring Nicollette Sheridan; Temporarily Yours, featuring Ashley Williams and Sam Jaeger; and The Christmas Note, led by Jamie-Lynn Sigler. In The Manny, a high-powered attorney who is a single mother of two hires a handsome bachelor as her nanny. Temporarily Yours is billed as a romantic comedy/drama, while The Christmas Note is a Christmas mystery movie for the whole family. “At MIPCOM, we are officially launching our new partnership with Crown Media Family Networks and its channels in the U.S., the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Channel, bringing to the international market their unique brand and breadth of original content,” says Francisco J. González, partner and head of international at Storybox.

“We bring to the international market diverse, top-quality and dependable programming with recognizable casts for all audiences.”

—Francisco J. González Temporarily Yours

STUDIOCANAL The Last Panthers / The Five / Section Zéro The six-part crime drama The Last Panthers, starring Samantha Morton, Tahar Rahim and John Hurt, is based on real events involving the notorious Pink Panthers jewel thieves. “STUDIOCANAL’s drama series are of the highest quality, with well-developed characters and story lines that have global appeal,” says Katrina Neylon, the company’s executive VP of sales and marketing, TV series. “A prime example is The Last Panthers, chosen by Reed MIDEM for its outstanding writing and production values to be presented in the World Premiere TV Screening spot at MIPCOM.” The Five is an original thriller series created exclusively for TV by bestselling author Harlan Coben and made by RED Production.

Section Zéro is a dark, political sci-fi thriller from writer/director Olivier Marchal (Braquo).

“We work with top-level writers and showrunners who have proven that their editorial lines transcend borders.”

—Katrina Neylon The Last Panthers

Sullivan Entertainment Anne of Green Gables / Road to Avonlea / Wind at My Back Sullivan Entertainment’s Emmy Award-winning movie Anne of Green Gables turns 30 this year. “Tony Award winner Colleen Dewhurst and Academy Award nominee Richard Farnsworth give unparalleled performances in the critically acclaimed production, filmed among the spectacular scenery of Prince Edward Island,” says Athena Malamas, Sullivan’s manager of sales, acquisitions and marketing. “We are also featuring our classic series Road to Avonlea. Based on the popular novels of Lucy Maud Montgomery, the beautifully shot series revolves around the adventures of Sara Stanley, a young girl who is uprooted from her life in the big city and sent to the remote farming community of Avonlea.” The family drama Wind at My Back, meanwhile, features the struggles of the Bailey family in the 1930s.

“Sumptuous production values and satisfying story lines are the hallmarks of Sullivan’s films and series, which continue to captivate new viewers all over the world.”

—Athena Malamas Road to Avonlea 80 World Screen 10/15

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Telefe Cannibals / The Return of Lucas / Lioness In Cannes, Telefe is offering the thriller Cannibals, directed

by Oscar winner Juan José Campanella. The drama focuses on a young woman determined to take revenge on the men who once brutally raped her, until she discovers that the suspects now work for a presidential candidate. But, far from giving up, she infiltrates their political party in order to carry out the perfect revenge on each one. Telefe will also present The Return of Lucas, a co-production with Peru’s América TV featuring Peruvian actors and guest stars from different countries. The plot centers on a boy, abducted from his parents during a beach day, who seemingly reappears two decades later. Another scripted title is Lioness, which follows characters trying to prevent the closing of a rundown factory.

The Return of Lucas

Televisa Internacional Abyss of Passion / Burden of Guilt / The Tempest With the verdant landscape of the Mexican state of Chiapas as a backdrop, Televisa Internacional’s novela Burden of Guilt centers on a love story filled with passion and intrigue that reshapes the lives of three families and shakes up an entire town. The title is one of many traditional telenovelas featuring romantic plots that the distributor is offering buyers at MIPCOM. In The Tempest, two lovers will have to defeat the obstacles that destiny has put in front of them, because only their passion has the strength to overcome whatever comes their way. The telenovela Abyss of Passion, on the other hand, tells the story of four youngsters whose destinies and happiness are seriously damaged by the resentment, ambition and betrayal that rule the world of adults.

Burden of Guilt

Terra Mater Factual Studios Amur: Asia’s Amazon / House Hunters: Amazing Animal Architects / David Attenborough’s Light on Earth The miniseries Amur: Asia’s Amazon takes viewers on an epic journey from the mighty Asian river’s delta to its sources.

House Hunters: Amazing Animal Architects is all about animal homes, from the art of nest building and choosing the best location to big animal cities. David Attenborough’s Light on Earth is a special about the wonders of bioluminescence.

“We’re in conversations with potential prebuyers for this special, which will deliver in time to commemorate Sir David Attenborough’s 90th birthday in May 2016,” says Sabine Holzer, the head of TV at Terra Mater Factual Studios. Holzer notes that there’s an “unbroken demand” in the marketplace for blue-chip programming such as these three titles. “Everyone wants to have high-budget, blue-chip [content] on their channels,” she says.

“Blue-chip naturalhistory programs speak a universal language, and thus have the ability to travel globally.”

—Sabine Holzer House Hunters: Amazing Animal Architects 82 World Screen 10/15

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TM International The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music / Posto Code / Among Wolves The feature film The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music, part of the TM International catalogue, has been presold to Lionsgate for the U.S., Canada and the U.K., and is based on the autobiography of Agathe von Trapp. With the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro next year, TM International believes interest will be high for the lifestyle doc series Posto Code. The program shines a light on Rio and “captures the unique atmosphere of the Brazilian beaches, which are punctuated by a series of lifeguard towers, the postos—a sensuous portrait of a marvelous city,” says Carlos Hertel, the company’s head of international sales. TM International also has a new TV movie in Among Wolves. “It is a universal and suspenseful crime story about two cops in a sea of murder, drugs, extortion, blackmail, corruption and sabotage,” explains Hertel.

“Posto Code is a very cool lifestyle documentary that proves to be ideal programming around the Olympic Games.”

—Carlos Hertel Posto Code

TRT—Turkish Radio and Television Corporation Resurrection Ertugrul / What Happens to My Family / Seddulbahir 32 Hours Second seasons are now available for the period dramas Resurrection Ertugrul (Dirilis Ertugrul) and Filinta from TRT— Turkish Radio and Television Corporation. The company also has a new family drama for buyers, What Happens to My Family (Baba Can’dir). Mehmet Demirhan, the deputy head of the TV department, acquisitions, sales and co-productions, at TRT, highlights the series’ blend of drama and romance as a strong selling point. There are two new miniseries as well, Seddulbahir 32 Hours and The Century Old Seal. “Both have high production values,” says Demirhan. “We also have more than 30 TV movies of different genres produced by TRT under our new label TRT TV Movies Project.” He adds, “All of our productions have found success at home [in Turkey]. We offer clean, family entertainment targeting all audiences.”

“We are getting more dynamic, innovative and competitive.”

—Mehmet Demirhan Resurrection Ertugrul

Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution The X-Files / American Crime Story: The People V. O.J. Simpson / Lookinglass David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson reprise their roles as the iconic FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in the 6x1-hour The X-Files series. The show, which had a nine-season run originally, is making its world premiere with a screening at MIPCOM, thanks to Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution. The company is also presenting at the market the anthology series American Crime Story: The People V. O.J. Simpson, which looks at the famous court trial from the perspectives of the lawyers. The drama Lookinglass centers on Jimmy Pritchard (Rob Kazinsky, True Blood), a morally corrupt ex-Sheriff who is given a second chance at life when he is brought back from the dead. The series is executive produced

by Rand Ravich (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) and Howard Gordon (Homeland, 24).

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Vision Films Check Point / A Date with Miss Fortune / A Year and Change This MIPCOM, Vision Films is attending the market with a focus on acquiring new content, in addition to scoring sales.

“Our DVD and VOD label in North America is growing and we need to feed the pipeline with new films each month,” says Lise Romanoff, the company’s managing director and CEO of worldwide distribution. “We are looking for family, animation, action and sci-fi feature films, and documentaries with a solid niche appeal. We are also looking for anything musicrelated, as that has always been our sweet spot.” As for sales, Vision Films is presenting to buyers Check Point, an action thriller about terrorist sleeper cells; A Date with Miss Fortune, a romantic comedy about cross-cultural relationships; and A Year and Change, featuring a young man who decides it’s time to make some changes in his life.

“In today’s competitive landscape, the cast is the most important element; therefore, all of our films and even our documentaries have recognizable casts.”

—Lise Romanoff A Year and Change

ZDF Enterprises Bron/Broen / How Climate Made History / The Game Begins Each of ZDF Enterprises’ four genre labels has a selection of new shows to offer. ZDFE.junior, for example, is promoting Coconut, the Little Dragon, an animated series for preschoolers based on best-selling books. There’s a third season of the Danish/Swedish thriller series Bron/Broen from ZDFE.drama.

How Climate Made History, one of ZDFE.factual’s MIPCOM highlights, takes a look at human history in the light of Earth’s volatile climate changes. ZDFE.entertainment is introducing The Game Begins, a new family show in which a team of celebrities takes up challenges posed by a variety of games. “If you take a look at the credits of our programs, you’ll see established, acknowledged specialists from scores of countries in our production teams,” says Fred Burcksen, the executive VP and COO of ZDF Enterprises.

“Each of these programs takes a wellrounded, open view of its topic, and doesn’t settle for ‘empty carbs’ anywhere.”

—Fred Burcksen

Bron/Broen

Zee Entertainment Enterprises Good Food America / Dance India Dance / Razia Sultan The Zee Entertainment Enterprises catalogue features a mix of drama, lifestyle and formats. “Our message is that Zee delivers top-quality, original content to viewers across the globe, helping audiences to experience a wide range of human emotions,” says Sunita Uchil, Zee’s global head of syndication and the chief revenue officer for ad sales. As for dramas, Zee is promoting Razia Sultan, a historical series set in 1236 AD. “Zee dramas are some of the best in the world, presenting emotions in a powerful way, with complex characters and engaging stories, making them a part of our lives,” says Uchil. In the way of factual, the company has the food and travel program Good Food America. Format highlights include Dance India Dance.

“We are adding more than 50,000 hours of high-quality, original HD content every year to our program library to give audiences a great TV-viewing experience.”

—Sunita Uchil Good Food America 86 World Screen 10/15

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IN THE NEWS

SOPHIE TURNER LAING ENDEMOL SHINE GROUP

TURNER LAING: It’s a fascinating jigsaw puzzle, and integration is a challenge at the best of times, so what had to be the focus for all of us in the group was keeping the momentum going. We couldn’t let the world stop just because of integration. So we tried to remove the noise of that—as much as possible—from most people’s day-to-day lives so that our producers could carry on producing brilliant content, pitching new shows and getting the recommissions. The momentum that we’ve seen since we merged has been truly fantastic. Since January 1 of this year, we’ve had more than 350 productions across 167 channels in 55 countries. That’s what we’re here to do, produce content.

By Anna Carugati

Sophie Turner Laing has seen the television business from numerous vantage points, first in sales, when she set up HIT Entertainment with Peter Orton, then as a buyer at Flextech and later at the BBC. She held various positions in acquisitions, commissioning and programming at the BBC and later at Sky, where her most recent title was managing director of content. Having a 360-degree view of how content is produced, distributed and programmed is serving her well now as CEO of the Endemol Shine Group, where she is responsible for some 120 companies in more than 30 countries. She talks to World Screen about integrating Endemol and Shine, managing creativity across the combined group and trends in scripted and non-scripted programming.

WS: What appealed to you about joining the Endemol Shine Group?

TURNER LAING: Well, several things really. I absolutely loved my time at Sky, but it was definitely time to do something new. When I got the call and was asked if I would consider [joining Endemol Shine], the big attraction was that it was the most fantastic opportunity to bring together two of the world’s most successful independent creators and producers of content. And it was a real chance for me to get back to the international world, which was obviously where I grew up eight centuries ago! [Laughs] WS: Endemol and Shine were two fully developed, very large companies. What have been your priorities in integrating the two groups?

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WS: How do you honor the diversity of each company and still manage them as a group?

TURNER LAING: Acknowledging that diversity and the very fierce independence of all our labels is our highest priority, and it is our differences that are our strength. I am a great believer that it’s quite rare to find true creativity and innovation coming from corporations. We operate with a very, very federal approach; it’s not about control and command from the center. What I’m really glad about is that I didn’t rush to do that normal hundred-day review of the business, because we’re in over 30 countries. I needed to get out and see what the business was like outside of the key markets, which have traditionally been territories such as the U.K., the U.S or the Netherlands, because it’s a very different world when you’re in Singapore or Tel Aviv. What we have is this enormous scale—we have around 120 different production companies—but they’re all united by an immense passion for creating content. [It’s as if] you’re inviting people to the best party where there are lots of like-minded people and, like your own family, you may not love them all the time, but you admire and respect them.

We have some of the most brilliant experts in every genre, whether it’s non-scripted, drama or documentary. For me the key is to make sure that everybody is aware of the diversity here under one roof.

WS: What are the benefits of scale? There’s so much consolidation in the industry right now. How big is big enough?

TURNER LAING: Well, what everybody acknowledges is that you’re either a boutique or you’re large. The middle ground is where nobody wants to be, and it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, whether you’re in retail or media or whatever. Again, because of our 120 or so different production companies, we’re able to operate very locally. If you’re in India, Endemol Shine India run by Deepak Dhar is the place to go as a onestop multi-genre company. It diversifies in more mature markets, for example in the U.K., where we have 18 different companies across multiple genres.

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Sky Atlantic and CANAL+ are the lead partners on The Tunnel, adapted from the Danish-Swedish production Bron/Broen.

Our business operates on this fascinating local-global axis, which makes us very different from the few other large competitors in our world. The origination of content and IP is at our heart, so we’re not reliant on third parties. Although we represent third-party producers, we’re not dependent on them because we have this fantastic network, and once a show starts to gain traction somewhere in the world, we’re able to send it throughout that network. That means that, particularly for non-scripted, we can get shows to market very quickly because we have trusted, established, brilliant local producers on the ground.

WS: What do you feel is driving the appetite for drama? How is Endemol Shine continuing to produce so much high-quality, compelling drama?

TURNER LAING: The great thing about drama is that it’s distinctive, particularly if it’s made at a high level, created by brilliant writers, directed brilliantly and acted brilliantly. All platforms, it doesn’t matter where you are, need distinctive content to be able to define their brands and attract viewers or subscribers. Drama is without a doubt the venerable genre in that it shouts quality, and it therefore has the ability to be marketed beautifully. Ultimately, most of our customers have to compete—particularly in mature markets—with a million and one other platforms. Look at how brilliantly Fortitude did for Sky and at how Offspring worked for Network Ten in Australia. But I also think people only tend to talk about high-end drama. An important piece for me is that we’re also the producers of longrunning dramas that don’t get an enormous amount of kudos and credit because they’re there day in, day out,

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but they are very difficult beasts to run and produce beautifully. For example, we have Hotel Cæsar, which is the longest running soap in Scandinavia, and Isidingo in South Africa, and to me it’s actually the variety of drama that we have across our group that is so interesting.

WS: How are shareholders 21st Century Fox and Apollo Global Management contributing to the Endemol Shine Group, and what are their expectations? In what areas do you see potential growth?

TURNER LAING: They are incredibly supportive shareholders. Fox is a practitioner in the media market, and Apollo has other media investments. They of course would like us to grow quickly. Now that we’ve tackled integration, we have a greater ability to lay down our five-year plan. [Both Fox and Apollo] move very fast and are acquisition-oriented, and while it’s possibly doubtful that we need to add more production companies to our existing 120, we will be very opportunistic. If the right talent or the right deal comes along, or if it’s in a genre or an area in which we are underrepresented, we’re going to move fast. What I still want to do is maintain this very local-global business, and I’m excited about our newly established hub in Singapore and what we’re doing in Miami for the Hispanic market. There are all sorts of different parts of the world that are ripe for further investment and development. What’s important throughout is that we continue building on our success in linear TV, while always evolving for the digital future and the new ways audiences consume content.

For more from Sophie Turner Laing, see page 492.

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GLOBAL NETS

ED CARROLL AMC NETWORKS that they were trying to tell and what the tragic flaws of their leading characters would be. So we look for all of that.

It’s still about doing fresh material and breaking the rules of conventional storytelling. Admittedly, the bar has been raised, and that’s what continues to make it fun!

WS: What are the international plans for AMC and Sundance Channel?

CARROLL: We launched Sundance Channel around the world back in 2009. We knew it would be a great brand to take around the world. We’re now in about 80 countries, and we continue to invest in the channel. Films that are high quality and that tell unique stories are finding a receptive audience around the world. It’s nice to have Robert Redford, the founder of the Sundance Film Festival and the Sundance Channel, enthusiastic about and engaged with the channel’s progress. He continues to be eager to talk to people about the channel and to go to places where we have new distribution. The other part of the mix on Sundance Channel is limited series. We have done and continue to do co-productions with a variety of media partners. We partnered with the BBC on Top of the Lake in the U.S., and we are continuing to coproduce four series that can appear on Sundance Channel throughout the world.

By Anna Carugati

With AMC, IFC, SundanceTV and WE tv, AMC Networks in the U.S. has been home to some of the most critically acclaimed and highest-rated series in recent years, from Mad Men and Breaking Bad to The Walking Dead, Rectify and Better Call Saul. In October 2014, AMC Networks took a 49.9-percent stake in BBC America, home to cult hits Doctor Who and Top Gear. For several years, AMC Networks has been working on expanding its global footprint, first with Sundance Channel, then by acquiring Chellomedia’s portfolio of channels in Central Europe and Latin America and by rebranding MGM Channel, also part of its portfolio, as AMC. As AMC Networks’ COO, Ed Carroll, explains, original series featuring unique storytelling techniques and subject matter are attracting viewers around the world.

WS: In the post-Mad Men and post-Breaking Bad world, when a lot of people think that television just can’t get any better than those two shows, what type of shows do you look for? How do you beat your own success?

CARROLL: Well, it’s nice of you to put it that way, thank you.

We are still looking for original stories that have not been told before. We like the cinematic style of storytelling, and then we look for a creator or showrunner who has a vision and a clear sense of story arc. A writer can take two or three years to draft a beautiful pilot script, but after you greenlight the show, they then have about two or three months to produce nine more scripts. You mentioned Breaking Bad and Mad Men—it was clear from our first conversations with Vince Gilligan and Matt Weiner that their characters were alive in their heads. Each of them had a pretty clear idea of story arc, which isn’t to say they knew exactly what happened with every character or when and how it would all end, but they knew the stories

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WS: You recently launched AMC in the U.K. CARROLL: We did, with BT, and we love their passion for high-quality content. We love their enthusiasm for making AMC an exclusive part of their offering. We premiered the companion series to The Walking Dead, called Fear the Walking Dead, on August 23, in the U.S., as well as simultaneously all around the world. We are far along in the conversion of MGM Channels to AMC. We’re in over 125 countries, and the great majority of those saw the premiere of Fear the Walking Dead right alongside the U.S. WS: What are the benefits of having a global rollout?

CARROLL: The world has gotten much smaller, and the internet and social media have played a big role in making that happen. When we introduce a trailer for Fear at Comic-Con, that becomes an event not only in San Diego and in the U.S., but also potentially throughout the world.

It seems to be smart, with some types of content, to capitalize on world anticipation. I’d be hard-pressed to identify a companion series that has launched while the first series is the reigning number one series on television, as The Walking Dead is. That’s a unique moment, so it did seem, for Fear, that a simultaneous launch around the world was a smart thing to do. I wouldn’t say that would be the case for every type of content. But, for a show that is met with broad anticipation and where people don’t want to encounter spoilers, it does make sense.

WS: If you’re looking to expand your portfolio, will you do it opportunistically, or are there certain territories that you’re targeting?

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AMC premiered Fear the Walking Dead on its channels worldwide simultaneously with the U.S. launch.

CARROLL: That is the word we use internally, “opportunistic.” If we see a channel that becomes available and that fits nicely into our portfolio, [we will consider it]. A recent example was a regional channel in Germany called Kinowelt TV. They have a great legacy and a strong fan base in the region, and they program art-house films. We know that business and have an affinity for it, so Kinowelt fit with our portfolio. If we see opportunities to strengthen our overall portfolio, we evaluate them, but opportunistic is really the governing principle.

WS: Looking at AMC Studios, why is it increasingly important for AMC Networks to own more of its content?

CARROLL: First, owning content gives you a little more control over the sort of shows that you’re programming. We can put into production the kinds of shows that we think are the right shows to go on AMC throughout the world. If we look back, AMC developed Mad Men. We produced the pilot ourselves at Silvercup Studios in Queens. Then we took the pilot to the major studios and said, do you want to partner with us, so you’ll be the studio and we’ll be the network? We did that because it was a long time ago, we hadn’t done dramatic series television before, and we thought that maybe we should split some risk. It worked out great because Lionsgate contributed a lot. They were a good partner and continue to be.

The Walking Dead was the first series that we produced ourselves as the studio, and that worked out fairly well. If The Walking Dead were controlled by a studio, then the studio would control any companion shows, and we could be in the position of bidding for shows that we helped build. Then, of course, as our global appetite increased, we wanted to control content not only in the U.S., but also around the world.

WS: What was appealing about BBC America?

CARROLL: The BBC’s programming instincts are similar to ours, which is to say we’ve been attracted to what we think is smart television—essentially unique, high-quality programming. Our thinking has been that if we make good shows, then good stuff will happen. What that means to us is, don’t try and think about how big the audience might be, or what the casting should be to give a show maximum

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international appeal, and don’t worry if the content will be too edgy for sponsors. The BBC has also been governed by these ideas because they have a different set of criteria, due to the way the public trust in the U.K. is structured. So we thought that even though partnerships can be difficult, we would probably work well with each other because we’re an admirer of what they do and the way they do it. We had also had some good experiences working together, like Sundance’s Top of the Lake and The Honorable Woman.

In the U.S., we looked at BBC America as a high-quality channel that had challenges being alone. As the industry has consolidated, and distributors and media buying groups get larger, it’s very, very difficult to be alone. In the advertising Upfront that just passed, we went to the major advertisers and said, buy Better Call Saul and The Walking Dead and Fear and Rectify and Humans, and also buy Doctor Who and Orphan Black. That can be a compelling offering.

WS: How has viewing on SVOD platforms helped drive viewers back to AMC Networks’ linear channels?

CARROLL: There are a couple of different pieces to that.

One is on-demand viewing, and there I would include cable and satellite VOD and, in a later window, SVOD, because we tend to use that as our syndication window.

Our shows tend to go to Netflix or Hulu ten months to a year [after they air on the channel]. Technology has allowed more complicated storytelling to flourish, because not that long ago you would really worry that if there was a plot with too many twists and turns, by the time you got to season two or three, the people who hadn’t discovered your show would never discover it. For a while, the Law & Orders and the CSIs would dominate because viewers could come into any episode and didn’t need to know the backstory. Those shows were certainly well produced, with well-written stories, and people [could make a lot of money] on those shows in syndication. But we wanted to do something a little different, and so we found ourselves telling stories that really tended to play out over 10 or 12 episodes, or even multiple seasons. On-demand viewing is really liberating for the storyteller. Then we found that people who had not yet experienced The Walking Dead or Breaking Bad had the ability to find a season on SVOD after it aired. We saw with every successive season of The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, the audience growing, which was really not a phenomenon that was common in television until some of these digital services came along. It’s been a symbiotic relationship. We have been very careful to make sure that our distributors enjoy a full current season, so they get the show and they get it on-demand, and it doesn’t come to SVOD until close to the launch of the next season. Hopefully it helps build anticipation for that season.

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MILESTONES

FIFTY YEARS OF WS: Ten has been serving Australian viewers for 50 years.

What have been some of its most important contributions to the television landscape?

ANDERSON: We have a long history of being innovative and authentic. We delivered the first one-hour commercial evening news bulletin in 1975, and we pioneered mass-market reality television with shows such as Big Brother, Australian Idol, The Biggest Loser and MasterChef Australia, which has been one the most successful shows in Australian television history.

We’ve been very committed to local drama over the years with popular, award-winning shows like Number 96, The Box, E Street, Offspring, Neighbours and many others, entertaining millions of fans across the country.

Neighbours is Australia’s longest-running drama, and it has been on air for an amazing 30 years.

We launched Australia’s first music TV show, long before MTV was even thought of. We produced the first Australian color TV program in 1967. We showed the first Friday and Monday night rugby league matches, in 1987 and 1985, respectively.

PAUL ANDERSON

By Anna Carugati

This has been an important year for Ten Network Holdings, the Australian media company whose assets include the free-TV networks TEN, ELEVEN and ONE and the online streaming service tenplay. Marking the 50th anniversary of the launch of its flagship Sydney station TEN-10 in April 1965, TEN has recently seen a ratings turnaround. These gains occurred thanks to a programming strategy that focuses on serving the 25-to-54 audience demographic with big family-oriented entertainment franchises, TV events, sports and news. Alongside entertainment shows like MasterChef Australia and The Bachelor Australia and factual series like Gold Coast Cops and Bondi Rescue, TEN airs several U.S. series, including Modern Family and NCIS. In June, Ten entered into an agreement with the pay-TV company Foxtel and its ad-sales arm, Multi Channel Network (MCN), whereby Foxtel will become a shareholder in Ten, with a stake of up to 15 percent, and Ten will become a 24.99-percent shareholder in MCN and have an option to become a shareholder in Foxtel’s popular online streaming service Presto TV. After the deal was announced, Paul Anderson, who has been with Ten Network since 2003—holding several positions, including chief financial officer and, most recently, COO—was promoted to CEO. Anderson is now concentrating his efforts on building upon Ten’s numerous gains without forgetting the many contributions Ten has made to the Australian television landscape in its 50-year history.

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WS: In 2014, TEN experienced its first prime-time audience growth in years, and that ratings increase has continued this year. What programming strategies did you implement to bring about this positive performance?

ANDERSON: The growth we’ve seen in 2014 and this year is the result of a clear strategy and a lot of hard work by everyone at TEN. In 2013–14, we changed the focus of the main channel, TEN, from people 18 to 49 to people 25 to 54, who represent the biggest group of TV viewers in Australia.

To do that, we focused on event TV—including live premium sports—and started developing new domestic formats, such as I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!, Family Feud, Shark Tank, Gogglebox Australia, Have You Been Paying Attention?, The Great Australian Spelling Bee and The Bachelorette Australia. We also reinvigorated MasterChef Australia, which grew its audience by 31 percent last year and another 14 percent this year.

We have also focused on consistency, giving our viewers and advertisers a more stable program schedule across TEN, ELEVEN and ONE. In terms of sports, we’ve renewed our long-standing associations with Formula 1 and MotoGP, broadcast the Sochi Winter Olympics and the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, and added the fastest-growing summer sport in Australia, the KFC Big Bash League. We also brought V8 Supercars back to TEN after a long absence, completing our suite of motorsport franchises.

Our 5 p.m. news bulletins, which have always been an important part of our business, have been revamped and refreshed, and they dominate their time slot.

Recognizing that watching television is no longer just a linear viewing experience, we’ve focused on digital media, in particular our online catch-up and streaming platform, tenplay. We launched tenplay in September 2013 to enable ourselves to take our content across

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NETWORK multiple screens and reach viewers wherever they are, whenever they want to watch our content.

WS: How did the deal with Foxtel come about? How do both companies benefit from the deal?

ANDERSON: Foxtel’s proposed acquisition of 15 percent of Ten is one of several strategic arrangements we announced on June 15 of this year, including a sales representation agreement with the advertising sales company Multi Channel Network.

The arrangements will enhance Ten’s business and better equip it to respond to the challenges of the everchanging media and advertising landscape. We welcome Foxtel’s proposed investment and we are confident that this proposal will drive value for all of Ten’s shareholders.

By joining forces with MCN, Ten will gain scale, new efficiencies and improved data capability on a world-class trading platform, and it will provide broader integration opportunities for its advertising clients. The combined sales operation will give advertisers a new way to reach consumers across all video content distribution platforms.

WS: How are TEN, ELEVEN and ONE each serving different audience demographics?

ANDERSON: By moving TEN’s main target audience to the 25-to-54 age group, we’ve given ELEVEN and ONE clear differentiated positions in the market.

ELEVEN is the youth channel in our portfolio. It’s the home of fun and bold entertainment programs targeted at 13- to 29-year-olds.

ONE features premium entertainment that’s aimed at men 25 and older. Within ONE, there’s a mixture of premium scripted and reality programming with some local and international sports.

What we have now is a portfolio of channels that are clearly differentiated and that appeal to different audiences.

WS: How important are live sports, despite the high cost of sports rights?

ANDERSON: All Australians are obsessed with sports. You pretty much get a guaranteed large audience with mainstream live sports. People want to watch sports events live, they don’t want to record them and play them back.

It is event TV at its best.

The portfolio of live sports that we broadcast, including the KFC Big Bash League, Rugby Union, Formula 1, MotoGP and V8 Supercars, are critical to the network.

History shows that when you give viewers premium sports live, it underpins your entire schedule, provides new advertiser opportunities and creates a positive halo effect across the whole network.

WS: How are you balancing cost containment against investing in programming? In what genres have you been investing?

ANDERSON: We have a very clear, strategic plan for the business, and that includes continuing to focus on finding

new efficiencies and new ways of working smarter while at the same time making strategic, prudent investments in new content.

We’ve shown our ability to manage costs and at the same time invest in successful new shows like Family Feud, I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!, Gold Coast Cops, The Bachelor Australia, Shark Tank and others.

We’ve told the market that our television costs would decline 8 percent this fiscal year, which ended on August 31, 2015. We did that while investing in new shows by being careful, smart and strategic. Our programming department is led by very talented and experienced people who do a lot of planning, development and research to make sure we mitigate any risk associated with launching new shows.

Not everything we launch works, but we’ve had a pretty good success rate recently. We work very hard to create buzz and attention through advertising, publicity and promotions when launching our shows, both on and off the air.

WS: How important are acquired programs to Ten Network’s channels?

ANDERSON: They are very important. We have terrific relationships with CBS [CBS Studios International] and Fox [Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution], and they deliver us a large number of hours of highquality content. We have to program three channels every day of the year, so we couldn’t survive without those relationships.

Our key overseas shows include NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, Law & Order: SVU, The Simpsons, Modern Family, Madam Secretary, CSI: Cyber, Scorpion, American Horror Story, Last Man Standing and Sleepy Hollow, and they all perform well for us.

In addition to that, we get great programming from the U.K., including The Graham Norton Show— whose ratings are up more than 30 percent for us this year—Sir David Attenborough specials and Jamie Oliver’s cooking shows.

We selectively buy overseas movies, and what we’ve found over the past 12 months is that when they’re scheduled well, we get a terrific lift in our audiences.

WS: Tell us about tenplay.

ANDERSON: From a standing start in 2013, we were able to launch tenplay within six months, in September of that year. It’s become one of the most popular online catch-up and streaming platforms in the country. It is industry leading and is regarded as probably the best in the market by consumers. We’ve had more than 2 million downloads of the tenplay app, which is great when you look at the size of our country. That spans iOS, Android and Windows, but tenplay is also available through providers such as Apple TV, Xbox, Fetch TV and FreeviewPlus. We’ve tried to make it as

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recent ratings growth and consistent program schedule.

Australian lifestyle shows like The Living Room are integral to the TEN schedule.

ubiquitous as possible. It supports our linear broadcast and has been an outstanding success.

Now tenplay is one of the leading online and mobile entertainment platforms in Australia. It has been key to the success of our TV Everywhere strategy, which brings our unique content such as MasterChef Australia, The Bachelor Australia, The Project, Family Feud, I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! and much, much more to people anywhere, at any time and on any device.

Each month, we see about 13 million video streams and 25 million page views on tenplay. Our digital team is improving it all the time, adding new features and content in response to how people are using it and what viewers tell us they want.

WS: How much viewing is taking place on linear channels, and how much is online?

ANDERSON: There’s a lot of discussion about that locally. Viewing of video on TV still represents 88 percent of all video viewing in Australia; the other 12 percent is on phones, tablets, PCs and laptops.

While there’s increasing competition for video viewing, the vast bulk of all live TV viewing is on free-to-air, in prime time. We live in a more competitive world, but free-to-air television in this market is holding up very well. It still attracts big audiences.

WS: What is the state of the television advertising market in Australia? What is Ten’s share of the market?

ANDERSON: By way of context, it’s a A$3billion ($2.2 billion) market largely shared among three free-to-air companies. The market itself remains short, but we’re expecting modest market growth over the next 12 months. Ten’s audience and revenue are trending upward. We’re feeling confident about the future with our

WS: How are Ten’s channels and tenplay working with advertisers?

ANDERSON: We work closely with our advertisers every day across our broadcast and online assets.

We’re delivering mass audiences via the broadcast channels and highly specific and targeted audiences via tenplay.

We continue to do more in the area of integration and valueadded advertising opportunities.

Ten pioneered that area in Australia, and we continue to build it out in ways that work for our advertisers and our viewers. Advertisers are always looking for new and relevant ways to engage their brand with consumers, and it’s our job to help them create that engagement via television, online and social media.

WS: Is audience measurement in Australia satisfactory to broadcasters and advertisers?

ANDERSON: Our television audience-measurement system, OzTAM, is widely regarded as one of the best in the world.

It is robust, reliable and constantly evolving to reflect changes among consumers, such as the decline of fixedline phones and the rise of mobile-only phones.

The OzTAM ratings system is a great currency for both networks and advertisers. And it is changing, to bring in viewing on phones, tablets and so on. That can only make it stronger. We know advertisers want a more complete picture of total television viewing, and we are giving that to them.

TEN has amassed a strong slate of live-sports rights, including the KFC Big Bash League cricket tournament.

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BEVERLEY MCGARVEY

By Anna Carugati

Prior to joining Network Ten, Beverley McGarvey had considerable international experience, having worked at television companies in Ireland, New Zealand and the U.K. In her current role as chief programming officer, she is responsible for a number of departments, including production, acquisitions and scheduling for TEN, ELEVEN and ONE. WS: For the big formats that you have acquired, what adaptations have you had to make for the Australian audience?

MCGARVEY: Every show is different, and every format that we buy we do adapt because every market has a very unique cultural slant. For example, on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! Australians are generally athletic and competitive. The series is based on the idea that the competitors do challenges and the reward is food. Once the competitors started doing the challenges, we realized we needed to make them harder because the contestants were doing them too well! So we put in challenging tasks early in the series, and that is a bit of a change compared to how the show runs in other markets. We suspected that would be the case but, to be honest, the competitors that we picked were much more resilient than we had expected. They were winning every challenge, every night, very quickly, so we made it harder!

Australians are quite laid back, and a show like The Bachelor is really interesting when you see how the drama plays out. But how the drama plays out for an Australian audience is not the same as how it would play out for a U.S. audience. Also, in terms of time slots, we tend to play our big franchises at 7:30 p.m. We pitch all our franchises to a family audience, so that does affect casting and storytelling because we are aware that children are watching at that time of night. We want family audiences to watch our shows, so we tend to cast and tell stories in a more family-friendly manner. It doesn’t mean that the stories aren’t dramatic, but there are just certain places that we wouldn’t go in a show like The Bachelor.

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WS: Are you looking for any entertainment formats in particular?

MCGARVEY: There are a lot of cooking shows on in Australia, and we have MasterChef. There are a lot of renovation shows, so we are probably on the market for something different. We have a lot of shows that play two or three nights a week, and our commissioning in the next 12 to 18 months will be for more event-style shows. So rather than shows that are on two or three times a week, we’d like shows that air once or maybe twice a week.

In terms of what the subject matter would be, we are relatively open. The Voice is still going well here, as is The X Factor, and they run on our competitors, so we are probably not looking for one of those types of shows at this time. We are on the market for an entertainment show, definitely, but we’re like everybody else looking to see what the point of difference will be for the next group of those shows when they come around.

WS: Australia has a long tradition of quality drama. Tell us about your homegrown series.

MCGARVEY: We had a very strong drama slate in 2014. At the beginning of 2014, everybody had commissioned a lot of drama. As a result of that, some of it popped, but a lot of it didn’t because the volume was too high and there were a lot of Australian dramas competing against each other.

We are beginning to commission lots of new dramas for the next 12 to 24 months. We have a very successful series called Offspring. We had two long seasons of a series called Wonderland. We haven’t decided what we will do with those shows moving forward, but we will always have a long-running 13- or 22-parter on the schedule.

Miniseries and TV movies have also done really well in Australia. We are in production on a TV movie called Mary: The Making of a Princess, about Princess Mary, an Australian girl who married Prince Frederick of Denmark; it’s a modern-day fairy tale. It’s important that we maintain our tradition of having quality drama that appeals to our audience.

WS: You have a lot of strong American series.

MCGARVEY: Yes, we have output deals with CBS and Fox. We have NCIS, Madam Secretary and The Good Wife, and all the CBS summer series, like Zoo and Under the Dome.

We also have shows like Homeland and Modern Family.

And then on ELEVEN and ONE we play shows like Hawaii Five-0 and Blue Bloods. We have Sleepy Hollow and Supernatural. We have a lot of U.S. content, and there is stuff coming through from this year’s L.A. Screenings as well; some of it will certainly work well.

One of the really attractive shows that we haven’t seen yet is The X-Files. That was really successful for TEN back in the day. American Crime Story: The People V. O.J. Simpson is really interesting. Limitless from CBS, starring Bradley Cooper, is probably the type of show that will translate for our audience. We also have Rob Lowe’s comedy The Grinder and the comedy Life in Pieces. The latter is very similar to Modern Family, which does well with our audience. It’s still early, but there’s lots of good content and there are lots of bankable stars that are promotable.

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CONTENT TRENDSETTER

AWA R D S or the fifth consecutive year, World Screen is teaming up with Reed MIDEM at MIPCOM to present the Content Trendsetter Awards to five programming executives to honor their contributions to the television industry. This year’s winners—Modern Times Group’s Jakob Mejlhede, FOX International Channels’ Jason Simms, Viacom International Media Networks U.K.’s Katie Keenan, Amazon’s Jason Ropell and SVT’s Christian Wikander—reflect today’s varied and ever-evolving media landscape.

Modern Times Group operates free-TV, pay-TV, SVOD and AVOD services across Scandinavia, the Baltics, Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and Africa.

FOX International Channels has more than 300 channels across Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Viacom International Media Networks U.K. comprises a portfolio of channels that target different segments of the audience, including the terrestrial broadcaster Channel 5 and the pay-TV channels Spike and Comedy Central. The online streaming services, Amazon Prime Instant Video and Amazon Instant Video, are offering a mix of original and acquired programming in a number of markets. SVT in Sweden has mastered co-producing dramas that are satisfying audiences around the world.

The challenge to all broadcasters, channel groups and streaming services today is to extend their offerings in order to reach viewers wherever they may be and on whatever screen they prefer. As a consequence, network schedules and on-demand menus must be

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rich in variety. It is the main responsibility of the five Content Trendsetter Award winners to source and develop must-watch programming that will draw viewers and brand their networks or services.

They will be presented their awards at the end of the Acquisition Superpanel: What Do Buyers Want? session, which will take place on Wednesday, October 7, in the Grand Auditorium in the Palais des Festivals from 12:15 p.m. to 1 p.m. The discussion, moderated by World Screen’s group editorial director, Anna Carugati, will range from strategies for spotting shows that work with local audiences to negotiating the complex maze of rights required to provide shows on multiple platforms.

“We are thrilled to be working with our friends at Reed MIDEM for the fifth consecutive year to honor these leading programmers with the World Screen Content Trendsetter Awards,” says Ricardo Guise, the president and publisher of World Screen. “With the experience they have built up working for services in many of the most competitive and dynamic markets in the world, these executives have developed keen eyes for spotting top-notch, on-brand programs to satisfy their demanding audiences. At the Acquisition Superpanel at MIPCOM we’ll hear them share insights into their approaches to finding and developing the best content for their viewers. The must-attend session will surely provide plenty of useful information for anyone in the business of producing, buying or selling content in the new golden age of television. We are delighted to be honoring their achievements at MIPCOM.”

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C O N T E N T T R E N D S E T T E R AWA R D S JAKOB MEJLHEDE Modern Times Group Modern Times Group (MTG) operates free-TV and pay-TV channels in 130 countries across Scandinavia, the Baltics, Central and Eastern Europe and Africa, and has a stake in the Russian broadcaster CTC Media. Jakob Mejlhede is the executive VP of programming and content development. Just like other major media companies around the world, MTG is seeing constant viewer migration from its linear channels to its SVOD and AVOD services. Mejlhede, who reports double-digit percent increases in online viewing, is responsible for acquiring readymade content across the entire fleet of MTG’s platforms: free TV, pay TV and online. He also acquires formats across the group. He buys both procedurals and serialized dramas. Examples of each include NCIS, NCIS: New Orleans, Bones, Criminal Minds, The Mentalist, The Shield, Tyrant and The Strain.

While the group’s free-TV services didn’t think Empire was right for their prime-time schedules, the series has been a huge hit on the SVOD service Viaplay.

JASON SIMMS FOX International Channels FOX International Channels (FIC), whose tagline is “brands with fans,” is 21st Century Fox’s international multichannel business.

FIC develops, produces and distributes some 300 wholly and majority-owned entertainment, sports, factual and movie channels across Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. FIC’s main brands include FOX, FOX Sports, FOX Life, FOX+ and National Geographic Channel. While FIC owns studios and produces thousands of hours of programming, high-profile acquisitions round out the schedules of the group’s many channels. As senior VP of global acquisitions, Jason Simms is responsible for sourcing and acquiring scripted programs from a number of territories.

He also works on FIC global dramas, including The Walking Dead, Da Vinci’s Demons, Wayward Pines and the upcoming Outcast, the TV adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s exorcismthemed graphic novels, expected to premiere in more than 125 countries in 2016. Simms also bought the series Dexter, American Horror Story, True Blood, Jo and The Bridge.

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C O N T E N T T R E N D S E T T E R AWA R D S KATIE KEENAN Channel 5 and VIMN, U.K. As head of acquisitions at Channel 5 and Viacom International Media Networks (VIMN) in the U.K., Katie Keenan is responsible for all acquired content across a portfolio that includes Channel 5, 5*, 5USA, Spike, Comedy Central and MTV. Channel 5 launched in 1997 and is Britain’s fifth terrestrial broadcaster. It has always sought out shows that set it apart from the competition. The franchises NCIS and CSI have been ongoing ratings stalwarts and Keenan recently picked up NCIS: New Orleans and CSI: Cyber. In an effort to attract younger viewers, Keenan acquired Gotham, which has been a hit. Other successful acquisitions include Wentworth, Under the Dome and The Mysteries of Laura. Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy and Justified have performed well on Spike, which skews toward a male audience. Keenan is broadening Comedy Central’s program offering, which has focused on scripted series like Bob’s Burgers and Undateable, to include the non-scripted show Impractical Jokers.

JASON ROPELL Amazon Everyone knows and has probably used Amazon, the online retailer that delivers to your doorstep any number of products from books to electronics and more. Amazon has also been providing a broad range of programming straight to subscribers’ laptops and portable devices. Amazon Prime Instant Video has distinguished itself with originals like the award-winning series Transparent, but the bulk of its offering still consists of acquired programming. Jason Ropell, the head of international content acquisitions, is in charge of keeping the pipeline full. He recently completed an output deal with Entertainment One, which includes the series Turn, Halt and Catch Fire and the upcoming Into the Badlands.

In the U.K. and Germany he has snatched away the coveted first-run window from free-TV networks and pay-TV channels for shows like Vikings, Extant and Outlander. He also signed on Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame to do a new motoring show.

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C O N T E N T T R E N D S E T T E R AWA R D S CHRISTIAN WIKANDER SVT, Sweden As Sweden’s public broadcaster, with seven national channels, the svt.se website and the catch-up service SVT Play, SVT’s main responsibility is to serve the needs of Swedish viewers.

But its high-end dramas have satisfied much more than the domestic audience. Bron/Broen, a Swedish-Danish co-production, was sold to more than 150 countries and its format was adapted into two international versions, The Bridge in the U.S. and The Tunnel, an Anglo-French co-production. Real Humans has followed the same pattern, a co-production that has sold around the world as a finished show and as a format. Christian Wikander, the head of drama at SVT, is responsible for these dramas and many more. Wikander is always on the lookout for co-productions and for feel-good dramedies and comedies that are relevant to the Swedish audience. His current slate of productions and co-productions includes Jordskott, Midnight Sun, Spring Tide, Miss Friman’s War, The Fourth Man, Thicker Than Water, 30 Degrees In February and Angelby.

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As more feature-film stars flock to the small screen, Elizabeth Guider gets the scoop from producers, broadcasters and agents on the keys to managing talent today. s never before, the television firmament is ablaze with stars, turning the small screen, especially in the United States, into the coolest, smartest destination for viewers seeking new content. Liev Schreiber, Halle Berry, Wesley Snipes, Frank Langella, Jennifer Lopez, Kirsten Dunst, Viola Davis, Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Bradley Cooper, Dwayne Johnson and many more A-listers, especially refugees from the film biz, are flocking to TV in unprecedented numbers. The competition for their services has never been fiercer.

If a TV role doesn’t command quite the same huge paycheck as a top role in a summer movie blockbuster, actors’ quotes are still boosting TV budgets—be they for series on broadcast nets, cable outlets or online players like Netflix and Amazon.

“Yes, the prices for talent are going up,” says Robert DeBitetto, the president of brand strategy, business development and A+E Studios at A+E Networks.

“The drumbeat for these stars is ever louder,” adds Gary Levine, Showtime Networks’ executive VP

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of original programming. “And that means they’re becoming well compensated.”

With so many media outlets vying for casts that can pique and hopefully sustain audience interest—even digital upstarts like Snapchat and GoPro are getting into the act—the talent pool has been stretched thin. “If we pitched actors to five or six buyers 15 years ago, now 60 or so buyers are on our radar,” one talent agent reckons.

“I’d say there’s never been a better time to be a creator of content behind the camera or an A-lister in front of the camera,” DeBitetto suggests. The cable chief has reason to know: the program outlets belonging to parent A+E Networks nabbed Kevin Costner for the miniseries Hatfields & McCoys, Vera Farmiga for Bates Motel and Bill Paxton and Ray Liotta for Texas Rising.

RAISING THE STAKES While it’s hard to quantify the effect that stars have on the success of a show, they definitely bring, in DeBitetto’s words, “premium-ness” to the undertaking. “Farmiga in Bates Motel, for example, helped transform a quiet, odd piece into a ‘wow’ project; once attached to McCoys, Costner became shorthand

for the high-profile impression that show made in social media.”

The key to success, DeBitetto stresses, is that you have to have “the right star in the right role.”

“Simply put, there’s better material to sink one’s teeth into right now in the TV space,” says Debbee Klein, the co-head of the literary department at Paradigm talent agency. “When I look around, there’s almost nobody today who’s not in TV.” Mike Jelline, the co-head of TV talent and a partner at another top agency, UTA, adds, “Years ago it took some arm-twisting to get certain clients to pay attention to the quickly increasing number of highcaliber opportunities that were becoming available in television.

But that was then, back in the early 2000s.”

From his perspective, the most important change at the agency level in the last decade was how agents were obliged to become bilingual, as it were, well-versed in both the film and TV businesses. That way, they could help actors move more easily and seamlessly from one discipline to the other.

“In short, the invisible yet very real line in the sand that existed

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between the movie and TV businesses began to blur,” Jelline says.

The old adage that movies appealed to adults and TV catered to kids has been, in effect, turned upside down. Agents played a crucial role in that shift in perception.

“For the last five years, we have been working very hard to get highend talent into television in a way that lets these actors stretch their creative muscles and retain the ability to cross over between film and television,” says Peter Micelli, the co-head of television packaging at Creative Artists Agency (CAA). “One of the things we have revolutionized here at CAA is the straightto-series business. This is a way to get top talent into this space.

We’ve found ways to restructure deals for our clients by encouraging networks to go straight to series on certain projects, so that talent doesn’t have to twiddle their thumbs for months waiting to know if there’s a greenlight, and by championing shorter episode runs for certain material,” the CAA agent adds. Thus, Matthew McConaughey, Viola Davis and Clive Owen (all three CAA clients) could take on TV projects— True Detective, How to Get Away with Murder and The Knick,

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Taking on his first role in a TV drama, John Travolta is set to play attorney Robert Shapiro in American Crime Story: The People V. O.J. Simpson, a new series from Ryan Murphy for FX. respectively—and still have time to do movies while on hiatus.

“We’re not comfortable with just the status quo because the landscape keeps evolving,” Micelli observes. “The global marketplace of television is expanding, and we recognize that the value of our clients around the world is significant.”

Michael Katcher, the head of TV talent at CAA, adds, “In fact, we spend our time thinking about how our clients are going to succeed in this changing landscape—and how to create opportunities that will put them in the best position to have a career that can sustain.”

BIG-SCREEN IDOLS So how did it happen that, in addition to the aforementioned stars flocking to the small screen, Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon— both with Best Actress Oscars on their mantels—became attached to a David E. Kelley drama at HBO called Big Little Lies, and John Travolta—a cinema icon across decades—came to tackle the role of defense lawyer Robert Shapiro in FX’s upcoming American Crime Story about the O. J. Simpson case?

The first concrete sign of the alignment of stars to come, Paradigm’s Klein suggests, was the buzz surrounding Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City and James

Gandolfini in The Sopranos, both on HBO. “People began to notice that the best material, the most creative voices, the juiciest roles, were in television,” Klein says.

More recently, Klein notes, shows like CBS’s The Good Wife, which is a ratings success, a critical darling and a multiple award winner, has become a template for actors to measure themselves by. Per several sources, “Get me onto something like that Julianna Margulies show,” is an oft-heard request from actors hoping to make the leap from the big to small screen.

“Why hold out for an Oscar when an Emmy nomination at least might come one’s way?” is how Klein puts it. (The latest indie film regular to accomplish that feat is Adrien Brody, for his performance in the limited series Houdini.)

Jelline, Klein and others point to several factors that contributed to the change in the entertainment zeitgeist. First and foremost was the contraction of the U.S. film industry whereby, as another agent described it, “middle-range movies and character pieces dropped out,” leaving behind mainly tentpoles and microbudgeted indie pics, and many actors with time on their hands and thinner wallets in their pockets.

Second, technology and deregulation spurred the launch of additional content-hungry cable outlets and, subsequently, online platforms like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. These new programmers quickly discovered that nothing attracts eyeballs and ink as much as good, and increasingly edgy, original content—just the kind of fare that ambitious actors naturally gravitate toward.

Third, in and around the time of the long and debilitating writers strike in 2007–08, a plethora of scribes, producers and directors who had worked in the movie biz migrated to television. Out of sheer necessity, countless actors followed the lead of these creatives, many of whom they had worked with on the big screen.

Presently, World Screen estimates that at least three-dozen A-listers are currently prepping for or shooting key roles on the small screen—for broadcast, cable and online outlets.

Wesley Snipes will topline in The Player at NBC, Bradley Cooper will take on a recurring role in Limitless for CBS, Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis will spar in Showtime’s Billions, Jennifer Lopez will be top of the bill in Shades of Blue for NBC, Antonio Banderas is set for Starz’s Havana Quartet, Anne Hathaway will feature in The

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Ambassador’s Wife and Billy Bob Thornton will anchor Trial for Amazon, to name only a handful.

UTA’s Jelline says he is currently juggling nearly a dozen key actor deals for upcoming projects, a summer deal volume that would have been unthinkable a few years ago in the old system. The biggest challenge he and his colleagues face is making sure they’re endorsing the right project for the right client, especially if they’re skittish about getting involved in the first place.

“A television project is like a gigantic chemistry experiment: so many different elements have to come together for it to work,” Jelline says.

AGENCY CLOUT As for what has changed at the agencies, several agents point out that the TV divisions have, not surprisingly, bulked up in recent years to handle the tilt of talent (and money) toward television. After all, it was largely agencies and managers who helped facilitate the shift in thinking among their clients.

“Major actors don’t typically spend their days watching TV; it’s our job to bring them around to it,” Paradigm’s Klein says. Among the benefits for clients, she points out, is the ability to have a second revenue stream, to offset the sporadic nature

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of film projects. They also gain the ability to earn a backend payday if a series has rerun potential and, in some cases, set up their own shingle, hire a development guy and exercise control over their future projects. Laurence Fishburne, for example, is now both an exec producer and a star of the comedy Black-ish on ABC, where his company, Cinema Gypsy, has a firstlook deal; similarly, Halle Berry, who stars in CBS’s summer mini Extant, is developing projects for CBS through her 606 Films banner.

This is not to say that the money in TV is instantly commensurate with what a star might earn from a Marvel action movie, a global franchise like the Twilight trilogy or a sleeper hit like The Fault in Our Stars.

“No one is immediately going to emulate Mark Harmon or Mariska Hargitay,” quips one agent who declined to be identified, per company protocol. (Harmon both stars

in and exec produces the longrunning global hit NCIS and Hargitay stars in the long-running Law & Order: SVU. The two are undoubtedly among the best-paid actors on the small screen.)

“Expectations have to be managed. Not every freshman series catches on; in fact, the failure rate is close to 80 percent in TV,” the off-the-record agent observes.

Various sources at the broadcast networks and at the cable programmers suggest that stars nowadays come to the table knowing those odds. By and large, stars command more money at the broadcast level, especially if the series gets to the “syndie-capable” 65 episodes, a bit less on pay cable and high-end basic services like USA, FX and AMC, and exclusively upfront dollars (with no backend) when they topline an online show.

“Yes, the studios have parameters and thresholds for casting allotments, but don’t be misled: a

salary of $150,000 to $200,000 an episode is meaningful. Top actors can do very well in television,” says CAA’s Katcher.

TALENT PAYDAY Eric Schrier, the president of original programming at FX Networks and FX Productions, points out that stars greatly benefit “in success”—he and several other sources point to the sizable paydays for stars of cable hits like, say, Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad and Jon Hamm of Mad Men. “What we try to do at FX,” Schrier continues, “is allow the creatives, including the top stars, to participate in the upside of a show.” He points out that two of the cabler’s comedies, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Archer, have secured syndication deals.

It’s not that different in broadcast TV. “We have to make deals that are respectful of the stars and that allow them to participate in success, but

that make sense for the series in question and the health of the network,” explains Jennifer Salke, NBC’s president of entertainment.

“As a general rule, these stars come to the deal educated.”

Asked if a preponderance of the budget earmarked for cast members was now funneled to A-listers, Salke demurred. “Of course, the people around the star can be insistent—it’s their job to get what they can for their client, the trappings, the trailer and so on—but from my perspective it’s the necessary push-pull of the business. I don’t believe the numbers are out of sync. Certainly not [at NBC].”

Salke, likes other executives, stresses that most of the stars are “more collaborative than not.” They absorb or adapt to the tone of the set they’re on. “It’s scrappier, what we do, as compared to the film biz.

There’s not a lot of tolerance or room for drama day in, day out in TV. Divas? Not in my experience.”

Having previously worked together on the film Se7en, Kevin Spacey teamed up again with David Fincher for their debut series House of Cards for Netflix, in which he stars opposite Robin Wright.

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Showtime’s slate of original series with high-profile leads includes the upcoming Billions, set in the world of finance and starring Paul Giamatti and former Homeland actor Damian Lewis.

The biggest request of film stars on TV sets, per a manager who wished not to single out a specific client, is “not bringing their own hairdresser or demanding sushi every day but rather making sure security is beefed up to the level they’re accustomed to on motionpicture shoots.”

DeBitetto at A+E Networks seconds Salke’s thoughts on how it works on set when A-listers are involved. “Actually, having been involved on nonfiction sets here at A+E Networks, I can safely say that by comparison being on a drama series shoot is a joy. Most A-list players bring a high level of professionalism to their work, so everybody feels they’re part of something special.

Plus, customs and practices are so long established in the TV biz that everyone is focused on the specific job they have to do. Hangers-on à la Entourage are few and far between.”

That programmers are elated to have top talents when they can secure them at a reasonable cost is not in dispute. For one thing, stars bring instant awareness and help with sampling. Moreover, many have been trained in marketing and promotion during their film careers and hence do not balk at similar demands in the TV biz. One cable source, who did not wish to

be identified, suggests that it’s “routine” for producers now to check out actors’ social media accounts to see how many followers they have. If a sizable number, all the better, as those core fans can function as the advance guard in getting the word out about an upcoming project.

Still, as most executives insist, “Alisters do not come to television strictly or principally for the money, but rather to stretch themselves with material that is challenging to them.”

UNDER THE INFLUENCE So, just how essential are A-listers to getting series up and running?

They’re not the crucial element, but they’re definitely a key factor in swaying network executives who might be on the fence about a project. Most all execs claim in various iterations that it’s “the fresh voice of the writer” or “the bona fides of a top producer” that initially persuade them to back a project. But, there’s apparently a “however” in most of these responses.

“Most pitches don’t have talent attached,” NBC’s Salke maintains.

“It’s the writer’s vision that’s paramount—if you don’t have that, you have nothing.” However, she went on to clarify, “when we see a list of stars that a producer or agent

brings to us and we like the names, well, we’re more inclined to pay attention.” To wit: The Blacklist (NBC’s biggest drama hit) was “a concept we fell for before James Spader was attached, though once he came aboard, he brought a whole new dimension to the endeavor.”

Other execs point out that even with top stars attached, stumbles do occur. NBC’s recent comedy The Michael J. Fox Show was canceled after one season; ditto for the Robin Williams topliner The Crazy Ones at CBS. The same fate recently befell Billy Crystal in The Comedians for FX. Even failure, however, can sometimes be fungible in television, especially in the cable world, where a canceled show can be spun as “an interesting experiment” and the actor’s own participation therein “a cool undertaking.” Thus, for most actors, the advantages of doing television are considerable and far outweigh the drawbacks.

Showtime’s Levine points out that working three or four months a year on a TV project—a time commitment typical of cable—allows the actor to use that job as a “home base,” but is a short enough stint to allow him or her to flex their muscles in movies, the theater, in the digital space or wherever.

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Over at FX, Schrier points out that Keri Russell, the female star of The Americans, has managed to fit in five movies during her time off from the period spy drama.

As for Levine, he was brought aboard Showtime some 14 years ago with the mandate to help the paybox up its game. He began with an upgrade of scripts and producer talent and gradually moved into tapping higher-caliber actors. “The effort started with Dexter, Weeds and Californication, and then Homeland exploded. Now we have The Affair, Shameless and Billions, to name only a few shows with high-profile leads.”

Regarding what stars can bring to the party, Levine sums it up in two words: personality and smarts.

“Most of the leads we’ve worked with are collaborative.

They set the tone on the set, having by and large checked their ego at the door.” (Here he rattled off stars like Michael C. Hall, Laura Linney, Liev Schreiber and Claire Danes.) Given the nature of the material all three of the premium channels—HBO, Starz and Showtime—specialize in, stars can bring an added bonus.

“When these artists take on complex, challenging characters, they tend to become proprietors of

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Inside Wolf Films those roles,” Levine adds. “In many cases, they form symbiotic relationships with the writers on the series. After all, on recurring shows actors and writers are practically living together for several months each year. On our shows, unlike on the typical film shoot, there’s an open avenue between the actors and the writers. Alchemy takes place, with writer and actor enriching each other, and by extension the series as a whole.”

Still, almost everyone World Screen spoke with circled back to the same mantra: without a good story underpinning a project, not even the shiniest star can salvage a sinking series.

“We don’t build the clock backwards, as it were,” FX’s Schrier says. “In mid-July we turned down a project with a major star because the material was just not there.”

It would be foolish to bet, however, against the cyclical nature of television or underestimate how fickle audiences are or how quickly media habits change. If the U.S. advertising market were to slump or subscriptions to this or that service to plateau, program budgets would eventually take a hit. Stars whose quotes were judged too steep would, in short, be eclipsed by lesserknown stars or, per Hollywood’s invariably hopeful jargon, “upand-comers.”

To be fair, not every A-lister has warmed up to TV or found the appropriate vehicle to take the plunge. Julia Roberts, Robert Downey, Jr. and Meryl Streep are among the names at the top of several TV producer wish lists.

Since almost everyone interviewed for this piece believes that the trend toward higher-profile talent in TV shows no sign of abating, expect some of these last holdouts to be coming soon to a small screen near you.

As Showtime’s Levine puts it, “What was our dream list of actors a dozen years ago has now become our down-to-earth list,” as so many stars have found their way to television over the last decade.

For a while, at least, more will surely come.

Peter Jankowski talks about his approach to casting the company’s four prime-time NBC procedural dramas.

Stars, by their very definition, are rare commodities. Lest anyone be mistaken, most television shows do not, for various reasons, boast ready-made luminaries on their acting rosters. At best, they create their own, and one such company has, well, a stellar reputation for doing so consistently over multiple series.

If Sam Waterston, Mariska Hargitay and Vincent D’Onofrio became familiar faces in our living rooms starting in the early 1990s, they have Dick Wolf’s Law & Order trilogy to thank. (SVU, which debuted in 1999 with Hargitay as the female lead, is still on the air with first-run episodes.) Now, the production company behind the franchise, Wolf Films, is on the verge of another hat trick, juggling a trio of interrelated prime-time shows, this time set in Chicago rather than in New York City.

“I recognize the trend, that more film stars are coming to the small screen,” Peter Jankowski, Wolf Films’s president and COO, tells World Screen. “And we understand why: episode orders are often shorter and more accommodating, and the creative space, especially in cable, is a little looser. Stars [coming] into TV is a signpost of how interesting and exciting television has become.” After a pause, he adds, “That said, I’m not sure people tune into television for the film stars alone.”

Per Jankowski, who has worked with Dick Wolf since the 1990s, the company’s approach has been to put story first and then come up with performers who can most convincingly bring the plots to life. “We like to find unknowns and nurture them.

When you can make your own stars, that’s really exciting. So no, I wouldn’t say we’re jumping on the movie-star bandwagon.”

That said, a parade of seasoned performers—from Bebe Neuwirth to Rosanna Arquette—and newcomers who later became stars, from Bradley Cooper to Zoe Saldana, have done cameos, guest stints or longer story arcs over the years for the earlier Wolf trilogy. Jankowski says stars can bring added value when the role snugly fits and isn’t just an arbitrary dressing-up of the script, or when the star plays “against type.”

That too, he points out, can be “very entertaining to watch.”

As executive producer of the new younger-skewing trilogy on NBC—Chicago Fire (going into its fourth season), Chicago

P. D. (now in its third season) and the brand-new Chicago Med—Jankowski suggests that the company probably hires more actors than any other in the broadcast biz. “But we take the team approach, especially with the new shows. Our main focus is to tell good stories—Chicago itself comes across as a character in the series as much as any actor.” All three dramas air on NBC. Asked if his own budgets have been affected by the overall buoyancy of the TV business and the influx of movie talent into it, Jankowski admits that there is “a constant struggle” to get the best people into each position on a show.

“Today, even more than in the early 1990s, we’re in a golden age of television. It’s the best place to be creatively. There is simply more tasty product in the candy store, though of course talent is finite.”

Chicago Med, which started shooting in September, has already lined up Oliver Platt as well as S. Epatha Merkerson, who was a mainstay on the Law & Order original.

If the Law & Order trio could draw on the vast talent pool in New York City—including, notably, a parade of Broadway regulars in cameos—Chicago is becoming “an exciting place” as well to set up shop. (FOX’s hip-hop series Empire also lenses in the Windy City.) “The local acting pool is growing, and among our own casts there is quite a collegial, enthusiastic spirit,” he points out, referring to the vibe at a recent dinner in the city with casts and crews from all three shows.

The budgets for the Chicago shows, he indicates, have not been particularly affected by the influx of stars into the medium but rather, he points out, by expenses for explosions in Fire or P. D. or for particularly sophisticated sets, like the state-of-theart hospital set designed for Chicago Med. “There will be a lot of crossover among the three shows, as they have similar tones and looks. We think of Fire as the heart [of the trilogy], P. D. as the physicality of the action and Med as the brain. In Med, we’ll be exploring moral and ethical dilemmas that arise in the hospital and how they affect the characters.”

NBC’s Law & Order: SVU.

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Emilia Clarke

Game of Thrones

that goes into every single department—really means that there’s not a huge amount of acting required when placed into that environment. You get to say the genius words that David [Benioff] and Daniel [Weiss] have written, inspired by George R. R. Martin’s genius story. It all just falls into place perfectly when you allow yourself to be as present in that moment as possible. What I’m saying is, I’m not really sure how I find the strength that she has! It’s all Daenerys—it just feels very natural.

WS: What have you learned about acting from the experience on Game of Thrones and from the other actors on the show?

CLARKE: So much. So much. When I was at drama school we had one acting for camera class [and they] just showed us a Michael Caine video that told us how to hit our mark. I really didn’t have a lot of camera experience before coming into this. I have learned everything that I know about acting for camera and about how a set works and operates and the best kind of behavior that you can have as an actor within that set, in a very safe environment. I feel very safe and helped by absolutely every member of the cast and crew, really. Especially since I had Iain Glen [who plays Jorah Mormont] as my confidant for so long. He really did spend a lot of his time mentoring me, Emilia, as much as Jorah does mentoring Daenerys.

My goodness, he knows the ropes! Many an epiphany after a discussion with Mr. Iain Glen!

Although she had very little on-camera acting experience when she was cast in the role of Daenerys Targaryen, Emilia Clarke burst onto the screen and has become one of the most compelling characters in the megahit Game of Thrones. Clarke has taken viewers along on Daenerys’s journey from innocent, timid teen to a very powerful queen leading armies of warriors, raising dragons and developing a strong sense of justice.

WS: Daenerys has transformed from a fearful girl to a very determined Khaleesi. How do you balance her vulnerability against her determination?

CLARKE: Well, I’ve been very lucky because I’ve been with her from the beginning. Unlike many characters that you read as an actor, you see Daenerys change from the beginning where she is fearful and timid and pushed upon by the strength of the male-dominated society that she finds herself in. I got to go from the very beginning, so I got to be timid and frightened and scared, and then have these gorgeous scenes like when she first stops Viserys, her brother, from slapping her. And then marrying Khal Drogo and the strength he gave her so she could feel like a woman for the first time. Then taking it all the way to the end of that season, when giving birth to dragons and surviving fire, so it’s never been a very conscious decision as to how I balanced the two. It’s been more a matter of taking each thing as it comes and playing the truth of that, and the logical conclusion is the balance of vulnerability and strength that she has.

Every choice that Daenerys makes from here on out is because she’s felt what it is to be sold. She’s felt what it is to be abused, and she’s also felt what it is to take back what is hers, and stand there with balls bigger than any guy in the room!

WS: Absolutely. I imagine that in real life you have not been a queen, nor have you led an army! What do you draw upon when you’re in those scenes?

CLARKE: Oh my goodness, we are so fortunate with Game of Thrones that every single part of our show—the set, the costumes, the detail

WS: Did you read George R. R. Martin’s books as part of your preparation, and how much of the mythology did you feel you needed to know?

CLARKE: I really did. The first book especially was akin to a Bible for me. I took it everywhere, absolutely everywhere, and reread and reread and reread. Then, as I grew in confidence after that first season, I have leant on the books less. Mainly because to understand the work you really need to pay homage to and understand the world that George R. R. Martin has created, but as the television show has moved on apace, as an actor it is important for you to be as present on the set as you are thinking about the book. Otherwise you’re doing a disservice to the both of them, because you could spend too much time thinking about what affected you in the nar-

Game of Thrones is this year’s most talked-about drama, and Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys is one of its most captivating characters. ration of one of the chapters that George has written, then you’re suddenly forgetting that it’s 4 o’clock in a Croatian desert with [hundreds of] people and having David and Dan asking when I’m gonna say my line! So we’ve grown to a place of accepting the Game of Thrones world, the show, as the new Bible.

WS: Game of Thrones is cinematic in its production values. Give us a sense of what it’s like to be on the set, especially in the huge scene when you met the Unsullied warriors.

CLARKE: Just as frightening as it looks. Truly, I really mean it. It’s really one of the most daunting scenes I’ve had, speaking at length in one of our made-up languages to a lot of people. You truly have to take

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HBO’s Game of Thrones. on every memory you have of politicians speaking at rallies, or in Congress, or Parliament, or whatever it is, and in that moment, think, Emilia, get the attention of 300, 400 people. That, again, does so much for not needing to be consciously thinking about acting.

You’re kind of very much in the moment, and reacting to how they are, and catching someone’s eye and seeing them wander, you’re like, Wait! I’ve got to get them back! So it’s definitely incredibly daunting, and they’re always the scariest scenes. Especially in that heat, with that wig!

WS: Daenerys has a very strong sense of justice, and there was that great line, I’m paraphrasing, when your advisor tells you, “Sometimes the best answer to justice is mercy,” and you said, “I will answer justice with justice.” Do Daenerys, and other characters on Game of Thrones, find themselves doing bad things even if they mean well?

CLARKE: Yes, it’s the difference between being an idealist and being a realist. I think the best leaders are a heavy mixture of both, and so while there might be some questionable tactics, you need to make a choice and stick with it. Her choice is the freedom of those in slavery, and getting back to her rightful place on the throne, so that she can administer as much good [as possible] and even out the enormous gap between the rich and the poor, at the sacrifice of herself as a person. Daenerys sees herself much more as Elizabeth I, being married to her job, to her role, to her destiny, as opposed to thinking, I’d like to find the man of my dreams and have lots of children. At the end of season one, when she says goodbye to Khal Drogo, she knows that she’s saying goodbye to any kind of selfish want, and is really looking out for the people.

WS: How many times do you meet people who say they call their significant other “My sun and moon”?

CLARKE: Oh, it’s my favorite thing to hear. I love it. I absolutely love it!

WS: Even though Game of Thrones is set in the past, what contemporary themes do you think it presents and addresses?

CLARKE: Ultimately, the core of Game of Thrones is power and the struggle for power—who has it, who doesn’t. Why do you want it?

What good or bad can you do with it? That is always going to find a relevant counterpart to our modern society, because, you know, power and money—they ain’t going nowhere! So [with those two themes] there are always a million ways that you can find counterpoints to modern society. I think that’s why people enjoy the show so much, making it even more relevant to today, and that that’s what keeps it really exciting. I’m genuinely not comparing [Game of Thrones to Shakespeare] at all, but good writing—the most famous example of good writing is Shakespeare, and you can read Hamlet and find it relevant today because it’s discussing themes that are the product of human nature, as opposed to being the product of 2015 or 1912.

WS: A word about her babies. What are the scenes with the dragons like?

CLARKE: Well they’re always wonderful, because they’re always incredibly heartfelt. You just have to get rid of any embarrassment as an actor, and really harness as much conviction as you can to truly care about the big green sock while the rest of the crew is looking at you earnestly discussing your love of this big green thing!

But I do have a huge soft spot for my babies! It’s just as well because the scenes are so abstract when you film them that you have to kind of zone out and see what the audience will see.

For more from Emilia Clarke, see page 428.

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Julianna Margulies The Good Wife

The Good Wife is widely considered one of the best shows on television. The drama, starring the Emmy Award-winning Julianna Margulies, looks at topical legal cases and the machinations of political campaigns as it delves into human motivations like greed, ambition and temptation. Even more interesting is Margulies’s character, Alicia Florrick, the insecure junior associate, humiliated by her husband’s betrayal and corruption scandal, who reinvents herself as a confident, competent partner in a law firm.

WS: The Good Wife is one of the few shows whose critical acclaim increases season after season. How would you explain such success?

MARGULIES: It’s the writing. One of the luxuries of television, especially network television, is that we really get to keep up with what’s happening in today’s world as it’s happening. That’s very beneficial in many ways. It keeps the show fresh and exciting; it’s not old news.

That’s part of it, and a tremendous part of it is that as the lead of the show, I see what the writers have to put up with in terms of scheduling conflicts and actors coming and going and contracts being expired.

Instead of looking at it as a burden, they look at it as an opportunity to advance all the other characters. So they bring on these new, interesting characters that bring fresh life to the characters that have been there since day one. There is something really refreshing about that.

It never feels the same, and I say this because most actors shy away from television and only want to do film or theater because playing the same role can get stale. Whereas for me personally, I’m always excited to play this character because she is constantly peeling off these layers and discovering every week who she is and who she can become, but is also dealing with new characters that come in. The Kings [showrunners Robert and Michelle King] have really managed a beautiful balance of staying on top of all topics that are political and also case topics. We did bitcoin and two years later all that was in The New York Times was about bitcoin! We had a whole case with Oliver Platt about whether someone has the right to refuse to serve a gay couple in a store and the next week it was all over the papers. There is an incredible poignancy in that.

WS: I imagine there is a certain comfort and shorthand that has developed among the regular cast. How do these terrific A-list guest stars shake up the mix? And does that allow you to stretch different acting muscles?

MARGULIES: Absolutely. A perfect example is Josh Charles [who played Will Gardner]. He and I were friends before I suggested him for the role. I had never worked with him before, but we developed such a great working relationship and friendship on the show. It was always exciting to work with him because there was an ease and a delicacy in how we could handle a scene. When he left I was panicked because I thought, Am I going to have that with other people the way I have it with Josh? I have it with Christine [Baranski, who plays Diane Lockhart], but sadly last season our story lines were separate. We didn’t work together in enough scenes as far as I was concerned! But then all of a sudden someone like Steven Pasquale [Johnny Elfman] comes on the set or David Hyde Pierce [Frank Prady] or David Krumholtz [Josh Mariner]. Honestly, it was an embarrassment of riches for me last year!

We were all laughing and saying we shouldn’t be getting paid to have this much fun together and create a really fun environment in which the writing can shine. This season Margo Martindale is coming on and so is Cush Jumbo, who is an incredible actress and playwright.

When I read the first episode of season seven I was in a real panic to start work again because if you are doing 22 episodes and you are the lead of the show, that’s your life for nine and a half months. I panicked because having time off and being able to have a life and be a mother full time [during the hiatus] was really rewarding for me. I thought, Oh my God, how am I going to do another season of this? It’s exhausting!

Then I read the first episode and I was in the best mood! I can’t get over the writing and how they handle every situation. Every obstacle that comes their way, they just look at it as a challenge, and for me as an actor, it’s a challenge to execute it. Any actor who would be afraid to do television, I completely understand. I would say look at the bigger picture and jump in, because these are characters that people want to live with week to week.

WS: What do you like about Alicia?

MARGULIES: I like so many things about her. At the core of her being she really is a good girl. She doesn’t really know how to be bad and

In a category dominated by pay-TV shows, Julianna Margulies took home the Emmy for lead actress in a drama last year for The Good Wife. yet she’s dying to get out. She’s dying to break out of the good-girl role, and yet people’s opinions really matter to her. I love that she is so smart and cerebral. There is incredible intelligence that comes with her silences that I wish I had more of personally. She has this amazing capacity of, instead of talking when she doesn’t quite know the answer, she just thinks on it and gets back to you when she’s ready. I think that’s a tremendous talent that I’m going to cultivate before this show ends. And I really love the situation she’s been put in. It’s so much fun for me to play because it’s about loss, it’s about love, it’s about politics, it’s about the law, it’s about conquering your worst fears, it’s about raising children, it’s about trying to find love. It’s so multifaceted there’s nowhere

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CBS’s The Good Wife.

I turn that I am bored because I’ve made that trip before. So it’s all new territory and it’s exciting to play her.

WS: One thing I love about Alicia is the way she tells people, often when she is in a difficult situation, “I’ll get back to you.”

MARGULIES: Absolutely, and you know what? I never knew I had that right! And then you realize, wait a minute, I’d be fine if someone said that to me, so why can’t I say that to someone else?

WS: It’s not disrespectful. It’s not off-putting, it’s just, I’ll get back to you.

MARGULIES: In the first episode of season seven, Alicia suddenly has this realization that she’s always saying “I’m sorry.” And women do that. There was a whole article written about why women [always say they are sorry]. For example, someone bumps into you and you say, “I’m sorry,” instead of, “Hey, watch it!” There is a wonderful exchange between Alicia and Canning [played by Michael J. Fox] and he calls her out on it and it’s great for women to see that and allow them a different way of thinking.

WS: The Good Wife is often compared to cable shows, but it’s not as dark as many cable shows are. It deals with complex issues but has never forgotten it has to entertain its audience. How does it remain so engaging while complying with broadcast-network standards?

MARGULIES: I’m so sick of being compared to cable shows! We’re not a cable show. We do twice as many, if not more than twice as many episodes, and we don’t have the freedom of speech, necessarily. I asked Robert and Michelle, if we were on cable, what would they change in the show. Robert said the only thing he would change is that every now and then people would be able to swear. Everything else would remain the same. He loves funny. I sat through a play that will remain nameless and all they did was yell the entire time. At first I was very engaged and then I just cut off because it’s too much, you have to balance the light with the heavy, because if you don’t, the heavy has no meaning after a while. Robert and Michelle have a really brilliant way of figuring out how to make moments funny. There are certain characters— Howard Lyman, who is one of the old partners at Lockhart Agos, the one who always takes his pants off. He is a great character, and you know what? There are guys like that! And it lightens up a moment. Zach Grenier plays David Lee. He is so evil and self-centered and yet there was an episode where he came in dressed as one of the characters from the comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore and says, “Oh, I do this on the side.” And you go, wait, who is this guy? It’s just little bits, but there are enough little bits that you can then allow for the drama to play out and still be entertained.

Look, maybe the real heavies, the people who only want darkness, find it mundane. But we find it enthralling because it also allows us to have a different mood on the set and have some fun.

For more from Julianna Margulies, see page 426.

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Michael Sheen Masters of Sex

Sometimes in the middle of a scene—in that moment of actually doing it—the most interesting things come out. You haven’t planned them, it’s not something that is from the head; it’s some sort of experiential thing. Having a working set where I can guide where the character goes and what the story lines might be is really exciting. I’ve never experienced that before. So it’s a very different process for me.

Another thing that I am experiencing is that when you work on a character over a long period of time, the character starts to become more and more an amalgamation of the character as written (in this case a real person) but also me. My raw material is, more than anything, me. As the audience does, the actor also spends so much time with the character. More and more of myself starts to come into it, not just the bits I’m aware of but the bits I’m unaware of. In creating Bill I’ve consciously tried to be as honest as I can in portraying the things that people might think are negative about him. There are things that are very much connected to who I am and the parts of myself that I am very ambivalent about. I didn’t want any of what was going on for Bill to be inauthentic, or to create some distance just because I’m doing things that I wouldn’t want people to see me do. I wanted them to be rooted in something. So when people come up to me and say, “That Bill is such an asshole,” I’m hurt by it because it’s me!

William Masters and Virginia Johnson’s groundbreaking research into human sexuality broke down misconceptions and prejudices about sexual behavior and dysfunctions. The series Masters of Sex is based on these two scientists who set off the sexual revolution. As analytical and scientific as Masters was in his work, he masked deep emotional wounds that severely impeded him as a human being. Michael Sheen, who has played numerous real-life people in film and onstage, gives a brilliant performance as Bill Masters.

WS: What research did you do into the role of Bill Masters, and do you have a process to get to the essence of a character?

SHEEN: This is the first time I’ve played a character where the context is so different from anything else I’ve done. Twelve hours per season is a very new process for me, rather than a film or a play or a TV film where you have the entire story from the start. My process is usually knowing what the whole story is, having a script, and then working out what the journey of the character is and what you might be focusing on in any given scene, depending on where that scene comes in the structure of the piece. Whereas with Masters of Sex and Bill Masters, I didn’t have that. I had a pilot script to decide if I was going to be a part of it or not, and because it’s based on a real person, I also had materials about him to get a sense of the facts of his life and his career. Then it was about talking to Michelle Ashford, the show’s creator and head writer, about what sort of show we thought we would be able to explore, what sort of character we thought this man might be, where he might go and what were the things that I was interested in. So it was a very different way to approach a character and journey for me and it’s one that is still evolving. I’ve been able to have so much input and contribute so much based on what I am discovering about who the character is. It’s something I have never experienced before. In films, as you start to know more about the character and have a stronger connection with him, you can’t put that back into the story other than how you played the character. You can’t actually change things or come up with ideas for what might happen. The story is the story. But with Masters of Sex you can. That has been really exciting.

WS: Bill can show much more compassion and understanding for his patients than he does for his wife or son. What made him that way?

SHEEN: At the very core of who this man is and of his relationships and the way he has lived his life up to this point is what happened between him and his father when he was younger. He is a survivor of physical abuse. His father would violently beat him for no reason, so he’s grown up in the shadow of that apparently meaningless random punishment from the person who should have been protecting him. That shapes you in many ways. One of the greatest fears for Bill is that he could perpetuate that behavior. It’s like a poison that gets put into you by the abuser. One of the most demoralizing and destructive elements of that abuse is that it makes you feel that it now lives in you and you might perpetuate that cycle of abuse. So it struck me as something out of a Greek play that in trying to run away from this fate you run straight into it. In trying to not

Masters of Sex star Michael Sheen is not new to playing real-life characters; he has portrayed Tony Blair and David Frost. do what his father did to him, Bill is keeping his son at arm’s length.

He is frightened of what the child might bring out in him and that he might not be in control. But by trying to create distance and not getting involved with his son, that is a different form of abuse or neglect. In season three we are seeing Bill starting to deal with the consequences of that. For all the apparent coldness and neglect toward his son, it’s actually coming from a place of trying to protect him, and that is one of the awful paradoxes of having grown up a survivor of abuse.

With his wife, it’s another consequence of growing up with that experience—a sense that the universe is out of control. If the person that is supposed to protect you and look after you is actually

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the one who randomly exerts awful pain and terror on you, then the universe is very dark.

Anything can happen at any time, and you have no control. In Bill’s case he’s grown up looking for anything that he can control, so he can retain some sort of balance in his world. He’s become a very controlling person; he has buried who he might be. I don’t think he ever really had the opportunity to find out who he really is, or what his authentic needs and desires are, because he has suppressed them and he controls his environment. The man we meet at the very beginning of the story is a man who had total control over his kingdom. He has a domestic life that has been consciously chosen. He has a wife he has consciously chosen in order to look a particular way. We see in flashbacks Scully, his mentor, saying to him, if you want to go down this very controversial road you are going to need very respectable qualifications in terms of your specialized subject area and a very respectable family life. So Bill has chosen his domestic life. I don’t think it was done maliciously, [it just] happened, and as time has gone on he and his wife just aren’t meant to be together.

The big, big upheaval occurred when this woman Virginia Johnson came into his life and something in her called to the part of Bill that he had buried for so many years. And perhaps a more authentic part of Bill starts to look for oxygen. Those aspects of himself that he buried and locked up can’t live in the world he has created around himself, so that world has to be pulled down. So while listening to this truer self is a very positive thing for him, his listening to that becomes hugely destructive, and that is always an interesting place to explore for a character and a drama.

WS: Does Bill use Virginia to get his research done and take a shot at the Nobel Prize or does he really respect and love her enough to elevate her to partner status?

SHEEN: In my experience in life there is no black or white answer. My experience of life and what I’ve tried to bring to this character is that there is what we think we want and what we actually want. Then there is what life does to us and how that all interplays. I think of it as currents under the sea. What you see happening on the surface of the water is often a result of the current underneath. It’s very complicated to be able to work out the patterns that shift over time. This is one of the things I find so interesting about the story in this long form. The narrative gram-

Showtime’s Masters of Sex. mar we got used to in the 90-minute structure of film is different from [a TV series]. When you’ve got 12 hours in a season you can really explore those currents in a very different way. You don’t have to have an incident that creates instant change for the character, because it doesn’t happen that way in life. There are incidents that happen and maybe years down the line you realize, Oh, this has changed as a result of that. This is one of the things I find most fascinating about telling the story this way, and Masters of Sex can reflect that.

In answer to your question of whether he is using Virginia, it’s a mixture of his own complications and confusions and mixed up agendas and emotions and desires. He is experiencing things in the same way as other people are experiencing him. That is what has been interesting in season three, seeing some things he had locked down start popping out and surprising him as much as they surprise anyone else. That is fascinating.

For more from Michael Sheen, see page 430.

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Andrew Lincoln The Walking Dead

WS: What’s in store for season six? The survivors are in a different stage now, having taken up residence at the seemingly secure community in Alexandria. Where is Rick Grimes in this journey?

LINCOLN: We left season five with quite a tumultuous final episode. You have a community in disarray, and the arrival of a long-lost friend, Morgan. You find Rick in a very decisive position. He’s a man who was almost restraining himself toward the end of last season, giving the Alexandrians a chance to get up to speed, as it were, with the realities of the world. You need Rick in a place of no nonsense. I do think that very much the story of this season, in particular what we’ve shot so far, has been about us and them: whether or not [Rick’s group of survivors] can integrate [with the Alexandrians]. But there are two other enormous threats lurking in the wings. All I will say is that this season there have been more zombies per capita than any season to date. It’s a thrill ride, to say the least. It’s been brutal, it’s been brilliant, it’s been incredibly ambitious and also, a nod has to go to [showrunner] Scott Gimple and his brilliant writers’ room. They keep changing up the story, and the way they tell the story. This season, more than any other, they are playing with time and threading some very intricate story plots together. It’s a really bold season in regards to storytelling. That shows some great courage and conviction from the writers’ room, and from AMC for supporting that and allowing them to change up the style and the format of the show. The fans deserve it because they are smart and attentive.

Heading into its sixth season, The Walking Dead remains a pay-TV sensation, delivering huge numbers for AMC and FOX International Channels. Heading up the drama’s ensemble cast is Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, who leads a motley group of survivors through the threats, living and dead, of a zombie-ravaged world. Lincoln began his acting career in his native U.K., appearing in shows like This Life and Teachers and feature films such as Love Actually. On The Walking Dead, Lincoln is not only the leader of a group of survivors—he is also number one on the call sheet, setting an example for the numerous cast members and extras on the sprawling set in Georgia.

WS: The last time we spoke, you had just lost your TV wife.

LINCOLN: That’s an occupational hazard in the apocalypse, I’m afraid. I’ve lost a lot more people since my TV wife. You know, we still correspond, Sarah [Wayne Callies] and I. She signs off [her e-mails] with DTVW— deceased TV wife.

WS: I’ve heard about the tradition of “death dinners” every time you lose a cast member to the apocalypse. I imagine you’ve had a lot of those in the last couple of years!

LINCOLN: Yes. [Laughs] It’s something I never really thought through when I agreed to do the job. I just thought zombies, apocalypse—not realizing that you make these incredibly intimate and tender and trusting relationships with brilliant actors and friends, and then you have to say goodbye to them. The bonus is I get to work with most of the Screen Actors Guild, in one job!

WS: And a whole lot of extras.

LINCOLN: They’re incredible. The people that play the zombies—the walkers—are hard core. This season in particular, it’s been very, very hot, and wet. It’s probably the same temperature as it was when we first started the show, which was brutal. When you’re feeling sorry for yourself and sweating in your cowboy boots, all you have to do is look across and see somebody with prosthetics on and then you shut up and get on with your day.

WS: Is the AMC scheduling strategy of having a gap between two sets of eight episodes helpful in terms of allowing you to digest what’s happened in the first half of the season?

LINCOLN: It’s become not just important but absolutely vital. Not necessarily so much for the actors, but for the crew. The crew are magnificent and most of them have been on this show since the beginning. Anybody that’s been to Atlanta, Georgia, in mid-summer knows how brutal the weather can be. We shoot an episode in eight days, which is impossible, actually. Because the bar keeps getting set higher and higher each season, 16 episodes of story is the maximum for the writers’ room. I would hate to speak on Scott’s behalf, but I know how much of a perfectionist he is and how much he cares about this show. He says he never wants a stagnant episode. You don’t want a filler episode, ever, in this show. AMC deciding to do eight and eight not only gives breathing space for the crew

Andrew Lincoln leads a ragtag group of survivors in the basic-cable hit The Walking Dead, which capped off its fifth season with 16 million viewers. to stand down, but it gives the writers an opportunity to do two arcs within one overarching season. You have a season premiere, a midseason finale, and then you have a midseason premiere and an overall finale. You can shape, within one season, more story, more compelling story arcs— and maybe more ambitious story arcs—because of that.

WS: You’ve had five years now with this character. What is it about Rick Grimes that has allowed him to be a leader and survive in these difficult conditions?

LINCOLN: One of his great strengths is the fact that he is very fluid in his leadership. He also doubts himself and he listens to others. If somebody is more qualified than him in a certain area, or has more experience, he

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AMC & FIC’s The Walking Dead. will listen to them. Ultimately, one of the things I love about playing him is that when he makes his mind up, he rarely goes back on it. Sometimes you can be fundamentally wrong or corrupt in a decision, but one of the great things about a leader is certainty. Once a decision has been made, he stands behind his decision. That takes great courage and great fortitude. And that’s also why people want to stand behind him.

WS: I heard there’s a “Rick Grimes for President” campaign from some of your fans.

LINCOLN: Maybe about four years ago they wanted Rick Grimes for mayor. Now there is a campaign for the presidency. You know, I’m very concerned about that, I don’t think we need Rick Grimes just yet!

[Laughs] He’s a little extremist, or at least he is at this point in the story.

WS: In season five, you put on a security guard uniform at Alexandria— and lost the facial hair. How important were those things for Rick Grimes’s sense of identity after all this time he’s spent looking for something resembling a normal life?

LINCOLN: It was something that had been planned. Two years before we played it out, Scott said to me, I really want to visually see this nadir in all of the survivors’ lives, and just at that point, there is hope again. It made much more sense when I got into the uniform. It was incredibly revealing. Rick has been fervent, wild and tenacious—he had to push the survivors because they were at their lowest ebb. Then they got to [Alexandria]. When Alex [Breckenridge], who plays Jessie in the show, tenderly touches the nape of my neck and the small of my back—no one has been tender or kind to him or any of the survivors for years. That sort of unlocked him in a way, but also made him incredibly vulnerable. As soon as he gets asked to become a constable—which made me laugh; I love the use of the word “constable”—he realizes that this presents an incredible strategy for him. That uniform is like another mask. That scene when he’s speaking to his closest confidantes, Carol and Daryl, on the porch, you realize there is some Machiavellian strategy in all of this.

When I played that scene out, it all made sense. I just went, Oh, I get it now! I was channeling the T-1000 [the shape-shifting robot] in the Terminator movies. [Laughs] WS: What’s fascinating about Alexandria is that while it looks welcoming and pristine, so many of the scenes set there are filled with suspicion and mistrust between your group of survivors and the existing residents.

LINCOLN: There was an opening scene, when we first arrive there, and we walk in and I’m holding [my baby daughter] Judith. We look like a feral pack of wolves. Sasha, under my command, shoots a walker, and I say, “It’s lucky we’re here.” That says it all. Perhaps we’re the virus—the patients overtaking the ward. That for me was a very interesting thing to do. And we’re still in that phase. If this were to happen, how would you redefine civilization and society? How would you build it again in this hell, in this apocalypse? That’s the clash we’re involved in. We left the story [at the end of season five] with lots of things bubbling, with lots of different characters. How are they trying to integrate? Can they integrate? Is it worth integrating? Is there a viable future? And also thrown into the mix are some serious threats just outside the walls.

WS: As the number one name on the call sheet, do you feel a responsibility to set a tone on set, especially when there are all these new characters coming into the show?

LINCOLN: I never want to be one of these benevolent dictators that goes, “We’re so friendly and we’re such a great family!” What I do like to do is welcome people and hopefully lead by example. I care so much about this story, that’s the bottom line. But so do the 350 other people working on it. I don’t think you have to rule with an iron fist. Actors arrive, suitably up for it and excited, and we’ve been so blessed. The biggest compliment we can get is the quality of the actors that have joined our show in season six. They’ve all been absolutely magnificent. And we’ve had that every single year. They very quickly realize that the crew are far more passionate than any other crew they’ve experienced, and everybody wishes them well. You just have to look anywhere on this shoot and everybody is rooting for you. You can’t fake that.

As number one on the call sheet, with the most lines to learn, I’m fortunate that I get to watch all of these brilliant actors joining us and I get to marvel that I’m still around—hopefully!—to work with this brilliant crew and cast. When we started this show, the original DNA of this cast and crew was extraordinary. Everybody came from a theatrical background. We all, like lemmings, jumped off this cliff together and hoped the parachutes would open. And they did. All I care about is honoring those people who created the ethos on this show and are continuing that ethos. And we are still very blessed that there are original members [still on the show]—Melissa McBride, Steven Yeun, Norman Reedus, Chandler Riggs. One of the great privileges has been watching Chandler [who plays Rick’s son] turn into this extraordinary young man. I’m very excited to see what the fans think about his journey this season.

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Peter Capaldi Doctor Who

very sweet. We had a big ceremonial hug and then he passed his watch to me and off he went and left it to me. It was scary, and it takes a while to get the hang of it—where all the switches are and what they do.

WS: Where do you see your Doctor in the Doctor Who pantheon?

How is he different from the ones that came before?

CAPALDI: I think he’s quite similar—he’s older, but they’re all basically the same. He’s a character that’s infatuated with the cosmos and the joys of travel through time and space, with varying degrees of cantankerousness. Obviously I’d be closer to the cantankerous earlier Doctors than the lovable later ones, but I think that is befitting of a man my age.

WS: What are some of the things you learned from your first season that you can bring to the new episodes?

CAPALDI: I think we can have more fun. The first season was about establishing yourself as the new Doctor, and people need to accept you, so it tends to be a bit anxiety-ridden. People try out different ideas, writers try out different ideas, because they’re not quite sure what direction to go in. But this year I can see quite clearly and they—the writers—can see what’s specific to me and it’s a better place to start from. So, more knowledge of who this Doctor is, less focus on the struggle that he is having with himself, and more focus on the adventures that lie ahead.

A veritable British institution, Doctor Who is arguably the U.K.’s biggest scripted export, having reached more than 180 territories last year. The sci-fi show is such a massive cult hit that the periodic announcements of who will be the next Doctor have become television events in and of themselves. In 2013, millions worldwide tuned in to learn that Peter Capaldi—best known for his portrayal of fiery, sharptongued spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in the political satire The Thick of It—would be the Twelfth Doctor. A lifelong fan of the show, Capaldi has given viewers a darker, more serious Doctor, while continuing in the tradition set by the actors who preceded him.

WS: Growing up, what did Doctor Who mean to you?

CAPALDI: It was my favorite program. I made sure I watched it every Saturday. It started when I was 5, so I think it’s deeply engrained in me and I found it to be a magical experience. I thought it was a great combination of sci-fi and fairy tales and horror.

WS: When did you know you wanted to play the Doctor? What were you doing when you heard that you had the part?

CAPALDI: I never went through life thinking, “Dear Diary, I want to play the Doctor,” I was just getting on with my life. But I’d always been a huge fan of the show. I was at home in London when the news came—it was during the time I was filming The Musketeers. On Musketeers there were a few directors who had come from Doctor Who, so I was always asking how Matt [Smith, the Eleventh Doctor] was and how the show was going. When I heard that Matt was [leaving] I didn’t phone my agent and ask to be put forward, because I didn’t think they would be going in that direction.

WS: What was it like for you, stepping onto the TARDIS set for the first time?

CAPALDI: Well, when I stepped onto the TARDIS for the first time, it was Matt’s. I did the regeneration scene with Matt and it was

WS: What can you tell us about the upcoming season?

CAPALDI: It’s a big, epic, cinematic season. There’s great ambition visually and emotionally in terms of the story. There are Vikings on a spaceship—not space Vikings, real Vikings! There are some fantastic vintage monsters—the Zygons are back! This season is really about Clara and the Doctor as a little gang, having a good time exploring everything that’s available to them.

As ever with Doctor Who, there’s a dark shadow growing which will engulf them.

WS: There have been some amazing guest stars on the show.

What’s it been like for you working with lots of new actors

Peter Capaldi’s first season as the lead in the BBC’s biggest-selling brand notched up ratings highs in several markets worldwide. every week, as compared with being on a show that has an ensemble cast that you spend most of a season with?

CAPALDI: One of the great joys about Doctor Who is that you have a new cast coming in every few weeks, in the same way that you have a new setting and a new environment rather than being stuck in the same offices or the same courtrooms or the same streets as you would be if you were in a cop show.

The cast is always brilliant, always very stimulating, and it’s been great to have Maisie Williams with us on this season. I’m a huge fan of Game of Thrones, so it’s lovely having her along, although I have to keep reminding her not to give [away] any spoilers!

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WS: How has the relationship between the Doctor and his time-traveling companion Clara evolved?

CAPALDI: They’ve bonded very deeply. The Doctor that I play is not very interested in being popular. But she feels he errs on the side of being too distant, so she tries to build his social skills, which is fun. I think he has a very deep affection for her—she humanizes him. One of the things I wanted to do when I took on the part was have him be more alien, more strange, but in a way Clara makes him feel more accessible now and yet allows him to retain the strangeness. Jenna [Coleman, who plays Clara] is just fabulous.

WS: I understand you took your first trip to Comic-Con this year. What was that experience like for you?

CAPALDI: Comic-Con was enormous fun. It was very exciting going into a panel with 7,000 people there—7,000 hungry Doctor Who fans. Their enthusiasm and affection for the show is really

quite overwhelming, and I’m in a very privileged position to be at the center of that. It’s a great carnival atmosphere there—with people dressed as Yoda or Thor, with costumes of varying degrees of professionalism.

WS: Why do you think this character has been able to endure for so long?

CAPALDI: Because he can change! He’s a superhero with no particular powers, he stumbles into adventures and into danger and he does his best to cobble it all together. I think that’s more interesting than being the U.S. military in space. If you’re on [Star Trek’s] Enterprise you’re basically on a battleship with torpedoes and a huge crew. The Doctor doesn’t have those things, he just stumbles along, and I think that’s an attractive quality. There’s also a strange melancholy in it. Every time he regenerates a bit of him dies. Other people don’t articulate that, but it’s part of the potency.

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Tatiana Maslany Orphan Black

MASLANY: I had a lot more time with the first few clones. I had to develop Alison, Cosima, Sarah and Beth in the audition process—so they were already under way. Helena was kind of a surprise halfway through the season, as Rachel was, and Tony was, and Krystal definitely was. They had a shorter, more truncated process. I was shooting the series at the same time as I was trying to create these characters. It’s a real test of my endurance and stamina to develop a new character while still defending the characters that I’m playing. It’s a lot [laughs], but it’s always fun.

Orphan Black fans were rejoicing this summer when Tatiana Maslany finally landed a Primetime Emmy nomination in the category of lead actress in a drama series. For the previous two years, social media had erupted in outrage when the Canadian actress was left out of the Emmy mix. She has, after all, pulled off playing a core group of five very different characters, and several others, in the series, which explores the issues of human cloning, identity and more. Thanks to some post-production wizardry, and Maslany’s nuanced performances, the “Clone Club” members are frequently seen in scenes together, and routinely one of the clones is pretending to be another as they seek to understand the conspiracy behind their creation.

WS: What was your initial reaction to the script?

MASLANY: It was unlike anything I had ever read in terms of the possibilities of it and the challenges of it. That really turned me on. I was rabidly hungry for that kind of a part. I wasn’t sure that it would actually work or if the gimmick would fall in on itself. Luckily the timing was such that we had the right people behind the show and the public was ready for it. We are very lucky that it hit the way that it did, because I think that in a more cynical environment it might not have worked so well.

WS: How did it feel watching an episode for the first time and seeing the “Clone Club” members together in the same room?

MASLANY: It was bizarre! It’s crazy to watch the scenes back and see how they come together, because I do my part and then it goes off to post-production and they put their magic on it, which is to make everybody else’s work look amazing. If we didn’t have them we would have nothing; the cracks in the scenes would be so obvious. It’s really exciting and it’s so much fun. We continue to try to push the boundaries of what we’re willing to do in those clone scenes so that it keeps us on our toes and keeps the audience guessing as to how it was done.

WS: How did you prepare for the first set of clones introduced in season one? And was that process different in the latest season with the introduction of Krystal?

WS: In this past season you weren’t the only clone in town. What’s it been like having this new dimension to the show? Did you give Ari Millen, who plays the Castor clones, any tips on how it’s done?

MASLANY: We talked about it before he took on the part, but it was never an advice thing because [how you prepare] is so specific to each person.

I told him about my own experience, and he came to the set to watch us shoot the clone dance party in season two. But he really made it his own process. He also had such a different challenge than I did, which was that the Castor clones were raised together. Their differences were more nuanced and their brotherhood was stronger; they had a different dynamic than the Leda clones, who are dispersed and who are discovering each other for the first time and are very different. I thought he did such an amazing job. It was so great to get to watch somebody else do that thing and confront that challenge.

It really opens up the nature-versus-nurture debate in a different way and allows us to look at identity differently. There’s something great about the military aspect of it too, [to look at] how much of your identity gets stripped from you when you’re in this sort of homogenized group.

When you’ve been raised as that and you’ve been raised to kill, how do you break out of that? Those questions are really interesting and relevant.

WS: My favorite scenes are the ones when the “Clone Club” members are spending time together. Tell us about the production process for you.

MASLANY: We did that dinner scene at the end of season three, and that was a blast! We not only had four clones and Felix in the scene, we had Donnie, Art, Mrs. S and Scott. It’s really fun to add those people into it because they are so much a part of the show and sometimes they can be second fiddle to the clone pyrotechnics. We have such amazing co-stars and such an amazing support cast, so it was great to get to spend those

In any given episode of the cult hit Orphan Black, Tatiana Maslany plays five or more characters— occasionally in the same scene. days with them and for them to be in on the process of how those scenes happen. There were a lot of hysterics, both tears and laughter.

We block the whole sequence, and I’ll have to block as four different characters in that sequence and predetermine what the movements are like so that the lighting can be specific and so that everybody knows what we are doing and that the camera moves can be memorized. Then we shoot one pass with all of our doubles and all of the cast, and the camera memorizes that movement. Then everybody leaves except for me and potentially one person I might interact with. Then we do the scene or I do the scene by myself, looking at people across the table who aren’t there and speaking to them and listening in on a headset so that I can respond to their lines. Then we go back and we do a clone changeover and I shoot another

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MASLANY: I was speaking to someone today about where television is right now and there’s a real drive to have women in lead stories. That inherently is interesting, in terms of how we look at identity and experience on Orphan Black and what makes us ourselves and what makes us unique and all the potential of who we could be depending on who our parents were or the choices that we make. I don’t know why it’s struck such a chord, but there’s something about the timing of it that people are ready for this kind of storytelling and are willing to go on the ride. In a more cynical time it wouldn’t have worked. But maybe shows like Game of Thrones have paved the way for more fantasy and imagination in the viewership.

WS: I’ve read you have a background in improv. Are there things from your improv work that have helped you in Orphan Black or any of your feature film work?

MASLANY: Absolutely. I’ve done a lot of work in film that is based completely in improv, so there it has definitely helped me. In terms of Orphan Black, the character creation itself is very much based in improv. The whole thing about improv is saying yes and fully committing to it. When I have to do these quick changeovers halfway through the day it’s about going for it and not being afraid to look like an idiot because the crew just saw me as this character and now suddenly I’m acting as this other one. [The experience also helps] in those scenes where I’m acting opposite of nobody, creating another person across from me. So much of improv is done on a blank stage, where you have to create all the props, costumes and environments. So it’s not a huge stretch for me to have to create a person across from me who doesn’t actually exist and speak to them. Definitely improv has helped me in that way.

BBC America & Space’s Orphan Black. section of it, responding to what I just shot. So I have to remember what I did and respond to it in kind. It’s a crazy, bizarre, very technical process.

WS: Are there things that you do when switching between characters?

Are there traits that help you lock into each one?

MASLANY: To be honest with you, at this point the hair and makeup room really helps. When I’ve got the wig on as Helena it’s a lot easier to sink into who she is. For me it always comes back to the physicality—how they walk, where they hold their tension, what they’re afraid of. I feel like the characters are so in my body at this point that it’s really about just letting them live and letting them talk.

WS: How do you prepare for those scenes where, for example, Cosima is pretending to be Alison?

MASLANY: For those I’ll always start as the real character that I am being.

So if it’s Cosima playing Alison I’ll start as Cosima, and then just let her pretend and try her best. Cosima is not an actor, so her flaws can show more and her slipups can be bigger. The great thing about it is that it allows me to make a big mess and make a lot of mistakes, and that’s sort of the fun of it, to let characters bleed into each other, not be too precious about it and let myself give it away a little.

WS: How do you keep track of all those complex story lines?

MASLANY: I don’t know anything, I’m so stupid when it comes to the plot.

I leave that up to other people. I have no clue what’s going on. I just have to be in the moment, and as long as I’m in the moment, then I’m in the right place.

WS: The show has such a huge cult following with very devout fans.

Why do you think it’s struck such a chord with viewers?

WS: What kind of atmosphere have showrunners Graeme Manson and John Fawcett created on set for you and the rest of the cast?

MASLANY: It’s super collaborative. They are always checking in, in terms of new characters being introduced or story lines or passing things by me so that I’m in the loop and have as much of a voice as they do. That’s been really great. Krystal [the newest clone] came out of a little joke I was doing on set, playing in that voice. Graeme just went, “Oh that’s perfect, let’s make her into a character.” Then it was about how to create her and make her real and not just a joke or a caricature. They’ve always been really open in terms of the way the show is moving.

WS: You’re also doing feature-film work. Is it refreshing to fully immerse yourself in just one character, versus five or six?

MASLANY: Absolutely. It’s a totally different process to just get to sit with one character for two months instead of switching back and forth daily.

It requires a different energy. I love working on feature films; that’s kind of where my heart has always been. I’ve gotten to do two exciting pieces this year, one directed by Kim Nguyen and the other directed

by Joey Klein, who’s a first-time feature director. Both of them really fed me in a creative way. I felt refreshed by them because there’s something about working on a small piece—you’re just exploring and discovering and there’s no pressure for it to be on network television or anything. You just make it for yourselves, to tell the story.

WS: Does having those opportunities help you in your work on Orphan Black?

MASLANY: For sure. It reminds me about taking it slower and not feeling like I have to tell the whole story in one scene. The characters can develop over time and can reveal themselves over time. With the longform format of television, you have a lot of space to slowly peel off the layers of the character and there’s no real rush. I definitely learned that from doing features again.

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Kathy Bates American Horror Story BATES: The first year [with Coven] I knew a lot going into it. I knew that my character was going to come back to life. We discussed some of the things that she’d be shocked at. Ryan was talking about cell phones and other modern-day things that would be so mindblowing to her. I said, And God, there’s an African American who is in the White House! From that [idea] came the wonderful scene, which is still one of my favorites, where my character is watching President Obama on TV and she can’t believe her eyes. So we knew that she was going to be struggling with race. That season really was all about acceptance of people’s differences.

With Freak Show, I didn’t know a lot about the character beforehand. I knew that she was a bearded woman. Ryan said that she came from Baltimore; in true Ryan style, he said that she had a “light accent.” [Laughs] I discovered that there’s no such thing as a light Baltimore accent. I watched a couple of speeches that Baltimore’s Senator [Barbara] Mikulski made in Congress and I found a website that had you sing the National Anthem in a Baltimore accent—that was my warm-up! I got so many bad reviews about that accent. Ryan said it was great because it was publicity for the show. So, to some people I succeeded and to others I failed miserably.

Kathy Bates was hardly a household name when she won an Oscar for her role as the menacing Annie Wilkes in Misery in 1990. The Tennessee-born star has now solidified her place among the acting elite, with movies such as Dolores Claiborne and much success in theater. Her TV work has garnered her multiple Emmy nominations and wins, including for the two seasons she’s appeared in so far of American Horror Story. The horror-anthology series, which is the brainchild of Ryan Murphy, has seen Bates portraying a racist, high-society, Creole socialite back from the grave in Coven and a bearded lady with an indistinguishable accent in Freak Show. She returns for another chapter of Horror Story this fall with Hotel.

WS: What is it like to work with some of the same actors every season, but with different characters and story lines?

BATES: There’s a sense of security. A lot of us come from theater backgrounds—Jessica, Denis [O’Hare], Finn [Wittrock], Angela [Bassett], Sarah [Paulson] and others. We all respect that in one another. Without really talking about it, we all speak the same language. We’re all getting to, as they say, use our chops. It’s magic.

I loved working with Jessica last year. She’s become a very good friend. Whenever our schedule was set to work together I was always excited. This year, I am getting to work with Sarah Paulson a lot. Each year is a new challenge.

WS: The cast has incredible A-list talent, alongside some fantastic newcomers. What is that dynamic like?

BATES: We have Lady Gaga this year! She has this amazing career as a singer and performer; she’s really a performance artist. She’s incredibly creative and imaginative. She’s bringing all of that with

WS: A few seasons of American Horror Story had already aired before you signed on. Were you a fan of the show? How did you get involved?

BATES: I was driving up Beverly Boulevard [in Los Angeles] when I saw this big billboard that had, on one end, a pregnant woman and, on the other end, a man in a rubber suit. I looked at it and thought, What is that? That’s what first drew my eye to the show, and I wanted to see what it was all about.

Then I discovered that Jessica [Lange] was on the show. I was absolutely mesmerized by her performance. After my series [Harry’s Law] folded at NBC, I asked Jessica to put in a good word for me with Ryan Murphy. Bless her heart, she did! I had a meeting with him and he pitched me this wonderful part, of Delphine LaLaurie [in Coven], who was based on a real person in New Orleans. I was thrilled, and that began my history with Horror Story.

It has been a wonderful experience. In the south we say, “I’ve landed in clover.” It’s such a unique show. The actors love to play dress-up, just like kids. It’s so much fun to have some of the same friends that you love working with all playing different characters every year.

her to the show. All of us have embraced that. Apart from everything she brings to the show, she’s just a sweetheart. She’s really young and has accomplished so much, but she’s been raised right. She looks like a diva, which is fabulous, but she really has a great heart.

We have all loved coming to work with her.

If there were ever a fledgling actor coming in, someone who wasn’t really known at all, we would always take them under our wing and treat them with respect. The cast is very warm and welcoming with everyone.

WS: How much did you know about each new season’s premise or the characters you’d play before agreeing to take part?

WS: How would you describe your working relationship with Ryan Murphy?

Kathy Bates has picked up an Emmy for her work on American Horror Story, in which she plays a different character each season.

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FX’s American Horror Story: Coven.

BATES: The first season [that I did] he came and directed the pilot. I was very, very nervous! He’s a genius, and I wanted to do well for him. I really love him as a director. Last year he also came and directed the pilot. This year I’m starting to feel comfortable enough with him to relax and joke around. It’s taken me a while. [Laughs] He’s directing more than one episode this year, I think. I love being around him, but there’s always that sense of, Wow! This guy is really at the top of the heap, and more so now than ever. I respect his taste. I respect that he wants things to be right, even if it means doing something over again. I’m really enjoying his friendship.

WS: What has made your experience acting in American Horror Story unique and different from other roles you have played?

BATES: The camaraderie over the seasons, and having the ability to change, to shape-shift. Those would be the main things.

When we were in New Orleans [shooting Coven], we all got together a lot, partied a lot and had a good time! I got to make a lot of new friends. That’s very different from when I’m in Los Angeles, which is where my home is—and don’t get me wrong, I’m so glad that we’re shooting in L.A. this year (I cried when I found that out!).

I really got to know [the other cast members] when we were in New Orleans. Then, because we’re all working together season after season, those relationships continue. It is a great gift from this show.

WS: Having worked in film, TV and theater, do you have a preference?

BATES: Of course I was passionate about theater when I was doing it, but I haven’t done it now in a very long time. I, like a lot of people, turned my nose up at television very early on. I thought that I would only do theater. I came out to L.A. to do some more theater, and that’s when Rob Reiner saw me and cast me in Misery. Then I started a film career. I began to really enjoy film, and still turned my nose up at television.

Movies now are either tentpoles and sequels or they’re independent. There are very few movies in between—$15-million,

$20-million, $25-million [budget] films. Also, so much of the film industry has left California. The writers and directors have now flocked to television, and to cable in particular. The parts are there! Actors, creators and directors, we all go where the story is.

We all go where we’re turned on by ideas, where we can find a sense of play. We want to play in the best thing we can find, and today that’s cable.

WS: Of all the roles you’ve played, is there one that’s really stuck with you or that is very close to your heart?

BATES: In the theater, I had a very intense and unforgettable experience with ’night, Mother. The play won the Pulitzer Prize. Anne [Pitoniak] and I were nominated for Tonys. It wasn’t the [awards] that were important to us; it was the experience of going through the creation and realization of those characters. There were a lot of emotional experiences along the way. That will always be very close to my heart.

In film, it would have to be Dolores Claiborne. That was a situation where we had a great amount of time to create the character. I really loved the transformation into Dolores.

For television, I’m still discovering! I’m very proud of LaLaurie. I was very proud of Ethel [in Freak Show]. This year [in Hotel], Iris is a real challenge. In television I’m still discovering the characters I feel closest to. I certainly feel close to this show, that’s for sure.

WS: Is there any type of project, in film or television, that you haven’t done yet and would like to explore?

BATES: I think of it in terms of people I would like to work with. I would love to work with my friend Janet McTeer. I am doing a film in January with Xavier Dolan, and I’m tremendously excited about that experience. For me, it’s the experience of the work—the collaborations, the relationships, how the scenes go, how I feel about it at the end of the day—that I carry with me. The experience is the most important part.

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Dominic West The Affair

story. It’s interesting as an actor because you get to play a swaggering lothario and also a rather timid, reticent man, depending on the viewpoint, so it stretches the character a little more.

WS: What does that say about objective reality—does it really exist?

WEST: Well, it doesn’t, of course. I suppose it does in hindsight, but certainly in something very domestic and personal and something as volatile or emotional as a divorce or an affair, you’re not going to get a lot of objective reality.

WS: Was Noah looking to have a fling, or were there deeper reasons for the affair?

WEST: That’s interesting. Certainly on the surface he had no intention. He was a happily married man with four children he loved and he would have hated to disrupt them or hurt them in any way, so I think absolutely not. But through this totally irrational impulsive affair he discovers that he is not feeling completely whole, and therefore [is tempted by] reckless behavior, and it makes him realize what is lacking in his marriage. What I think is crazy is that he ditches the whole marriage! But he does it I think for reasons of integrity and of honesty and also for reasons of excitement, obviously sexual as well as creative. It rather overtakes him, this girl and the power she has over him.

While on vacation, Noah Solloway, a happily married father of four— played by Dominic West—meets a younger woman, the beautiful, damaged Alison Lockhart, also married but struggling as she and her husband try to come to grips with the death of their child. Through a unique storytelling device, The Affair explores all the ramifications of this extramarital relationship through two points of view, Noah’s and Alison’s.

West is no stranger to groundbreaking series or flawed characters. He was Detective Jimmy McNulty in The Wire.

WS: What appealed to you about Noah Solloway? What did you find interesting about him?

WEST: I know him and I quite like him. He’s an ordinary guy and a decent guy; he’s a good dad and he’s a husband. Essentially the role examines what happens in midlife to some men when they feel they are creatively stunted or sexually unadventurous, or they haven’t lived their lives as they wished they had. That’s quite a potent subject and I like him for that. I also like him because I think he’s a bit of an idiot a lot of the time, but men are, and I think he’s ultimately likeable because he’s an honest man.

WS: Each episode of season one is told from two points of view.

One half shows Noah’s recollection of events, and the other half Alison’s. I found that extremely interesting as a viewer. Was that also an interesting challenge for the actors?

WEST: Yes, very much so. It means that you are almost playing two different characters, and in season two they are using four viewpoints, so you get the viewpoints of Noah’s wife and Alison’s husband as well. It’s interesting because you get to play sometimes extreme versions of your character, especially this season, because Noah and his wife are going through a divorce, so her recollection or her viewpoint of his behavior is extremely different from what his recollections are. That interests me a lot in the narrative: subjective viewpoints are how we experience everything in life. So it seems to me a very real way of telling a

WS: I find that The Affair has a lot of nonverbal communication that depicts state of mind, motivation and emotion. Is it harder to get moods across with looks and gestures than with words?

WEST: It’s very interesting you say that. We usually cut down a bit from some of the writing because every beat is written, and I often say, actually we can get all of that with a look. And they are very happy to cut some of the stuff anyway. I love the words and I love the writing, but it’s become very apparent to me now when there is too much written and that we can convey far more in looks and gestures and in the way body language relates the story. I find all of that very interesting, and the added advantage is that I don’t have to do it in an accent that is not my own!

[Laughs]

One of the U.K.’s best-known actors across theater, film and TV, Dominic West plays one of the two leads in the Showtime hit The Affair.

WS: I meant to ask, is the accent difficult to maintain?

WEST: A bit, because Ruth [Wilson, who plays Alison] is British as well, and we chat on the set and we don’t stay in character, so we sort of put ourselves up against it. We’ve got pretty good at it now, but it’s always a challenge. It’s interesting because it helps you create a distance between yourself and the character, which I find is always useful. But I’ve always found it difficult to play American, especially an emotional or angry scene. But that is part of the challenge and part of why I like doing it.

WS: You’ve had a variety of roles, including costume dramas, movies like Pride, TV shows The Wire and The Hour. What do you look for?

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Showtime’s The Affair.

WEST: Something different, something I haven’t done before, something that is a challenge and something that I find resonates in some way with what I find interesting in life. I did Pride mainly because I had a two-minute solo disco dance in the middle of it! You have to feel that something in the character resonates with you and that you have something to say about that character. Or that something is going to be fun or enjoyable or connects with you in playing that. Honestly, it comes down to good writing, really, because there’s not much of it around. I don’t get offered a great deal of really good writing, so I jump at it when it becomes available.

WS: And a lot of that seems to be moving to television nowadays, at least in the U.S. WEST: Yes, if you were Charles Dickens you would be writing for television nowadays! In long-form television you are able to go into great amounts of detail that movies cannot.

WS: The Wire was such a game-changing show. Was it also for you and your career, and what did you enjoy most about playing Jimmy McNulty?

WEST: It was, I suppose, a game changer, and it’s still what people know me for and it enabled me to get out of whatever box I might have been in in terms of casting. As a Brit I might have done costume dramas all my life! I’ve done many costume dramas, but The Wire enabled me to say I can travel a long way from myself and hopefully make it believable. It was also such an interesting, well-written show and one that you really hadn’t seen the likes of before. In many ways it changed a lot of things about television series, certainly about cop shows or

depictions about life on the street. I’m unusually proud of being involved in it, and what I loved about it was the writing and the other people who were involved in it. And I liked playing McNulty because I suppose I am most comfortable in flawed but ultimately likable antiheroes. That’s good fun to play because you get to do the right thing and you are heroic in some ways in spite of yourself and of your own flaws, which I think is interesting.

WS: You’ve worked on both sides of the Atlantic. How do the budgets and productions of the U.S. shows compare to the British shows you’ve worked on? And what’s more important, the quality of the writing or the size of the budget?

WEST: [Laughs] Often they come together in some way! Yes, the difference between the two industries is size and money. So it’s always nice when you have a nice American budget and a pool of talent that you have in America, particularly in writers. But Abi Morgan in The Hour, that’s a great writer. It was really fun playing her writing, but had she had more resources I think the show might have gone on longer and it might have been more easily sustained.

WS: What upcoming projects do you have?

WEST: I’m shooting The Affair till November and then I’m doing a play, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, at the Donmar Warehouse in London just to keep my hand in theater. Then we’ll see, I don’t know what will happen after that.

WS: I hope there will be another season of The Affair.

WEST: Oh, I think there will be, I think there will be.

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Jeffrey Tambor Transparent WS: I imagine you can tap into more vulnerable, softer, more humane parts of you for Maura than for George Bluth or Hank Kingsley.

TAMBOR: Certainly George Bluth; he is the original Darwinian! But Oscar Bluth had a bit of vulnerability, as did Hank, poor Hank! It’s glib of me to say that because Maura is a woman she is more vulnerable. We are all vulnerable. The more I find out about Maura and her voyage, the less meaning any term has for me. I don’t know if that makes sense, it’s just my view on it. It sure is thrilling. I did a scene the other day with the wonderful Alexandra Billings, who plays my transgender friend Davina, and she is a transgender artist of great talent. I remember as we were doing this particular scene for season two I said, This has never been done on television before. Stay tuned!

One of Hollywood’s most versatile and prolific actors, Jeffrey Tambor has specialized in characters that blend opposing traits. Among his most famous are the despicable yet all too human Hank Kingsley in The Larry Sanders Show and the evil and vulnerable George and Oscar Bluth in Arrested Development.

None has represented more of a contrast than Maura Pfefferman, the transgender woman in Transparent, with whom Tambor ventures into uncharted territory for scripted programming. The role landed him an Emmy this year.

WS: How was your preparation for the role of Maura different from how you’ve prepared for other roles?

TAMBOR: Every role has its own set of [characteristics], externally and internally, that you have to bring into yourself. There is a wonderful adage in acting: You’re stuck with your character but your character is also stuck with you. With Maura, what’s interesting is that she is transitioning. She is a transgender woman and so there was a whole other set, externally and internally, that I had to adopt, adapt, acquire and learn about, and it’s been one of the most thrilling rides of my career! I continue to learn every day. Just the other day, with Zackary Drucker, who is one of my trans consultants on the show and one of our producers, I had one of the most incredible conversations. I keep asking what is, how is, what about this, what about that, and new avenues and explorations happen every day. I don’t know if that answers your question. I will tell you this, I thought that the external part would be more daunting than the internal part, whereas indeed the internal part seems to be the one that has the most—for want of better words—gravy and guts.

The outside was very easy, and I adapted to it very easily and love it.

WS: Did you take on the role of Mort, who transitioned into Maura, or did you feel like Maura from the very beginning?

TAMBOR: That’s an excellent question! No, I’ve always felt that Maura was within my grasp. I don’t mean to sound all actor-y when I answer, so please use that as a preface, but I feel that Maura is a friend; a friend I have discovered again. She has allowed me to use more Jeffrey than I’ve ever used in my roles.

WS: Besides Maura’s journey from man to woman, what other important themes does Transparent explore?

TAMBOR: From male to female the journey is incredible, but Maura’s journey sparks and ignites everyone else’s journey in the Pfefferman family, and that is what we are fast upon in season two. When people ask me what is the bare, bare nub of this series I say, If I change, will you still love me? That is indigenous to every family. Every family can relate to it. When people stop and talk to me on the street about this show there are usually three strands: One, they will say I didn’t know what to expect from the show, which I think is code for their comfort or discomfort about the subject. Two, I say this in all humility, they will talk about their idea of me playing this role without actually having seen it. Three, often they will start talking about their families—the transgender experience they’ve had in their families or friends of families, but they will also just talk about family. So something about the Pfeffermans is coming through on some level.

WS: Maura’s adult children are just a wee bit self-involved! When she was dealing with her children I wasn’t seeing her as transgender, I was just relating to her as a parent…

TAMBOR: Beautiful!

WS: And seeing her just as a person…

TAMBOR: Oh, I love that!

Jeffrey Tambor’s Emmy-winning performance in Transparent has made the show Amazon’s most high-profile original series to date.

WS: How is she evolving as a parent?

TAMBOR: I think she is a better parent, certainly better than Mort. Mort is angry. Do you remember after the scene I did with the great Bradley Whitford [who plays Mark/Marcy] where we get into the car and Mort starts shouting at his kids? I thought that was emblematic of how he was. He is struggling as Mort. Maura seems to be more present. She seems to have more of a maternal grasp of things. And she handles the Shabbat service quite well.

I know for sure that [Transparent’s creator and showrunner] Jill Soloway and the writers are taking the bubble wrap off in season two.

We are seeing the more flawed and less saintly Maura. For instance, in the first season, she plays the kids off one another a lot by telling them,

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Amazon’s Transparent.

Don’t tell the others I said this. My father used to say that, Don’t tell your mother. That’s so human, I love that about Maura. I think she’s more affectionate; more touchy-feely. She is less conflicted. A lot of people do say that about the kids—even Maura says that— they are so selfish. But the kids are in shock [to see their father transform into a woman]. That’s not easy, either on a conscious or a subconscious level.

As kids, we all knew when there was tension in the house and it scared us.

Can you imagine the ebb and flow of what they are feeling about what Mort is exhibiting? They redeem themselves beautifully in season two. They are good kids. The scene I am thinking about right now is poor Josh, sitting in front of Maura, as Maura takes down her hair on the couch and Josh can’t do it, he can’t [accept her] yet; he doesn’t have the equipment.

WS: Does comedy have the ability to reveal a character’s humanity, at times even more effectively than a drama?

TAMBOR: Yes, that is the function of comedy. You know that Chekhov called his plays comedies? In The Three Sisters [their dream of living in] Moscow [has you] dissolved in tears. I have always believed that laughter is curative and laughter teaches on so many levels. And that is really emblematic about this show and what Jill does, she zigs when you think she is going to zag, and zags when you think she is going to zig. That funeral scene is hysterical and then you are crying when the family is eating coleslaw—there you are! We laughed, God rest his soul, at my dad’s funeral because the rabbi had no idea who my dad was. The cantor was playing on the guitar and I thought, Oh my God! This is so Pfefferman-y!

WS: Is the set a welcoming one? You are a super-seasoned actor, but do you feel comfortable enough to try different things?

TAMBOR: I like the word “super-seasoned” and how that replaces “old”!

WS: No, I don’t mean old, I mean experienced!

TAMBOR: I’m 70 years old. On Jill’s set there is no wrong, there is just the next take and the next take and the next take. It’s not Woodstock, do whatever you want. It’s very hard work and very meticulous work. We did a scene last year, Bradley and I, where we went to Camp Camellia [a camp for cross-dressers]. We broke for lunch and we had hundreds of background players dressed beautifully, some transgender artists, some cisgender, and everyone dressed up gorgeously for the event in the evening. I remember walking around with our dinner plates as the sun was setting, we were out in Malibu, and I said, This is the most extraordinary thing I have ever done. It was so beautiful and everyone was so revved and we danced till two or three in the morning. Everyone was so happy. I remember Jill

dressing the background artists and I turned to somebody and said, You will never see this again; this is not how it’s done. Jill asked people to do whatever they wanted to do that night, bring your power, your beauty, your love and how important you are not only to the scene but to what we are saying and what this is all about, which goes all the way back to Jill’s first sentence on the set at the very first table read. The very first thing she said is that she wants to make this world safer. There it is. That’s the whole deal. I could talk forever about this.

WS: Someone very close to me came out this year, so I am trying not to pay attention to words or labels, but to see people as human beings as opposed to seeing gender. Do you think there is a perfect storm right now between Transparent and Caitlyn Jenner and other shows that have transgender story lines?

TAMBOR: Yes, we always talk about, even though it’s an overused word, the zeitgeist. It’s zeitgeist-y! You made my day just now telling me about the person close to you. I hear the word “authentic” in the community and on the set so much. It’s about being your authentic self and you’re right, it goes beyond words and terms. That is also what our show is about. Transparent can be seen a lot of different ways—a trans parent or transparent. Be your authentic self.

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Ben McKenzie Gotham

take on police work, trying to be as authentic as possible, and so there was a lot of practical training working with the LAPD. In Gotham, although I’m playing a cop again, a detective in this case, it’s clearly a larger-than-life world that we’re entering into, so it’s much more understanding of themes and the roleplaying that goes on in terms of Jim’s relationship to Bruce, primarily. Jim is, in many senses, the knight to the once and future king of Gotham, Bruce Wayne. Jim is trying to maintain order in a city that’s falling apart, while mentoring a young boy who will eventually succeed him and reign over a city as it crumbles. So [the preparation] involved more of a thematic understanding of the role, understanding of the underlying themes of the show, as opposed to a more practical, hands-on training.

Ben McKenzie broke into television as Ryan Atwood, the brooding teen heartthrob in The O.C. He then played a cop in the critically acclaimed Southland. Now, in the stylish, dark, at times campy Gotham, he is Detective James Gordon, who is investigating the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents in the years before Bruce becomes Batman. McKenzie portrays Gordon’s conflicting ambitions of trying to restore order to a corrupt city and resisting the trappings of power.

WS: What are the challenges of acting in a series whose characters have such a legacy and are so iconic, as opposed to acting in a series that is based on a completely new idea?

MCKENZIE: I would say it’s both a responsibility and an opportunity. It’s a responsibility to stay true to the intrinsic nature of these characters, the foundation that’s been laid over the last 75 years of Batman; these characters are so beloved and so well known in certain respects that you need to be true to their spirit.

The opportunity is to interpret them anew and add your own little contribution to the thousands of artists who have drawn these characters or acted these characters or have done all of the myriad jobs [necessary] to portray these worlds, either in print or on screen. So, it’s a real opportunity for us. We all felt the responsibility of it more heavily at the beginning when we were worried about pulling it off, quite frankly, and not embarrassing ourselves. But as the series has come out and it’s been well received both in the U.S. and in many parts of the world, that sense of freedom is really starting to grow. We’re starting to be able to focus on being creative and taking leaps of imagination and broadening the scope of the series to include all sorts of other characters that we haven’t had time to mention yet.

WS: Was the preparation for this role different from previous roles you’ve had?

MCKENZIE: It was different. The series before Gotham was Southland, which offered a much more purposefully realistic

WS: What are the themes of the show, and what can you tell us about season two?

MCKENZIE: The show explores a number of themes. One of them, that we will certainly be exploring more in season two and in future seasons, is really understanding the thin line between good and evil and understanding on quite a deep level who these “villains” are and why they are the way they are. One of the things that is really interesting about the show is that it actually delves into the origins of not just the heroes, but the “villains” themselves. You understand how a little pipsqueak like Oswald Cobblepot, who’s been berated his entire life and thought of as nothing more than a little bug underneath someone’s shoe, takes such offense to that and is so motivated by that lack of respect that he becomes the Penguin, a power broker in Gotham, by sheer force of will and emotional and psychological manipulation. And we’ll see similarly with Edward Nygma, who will become the Riddler, how his bipolar nature, split personalities, manifest in a character obsessed with games and words and [how he] uses his intelligence to play with law enforcement and also to amuse himself. We really get to understand who these villains are as well as the heroes.

In the first season we tried to do an awful lot, most of which we were successful at, but I think we made a miscalculation in turning the show into too much of a procedural, the villain of

Ben McKenzie was cast as James Gordon in Gotham after his acclaimed work on Southland and breakout role on The O.C. the week. In the second half of the first season there is a real shift to longer story lines involving villains that we really get to know for longer periods of time and their interactions with both Jim and Harvey and the rest of the police force. In future seasons, we’re really trying to make the show into much more what I believe it should have been all along, which is a serialized epic drama involving all of these characters. There are criminals committing crimes, of course, but you’re not opening on a dead body à la Law & Order and spending an hour finding that criminal and taking care of him. Instead, the criminals stick around for long periods of time and, in fact, many of our criminals this year are sticking around for the entire season. So

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FOX’s Gotham.

we’ll really get to know them, understand them, almost sympathize with them, their zany kind of sense of humor and offbeat characteristics. I think that’s really going to improve the viewing experience. To try to cram into 45 minutes, which is the length of the show after commercials, the establishing of a villain, seeing them do a couple of villainous things and then killing them, does a real disservice to how beloved these characters are. People want to spend time with not just the Penguin and the Riddler and whatnot, but Mr. Freeze and Joker and all of the characters that have been established over hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of comics. That’s what we’re going to do more in the second season. From the scripts we’re seeing, it’s created a huge difference, a really positive change in the show.

WS: Jim Gordon seems to have a very strong moral center, but he’s being pulled in different directions. Is there an evolution to his character, and does he remain a good guy?

MCKENZIE: That’s exactly the question that we are asking ourselves constantly on the show. Why are we focusing on Jim Gordon as opposed to Bruce Wayne? Well, we’re focusing on him because in our story Bruce is only a 13-year-old boy when we meet him. And so Jim is really a surrogate for Bruce. As a lawman, he is understanding that the way in which law and order is maintained in a city that’s falling apart is through stretching his morality, bending to the city and to the ways it works in order to get things done. If Jim were to remain rigid, he would either be dead or would not continue to be able to rise up the ranks of the power structure in Gotham. So, we’re

watching him evolve and he never turns into a “bad guy.” What he does do is learn how to gain power and use power in a city where power is neither gained nor used without moral compromise. We’re going in that direction in the second season; we open with quite a big moral compromise for Jim. WS: How did your experience on The O.C. shape you as an actor, and did you ever imagine it would become as huge as it did?

MCKENZIE: I had no idea what it would become when I started it because I had no idea what anything was! I was pretty much fresh off the boat! I had almost no experience acting on camera.

I was lucky enough to get the role, and we started filming the pilot a week or two after I got it. The pilot was picked up the week after we wrapped and we were shooting and it was all just sort of a whirlwind. So I had no idea what to expect. In terms of teaching me, I view it as my graduate school. I never went to graduate school for acting and instead I spent four years on the set. I learned very practically how things get done, not just how to act on camera, but also understand the way a set works and a lot of that is interpersonal and understanding who does what, how to interact with them, how to collaborate with them so that everyone feels respected and listened to, but there’s also a sense of hierarchy and things are done professionally and cleanly. The combination of the O.C. experience and the Southland experience put me in a good position to be of service on Gotham in ways that are not just being an actor. It really helped me understand how to get things done. The O.C. was enormously impactful and obviously changed my life completely, experiencing it was quite a graduate school.

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Téa Leoni

Madam Secretary something about her ordinariness that I like. That’s not quite the right word; I’ll think of a better one.

WS: It’s interesting that you say that. Elizabeth is totally a good person, but she’s fascinating. Is it more difficult to take a person who is “good” and make them interesting than playing a badass?

LEONI: I think in a way it is, because the idea of lack of character makes for great drama! It’s spicy, it’s shocking, it’s titillating, and there are no boundaries, there is a freedom.

One of the reasons I took this job, oddly enough, was because of the Henry character [Elizabeth’s husband]. I was so impressed that we would have a man on film that could stand alongside a very powerful woman and not derange himself or her in the process. I don’t think we’ve seen a lot of men like that. If I were a man I would be greatly offended by a lot of the depictions of men on television, mostly in that they can’t seem to be able to stand behind or alongside a powerful woman. I like the idea that they would have—shocker of shockers—a strong relationship where they hold each other accountable. Where they work it out; they figure it out.

I’ve played the hyper-neurotic, not-so-gracious characters. I’m particularly thinking about Spanglish. That was kicky because there is compassion there. As an actor, you’ve always got to have compassion for your characters, good or bad. One of the coolest things happened a couple of weeks ago. A woman walked up to me and said, My 10-year-old now wants to go to law school and get into politics because of you on Madam Secretary. And I loved that!

For most of her career, Téa Leoni has worked mainly in feature films, starring in a broad range of movies from Tower Heist and Jurassic Park III to Spanglish and The Family Man. She was attracted to the quality of television’s long-form storytelling and intrigued by the prospect of playing Elizabeth McCord, a former CIA analyst who left the agency on ethical grounds and is tapped by the President to be secretary of state in Madam Secretary.

WS: What attracted you to television and to Madam Secretary?

LEONI: I was ready to do a television series because my kids had gotten to the age where they can turn their own key and make their own breakfast in the morning, and I thought, they’re ready. I was curious about television because the level of work being done, from the cinematography to the commitment from every department, is in many ways more incredible than in film. Television used to be more like film light, and it’s not that way anymore. And I was certainly attracted to the idea of living with a character beyond the beginning, middle and end that take place in two months on a film. There is something about playing a character when you don’t know the middle or the end. I was looking forward to that opportunity. I had never done that. I had done a sitcom, but sitcoms are a little bit different.

Madam Secretary came at the eleventh hour of me looking around and thinking about a commitment to a different [project]. If they had been asking me to play a seasoned secretary of state I wouldn’t have been as interested; actually, they wouldn’t have asked me to begin with! But I liked the idea of a rogue, fish-out-of-water woman. I either made up or identified right off the bat with the fact that Elizabeth was hopeful. That was her dirty little secret. I like that dirty little secret. There are a lot of powerful women on television who have really fun, fetishistic hobbies and addictions! That’s fun and kicky and I’m loving a lot of these performances and the characters that are being created. I also like the opportunity to play a woman who is enough just as she comes, without any of that. We haven’t explored that. I like the idea that Elizabeth isn’t particularly extraordinary. She’s smart. She’s doing her best as a mother. There is

WS: You mentioned the Henry character. Henry and Elizabeth make an enviable couple.

LEONI: When we tested the pilot, it was really funny. You always test pilots and it’s more for shits and giggles than anything else. It was interesting because some of the women said Henry and Elizabeth look like they want to eat each other alive: after 25 years of marriage, these people are way too horny! I thought that was really funny. And the men were upset that they didn’t see more sex, the lovemaking scene was after the moment, it was sort of post-coital, as opposed to mid-coital!

Then we dug a little deeper with them and a lot of the women said, I still want to watch it. I still may not think that is my marriage or the marriages I see on television, but I want to see more. In a way that’s

Known primarily for feature films, Téa Leoni’s first TV drama, Madam Secretary, was one of the highestrated new shows on CBS last season.

Elizabeth, and that’s what people also respond to. Ultimately, she doesn’t run around pleading for her hopes, but you know she is hopeful. You know she believes she can get [the job] done. That’s a very strong aspect of human nature and at times we’re less in the presence of it. But I really like playing a hopeful woman.

WS: Madam Secretary depicts a different Washington, D.C., than the one we see on other shows—House of Cards, Veep and Scandal come to mind.

Was the vision for the show a more positive way of looking at government?

LEONI: One of the things we set out to do, and it’s going to get trickier in season two, is we have never used, to date, the words “Democrat” or “Republican”. If [showrunner] Barbara Hall had an agenda, it would be

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CBS’s Madam Secretary. to explore the polarization of Capitol Hill as it is right now, and what would politics look like, what could get done, if we didn’t have that.

Barbara doesn’t have an agenda, but what she did by removing those words and staying out of that nomenclature is that you get to see—I know [executive producer] Lori McCreary has a close relationship to this—that the State Department is the largest branch of government with people who are [committed to] public service. It’s really easy to cite what people are doing wrong, but if you take a look at the individuals, people aren’t there for the money, not for the most part. They are there because they want to effect positive change. People don’t get into politics in order to start a war, no matter who they are. We forget that. We can list all the things that get in the way, greed and righteousness and everything else, but there are people who work very hard and commit their lives, particularly the people in the State Department who are stationed overseas away from their friends and family and their country, in order to help our relationship with the world. It’s an immense and admirable commitment.

WS: How did you research the role?

LEONI: I recognized, more so than maybe any other part I’ve played, that I probably needed to get myself a little more educated on the brass tacks and nails of the position. So I did go down to Washington. I did talk to people who work at different levels in the State Department. I talked to, yes, Democrats and Republicans alike! And I had a really good [meeting] with former Secretary Madeleine Albright and got to ask her some questions. But ultimately, and I hate to disappoint so many people who are looking for me to confess that this role was designed after Hillary Clinton, but truly I’m fashioning Elizabeth off my mother, my father and my grandmother. They are three of the greatest diplomats I have ever known in my life. To have great diplomacy in life is a great asset that we can teach our children. But my parents knew that. They taught me a lot about that and it’s urgent, I really do try to teach my kids about it. But I wanted Elizabeth to be one of the greatest diplomats of all time. So she would have to have humor, too. I got that from members of my family probably more than from [Henry] Kissinger!

WS: The show deals with very serious topics, but there are great moments of humor. Is it difficult to find actors who can play the dramatic parts and infuse them with humor when needed?

LEONI: It’s interesting. When you look at it, every actor we have has done great comedic work or has great comedic timing or both, and that wasn’t by accident. The levity has to be available not only to the characters but to the cast. If we were sitting around slathering over some of these incredibly intense and dark political issues, we might be accurate but we’d also probably be off the air. Nobody wants to slog through that. And the humor is not just a diversion tactic. The humor is very real. It’s a little bit maudlin humor, but I do have to say, we have fun on that set! I would say our rowdiest scenes are in the conference room in the State Department because it’s Elizabeth with the staff, and the staff is extended. We have our day players who come in as our background artists. It’s a bit of a dinner party with a lot of personality and then [director] Eric Stoltz is one of the greatest bandleaders of all time!

WS: I am extremely envious of how Elizabeth and Henry manage their teenagers! Tell me about the dynamics of the family scenes.

LEONI: It’s funny because I actually don’t know that Elizabeth is a great parent. You must have diplomacy when dealing with teenagers, and that is Elizabeth’s greatest asset as a parent. Tim [Daly, who plays Henry] has two kids. I have two kids. We know the drill about teenagers. They are powerful, that’s what is so fabulous about teenagers. They don’t know the limits of it. Sometimes they strike in ways that they don’t even know they are doing it. So we really like to bring that dynamic to the scenes with the kids. Families are like free-for-alls, and you win some and you lose some. And I said to Barbara, Let’s not make these parents perfect; let’s not always make it go their way. But the one thing that we have been very conscious of is the partnership between Elizabeth and Henry, because that will be what makes the marriage strong. And teenagers do divide and conquer. I don’t know where they learn it. I was the same way. Remember being a kid, you would ask Mom when Dad wasn’t in the room, and then tell him that she said yes! [Laughs] There are some things that teenagers or kids just inherently do, so we certainly play with that. Occasionally, score one for the kids, they got Elizabeth and Henry on opposite sides of an issue—they played them. But for the most part, the two assets these parents have are diplomacy and partnership.

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Mireille Enos The Catch

WS: There is more to Alice than meets the eye. Will she have to deal with issues of trust and betrayal just as Sarah Linden did?

ENOS: Absolutely. Before her engagement, Alice kept herself quite private because of the things that she was protecting. For whatever reason, this man allowed her to open herself up and to trust him and now that has been shattered, so she will be dealing with those themes as well.

WS: I imagine Alice will be going through considerable emotional upheaval. That is something you dealt with a lot playing Sarah Linden.

ENOS: We watched Sarah have to deal with those feelings to an extent that most of us will never examine and it’s very juicy as an actor to get to go to those crazy, crazy places. Sarah is a person who started dealing with those issues from when she was very, very young. She is a very complicated, closed person to begin with. Alice is generally a gentler person than Sarah is, or at least she has a more graceful way of masking her defenses. That will be interesting to explore. I [just recently started] spending time with Alice, so I don’t fully know how she deals with these things yet. That will be interesting for the writers and me to figure out. Sarah had no problem being unlikable and had no issue with people seeing her crack, while I think Alice never wants the world to see her crack. So this will be a different exploration.

Mireille Enos had guest-starred in many TV series before her breakout role in The Killing, in which she entranced audiences with her emotionally raw portrayal of Detective Sarah Linden. Although she had decided to take a break from acting after the birth of her second child, Enos was drawn back to television by the character of Alice, a fraud investigator in The Catch, an upcoming drama from Shonda Rhimes.

WS: How did you become involved in The Catch?

ENOS: I had a baby a year ago, so I actually thought I would not even look at television. I had told everyone I just want to take a break, but [my agent] had his eye on this project. He had read it and sent it to my manager and finally he called me and said, We know what you said, but please will you read this, because it is really worthy of your attention. I responded to it and one thing led to another and I’m lucky enough to be doing it.

WS: What is it about Alice that intrigues you?

ENOS: She investigates financial fraud. She has a very analy tical mind. She is very precise, organized, ordered, and she is curious about numbers, but more than that she is curious about people who keep secrets. That is interesting to me. You spend a long time as an actor exploring the idea of secretkeeping and how that affects a person’s life. I believe that people are defined by their secrets.

When we meet Alice, she is perfectly happy, she is two weeks from getting married. She has the perfect guy, but then what is true is that the man posing as her fiancé is a con man and she herself is taken for everything she is worth. So now the fraud investigator has been conned and she starts to investigate her own fiancé. What is also true about Alice is that she has a lot of her own secrets and what draws her to that career is that she understands people who keep secrets because she does.

WS: Sarah had to investigate those gruesome crimes. Was it difficult to walk away from that at the end of your workday?

ENOS: I was lucky in some ways to have my daughter right at the same time as the series began, so it created the absolute necessity to compartmentalize. She was with me on the set every moment, so one minute you are playing The Cow Says Moo, and the next minute you are interrogating someone. It created a situation where I was able to leave Sarah at the door. The only time when that wasn’t entirely true was in season three, because that story line was so dark, the victimizing of those young girls was really troubling to me, especially since I had a baby girl, so that was harder. I didn’t sleep as well. But mostly, I was fine. I think

Shonda Rhimes’s The Catch, with Mireille Enos in the lead, has landed the plum Thursday night spot on ABC’s midseason schedule. you’ll find other actors saying this as well, when you’re doing really dark material, in order to survive it, the set is actually quite jovial, and in between scenes you tell jokes, you laugh, people bond. There are often outtakes produced of silly things people do on film, I wish there were an audio outtake reel because Joel [Kinnaman, who played Stephen Holder] and I had all the scenes in the car, and in between takes the sound guys were still recording, and we would be laughing hysterically about whatever, and then they would call action and we were in some dark place together. I actually think [the levity] makes the darkness of the world more interesting because it’s more complex and real, and also it’s just a way of surviving it.

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Priyanka Chopra Quantico

loved. They obviously know what they’re doing. My instinct tells me this will be something worth watching.

WS: I think it was Paul Lee who said your character was like a female Jason Bourne. How have you prepared for the physicality of playing an FBI recruit?

CHOPRA: I’ve done a lot of action movies. I’m so glad I did them! My last movie was Mary Kom, a biopic of a boxing champion. There was a lot of action in Don [a 2006 blockbuster hit]. I’ve played cops before. I have an interesting background, which made me relatively comfortable with the physical aspects of the role. But the hours are crazy and there’s a lot of stamina needed in the fight sequences. So I’m training and working out, which is something I hate doing!

WS: You mentioned that the hours have been tough. What are some of the other differences you’ve encountered between TV and film work?

CHOPRA: The hours—that’s the big one. The work culture is pretty much the same anywhere in the world. I’ve shot movies in Spain, in America, in the U.K. The funniest thing I’ve found is that all the ADs [assistant directors] in any part of the movie industry, in any part of the world, always dress the same! They’re always in shorts and loose T-shirts and bandanas and have walkie-talkies. I don’t find much of a difference in the work culture. The big difference is in the technicalities of filming [movies versus television]. TV is a marathon. It does not stop. It’s another beast.

Through her work in almost 50 Indian feature films since 2002, Priyanka Chopra has amassed an ardent fan base across the globe (she has more than 11 million followers on Twitter). The former Miss World is known for her eclectic film choices. This fall she takes on her newest challenge, playing Alex Parrish, an FBI trainee in the ABC drama Quantico—marking the first time a Bollywood actress has landed a leading Hollywood role. Parrish and her fellow recruits find themselves at the heart of an investigation into a massive terrorist attack as the FBI works to figure out who among them masterminded the plot.

WS: When did you decide you wanted to do American television?

CHOPRA: Keli Lee [executive VP of casting at ABC] came to India while I was filming Gunday [a 2014 action crime thriller]. She hung out with me on set and talked to me about doing a talent holding deal. I really did want to expand my horizons, expand myself creatively as an actor.

Even with the films I’m doing in India, I’ve been trying to do a lot of different kinds of roles. I thought about it and said, let me at least have a read. I came to L.A. during pilot season and I read about 26 scripts.

Quantico was my favorite, and ABC felt it was the best pilot for me, too.

WS: When you read the script, what was it that appealed to you?

CHOPRA: I love watching good TV. America is going through a golden age of television. The best content in America is on TV. Alex’s part and the story line of Quantico kept me guessing so much when I was reading the pilot. I think that’s how people are going to feel when they watch the season. It keeps you on your toes. I am a smart consumer of entertainment and I don’t like my intelligence being taken for granted.

This show is gritty, it’s smart and it’s sexy. Those things combined make for good TV. Quantico runs in two time periods, the future and the present.

All of the recruits coming into Quantico have something to hide.

So [the viewer] never knows what’s going to happen. And I still don’t know what’s going to happen! The people making the show— Mark Gordon, Josh Safran, Paul Lee [president of the entertainment group at ABC]—have made so much great TV that I have

WS: How does it feel knowing that STAR World has acquired the show for broadcast in India, day and date with the American airing?

CHOPRA: As soon as Quantico was picked up, the first thing I said to ABC was, This has to air in India simultaneously! It was important to me that it air as close as possible [to the U.S. broadcast]. You know that TV shows come to India 20 days later, a month later. I didn’t want that to happen with Quantico. India is where my roots are. I’m so happy that STAR World gets it.

WS: How will you balance your American television career with your Indian feature-film projects?

CHOPRA: I went to India [for three days in August] to work on Bajirao Mastani [a film set in 18th-century India due for release

Said to be India’s highest-paid actress, Priyanka Chopra has starred in almost 50 feature films in her 13-year career. later this year]. My life is going to be like this. I still have to finish Bajirao Mastani, I’m doing Gangaajal 2 [in a role as a policewoman] and I’ve taken on two more films. So when this season is over I’ll go back to India and film those. I want to be able to balance both. Hindi movies is what I do, it’s who I am. As long as people want to watch me, I want to be able to entertain. Wherever that takes me in the world, I’ll go.

WS: What about your music career?

CHOPRA: That has suffered! I haven’t had time to go back to the studio.

It’s been really nuts trying to straddle two worlds right now. But I’m hoping I can go back to it soon.

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ONE-ON-ONE

effrey Bewkes, who was elected CEO of Time Warner in 2008 and chairman of the board of directors in 2009, has spent much of his tenure streamlining the media behemoth into a pure-play content company. He has been spinning off assets that weren’t related to the production, distribution and programming of video content—first Time Warner Cable, then AOL, and finally the publishing unit Time, Inc. What remains part of Time Warner are the core businesses: the Warner Bros. studio, the

Turner Broadcasting System group of cable channels and the premium pay service HBO. Last summer, the media industry was stunned to learn that Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox had made an offer to take over Time Warner. The news triggered collective déjà vu of the AOL acquisition of Time Warner in 2000, a deal that quickly became the worst in the history of media mergers and acquisitions. Murdoch’s bid set off speculation about exactly how the two media giants would be combined since there was so much duplication. With two Hollywood studios, two channel groups and two international-distribution operations, who would stay and who would go?

As it turned out, Time Warner’s board rejected Murdoch’s bid, as it and Bewkes believe Time Warner is strong enough on its own and doesn’t need to get bigger to do better. Smart exploitation of content across linear and nonlinear platforms contributed to 2014 revenues of $27.4 billion. Secondquarter results for 2015 of $7.3 billion far exceeded analysts’ predictions.

In 2014, Warner Bros. Pictures grossed $4.73 billion at the global box office. Its 2015 slate includes American Sniper, Magic Mike XXL, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Pan. The studio is also home to DC Entertainment, whose characters have given life to numerous blockbuster films, including Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, scheduled for release in March 2016. The Warner Bros. Television Group produced more than 60 series for broadcast, cable, pay and digital during the 2014–2015 season, including Arrow, The Big Bang Theory, Major Crimes, The Flash, Gotham and Shameless.

Turner Broadcasting owns and operates a portfolio of cable networks in the U.S. and around the globe, including CNN, HLN, TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, Adult Swim, truTV and Turner Sports.

HBO is known for its cutting-edge, award-winning series, miniseries and documentaries, such as Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, Veep, Citizenfour and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

HBO and Cinemax are available in the U.S. and internationally and offer viewers a suite of multiplex and on-demand services.

This past April, the highly anticipated standalone online streaming service HBO NOW was launched in an effort to capture viewers who do not subscribe to cable, satellite or telco packages.

As Bewkes tells World Screen, he remains confident that the focus on producing and distributing film and television content for all platforms will ensure a prosperous future for Time Warner.

JEFFREY BEWKES TIME WARNER

By Anna Carugati

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WS: What can you tell us about the bid last summer from 21st Century Fox, and what was your main objection to the offer?

BEWKES: We thought we could have a more successful and valuable future on our own, and we feel really good about the company’s position. If you look at where we are today, we believe—and we thought this when we rejected the proposal—that we can continue to deliver buzz-worthy, awardwinning content and greater shareholder value on our own.

Why do we think that? Over the last five years, many things we’ve done have made us a more focused company with a very strong competitive position. You remember we had a cable business, a music business, a publishing business and an online business in AOL, and we wanted to focus Time Warner on the exploding video-content business. If you look at where we are now, we are the largest film and TV production studio in the world at Warner Bros.— just Warner Bros. We don’t need another company to be in that position. HBO is the largest premium network in the world, by subscribers, by revenue, by earnings and by original programming, and Turner Broadcasting has three of the top-ten basic-cable networks in prime time. In fact, if you look at the Turner channels—TNT, TBS, CNN, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, truTV and Turner Classic Movies—it is the most concentrated broadreach, must-carry set of channels in the cable world. It doesn’t have a long tail of smaller marginal networks. If you take all of that together and add our operational results, whether it’s our earnings growth or our stock growth, it puts us at the top of the media industry along with Disney and, frankly, at the top of the S&P 500.

WS: Once the bid was dropped, what actions did you take to improve Time Warner’s performance? Did you view the company differently as a result of the whole process?

BEWKES: No. We had been executing a plan that we had put in place five or six years ago. The core of our strategy has been, and it remained

product that has global potential.

We also have some very strong digital brands that I think merit more attention. In addition to CNNGo, there is also TMZ in celebrity news and Bleacher Report in sports, which is number two behind Yahoo! Then we have short-form digital content studios at each one of our networks and at Warner Bros. The business is evolving rapidly, and we think we have a responsibility to ensure that our company is well positioned for growth going forward.

Upcoming films from Warner Bros. include Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. through this process, to be the industry-leading scale player producing high-quality branded video.

We wanted to distribute that on traditional platforms, like the multichannel bundles all over the world, and also on emerging platforms like the VOD broadband platforms. We are one of two companies—I think Disney is the other—who have, over the last four or five years, dramatically and steadily increased our investment in programming.

Whether it’s the slates of films or TV shows at Warner Bros., or the acquired series on Turner, or the original shows on Turner and HBO,

we’ve been ramping up throughout the company. That lead in programming, plus strength in our brands on a global basis and in earnings growth, has given us the ability to embrace, and in many cases be the anchor tenant of, new technology models to meet consumer demands, emphasizing the idea of the Content Everywhere strategy across all our businesses. Examples of that would be HBO GO, UltraViolet at Warner Bros. for movies, and CNNGo, which I think is the leading VOD product in the news business.

HBO NOW is a good example of a broadband-only, on-demand

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WS: Tell us about the decision to launch HBO NOW. BEWKES: HBO was the first network in the world to be on demand, which happened at least 15 years ago. It’s important to point that out.

The original pioneer of on demand was HBO. That was through the settop box and the cable infrastructure. In the last 15 years since HBO On Demand started, there has been an increasing broadband capability in the U.S. As we’ve said over and over, we have the rights to all of our programming on HBO, and we were just thinking about when would be the right time to launch a product that is VOD over broadband. When [the U.S.] got to about 10 million broadband-only consumers last year—and that number is growing—and we considered the changing behavior among the younger demographic, we thought, we’d launch the HBO NOW product to make HBO available to this group. About half of the 10 million broadband-only consumers already subscribe to a VOD video service, whether it’s Netflix, Hulu or Amazon, and they are natural consumers of HBO. So it’s obvious that we need to make it available over the method that these consumers have chosen to receive video.

WS: While HBO NOW helps attract cord cutters or cord nevers, how are you convincing your traditional partners, the cable, satellite and telco companies, that HBO NOW is good for them, too?

BEWKES: We’re doing that in a couple of ways. It is often the cable companies that are providing the broadband service over which any

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video broadband service, whether it’s Netflix or HBO, travels. So VOD is a natural part of the business they are in as they move more and more to increase their broadband business. We’ve been in discussion with all our existing distributors, as well as new digital partners, like Apple, to offer HBO NOW. If you look from any distributor’s point of view, think of Comcast or Verizon or Time Warner Cable, it’s in their interest to have a full suite of programming alternatives depending on which consumer they are talking to. Some people want the traditional cable video-broadband-telephone triple play. Increasingly, there’s going to be the question of whether mobile gets added by these distributors to that triple-play package. Every distributor, whether it’s a cable company or a telco or a satellite company, has a number of customers that want broadband only. As partners we have to offer all of these methods so consumers can watch programming on the big screen or take it with them as they leave the house.

WS: In the future, do you foresee online services similar to HBO NOW for any of the Turner channels?

BEWKES: We don’t currently have a plan to offer channel-by-channel product for TNT or the other Turner channels, but we’re continuing to make our content available across platforms. CNN already has a good on-demand product with CNNGo. The Turner content is already available on several over-the-top platforms like Hulu or Sony PlayStation Vue, and Dish has Sling TV, which offers Turner content on broadband.

In April 2015, Turner and Hulu announced an extensive multiyear licensing agreement that gives Hulu the exclusive SVOD rights to previous seasons of Turner programming from Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, as well as select current and upcoming series from TNT and TBS. This is the first-ever licensing agreement between Turner and Hulu. In February we also launched TNT GO, which is an over-the-top service in Latin America available in both Spanish and Portuguese. It’s accessible on iOS and on Android smartphones and tablets. It includes both live linear TV channels and VOD options from those channels. It is offered through Turner’s pay-TV partners, which means the regular distributors in Latin America.

The global news channel CNN is available in more than 260 million homes outside the U.S. WS: Do you see OTT platforms around the world affecting the Turner channels worldwide?

BEWKES: Over-the-top bundles could be an interesting way to attract younger consumers to everybody’s channels, including Turner’s. These new internet-based products can also innovate more quickly in terms of consumer interfaces. That’s interesting because there is a real wealth of programming on the Turner networks.

Having so much volume of programming across so many channels means that interface and recommendation engines become very important to helping consumers find and discover all the shows.

WS: There is so much programming; sometimes there aren’t enough hours in the day to catch up with everything you want to watch.

BEWKES: That’s the point, and in TV, like so many have said, we have a golden age in terms of the quality and caliber of the writers, directors and actors. You have budgets in TV now—think of Game of Thrones— that are on the level of major theatrical releases. So the quality and number of shows and hours are going up. For consumers it means being familiar and satisfied with a favorite brand, whether it’s HBO, TNT or whichever network brings you fresh shows. Then, finding which ones are good and which ones you don’t think are good becomes more and more important.

Warner Bros. Television is producing the new thriller Blindspot for NBC this fall.

WS: Looking at Warner Bros., I’m told, and correct me if I’m wrong, that blockbuster movies nowadays

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are made for countries like Russia and China, and that the safest bet to be profitable is for a studio to create franchise movies that are actionpacked without too much dialogue because they will translate better.

Several years ago you told us that mid-budget movies were an important part of Warner Bros.’ mix.

Financially speaking, are they becoming less attractive today?

BEWKES: I can’t answer that with a simple yes or no. We think Warner Bros. has the biggest and most diverse slate in the industry.

It has more big-budget tentpole franchises than any other studio, but it also has a bigger release slate of character-driven films and mid-budget movies that we’re very proud of and that continue our mission of making different top-rate programming.

Some of those mid-budget films turn out to be big hits; think of The Blind Side or American Sniper and others we’ve done.

The reason this question is hard to answer is that the creative process is neither simple nor formulaic, nor should it be. Warner Bros. is a filmmaker-centric studio and we do have a tentpole strategy, led by DC Entertainment’s IP, The LEGO Movie and the upcoming Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them from J.K. Rowling, which is part of the Harry Potter franchise. That’s a pretty diverse and fairly large set of big-budget projects. But we are also succeeding globally with mid-sized films and smaller-budget projects, particularly in comedy, horror and drama/suspense.

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HBO’s ambitious original programming slate includes J. J. Abrams’ sci-fi thriller Westworld, which is slated to premiere next year.

Of course, it is a global business and the Chinese market is getting particularly strong, which presents a huge growth opportunity for the studios. But I think, given the nature of the world, we can’t really agree with your assessment. To say, whether you think it’s Russia, China or the international market in general, that films are being made to have less dialogue I don’t think is accurate or fair. I know you’re not saying it as a criticism. We’re trying to make films that are authentic to whatever the subject matter is; whether it’s a comedy or a drama, you want it to be authentic. You want it to feel relevant to today’s audience. If you make a film that is too commercially formulaic, I doubt it will be a film of lasting impact. Economically, the best thing to do in filmmaking is to make a film with lasting value.

WS: Success in broadcast television is elusive. Does a show based on a comic-book character have a better chance of beating the odds? Are these shows helping you capture the attention of Millennials?

BEWKES: They are, but if you have success with a show based on a comic-book character, the reason is not because you are picking up the audience of the comic. The reason is that a successful comic-book

character, if it’s reasonably well conceived, can provide the basis for an interesting and engaging world and for strong character development. If you look at the shows that have succeeded, like The Flash, Arrow and Gotham, those are very current shows with engaging characters with a lot of different relationships. Those shows aren’t completely similar to the plots or the contexts of the comic books. It’s a different medium, right? The comic book is a series of still pictures. A lot is communicated without words.

You can’t do the lengthy dialogues in comic books that you have to do in television shows. If you take Supergirl, which airs on CBS this fall, we expect younger viewers to embrace it as they have those other hits. And while these shows have attracted Millennials, they have also brought viewers of all ages into the tent. But Warner Bros. Television, which has more than 60 shows on air, is not mostly relying on superheroes. We have every genre from drama to comedy to non-scripted. We’re expanding our efforts and look at widening the range of shows we are interested in.

deliver the large quantity of awardwinning shows that HBO does?

BEWKES: Maybe. They will probably have the budget to do it. I don’t know whether the creative result will be the same. There is no inherent reason why a committed programmer—if they become that, and they seem to want to do that—could not get into that level of output and quality. Technically we consider anyone vying for viewership as a competitor. But our focus is on our viewers, not on our competitors. If you think about what we did in original programming at HBO; at Adult Swim, which is huge with a certain age group; at TNT and at TBS, we did that in the shadow of the giant show budgets of CBS, ABC, NBC and FOX. Those sources of program development, competing shows and competing development budgets have always been out there. We are no longer newcomers in this business, and it’s not surprising to us that some other companies, like Amazon and Netflix, join it. It means more competition but also more financial resources and creative resources flowing into the neighborhood, some of which we think we are going to take advantage of.

WS: Do you think in five years Netflix and Amazon will be able to

WS: Looking ahead a couple of years, where do you see growth? Do

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you view international acquisitions as a component of this growth?

BEWKES: No, not so much. The growth is in consumer engagement with video programming. It’s happening as television multichannel plants are being built all over South America, Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. It happens as broadband capability to deliver programming over internet connections to all kinds of connected devices on demand is getting stronger. Fueling all that, you have the explosion of an infrastructure on TV and broadband. You also have a steady increase, with some interruption, of consumers’ financial ability to pay for services and content. So there’s a very secular, buoyant trend in video consumption across the world. VOD just makes it better. It makes the content, and engagement with it, possible for more people. It also makes it possible to watch programming less expensively than you could before. Billions of people who couldn’t see the programming that was on TV ten years ago are now able to see it in a way that is economically feasible for them, and on demand, so it fits their schedules. That is where the growth is. If you look at our company over the last five years, that gives you a pretty good indicator of the next five; we’ve been ramping up production of original programming and VOD capability both domestically and globally.

The acquisitions we’ve done have tended to support more diverse types of production, not just in the U.S., and more platforms that we can deliver it over.

Regarding mergers and acquisitions, we don’t think that’s the principle growth driver. That’s just people moving around their assets, and in the network business it’s the quality of networks you have that matters, not the number of networks. If you go to a distributor, as we have, with five to seven strong basic networks and a couple of the world’s strongest premium networks, that’s a very attractive offer for distributors and for them to make to consumers. If you added marginal networks to that collection, it wouldn’t help.

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ON THE RECORD

ince 1999, Dana Walden and Gary Newman have been at the helm of 20th Century Fox Television (TCFTV), the studio that has produced a wide variety of series, including The Simpsons, Family Guy, 24, Bones, Glee and Modern Family for broadcast networks; The Americans and American Horror Story for cable; and Homeland for premium cable. These are shows that Walden and Newman describe as being unlike any others—a distinction that has helped them attract loyal audiences and in many cases Golden Globe and Emmy awards. Through the years, Walden and Newman have nurtured relationships with top creators, including Seth MacFarlane, Steven Levitan, Christopher Lloyd, Jake Kasdan, Jason Winer, Ryan Murphy and Howard Gordon.

In what Walden quips was a moment of temporary insanity, last year she and Newman added the FOX Broadcasting Company to their responsibilities. They are now chairmen and CEOs of the Fox Television Group, which encompasses TCFTV and FOX. The benefits of overseeing both the studio and the network are numerous, including being able to control the marketing and scheduling of shows produced by the studio—which cannot be done when

series are sold to third-party networks. Despite the many synergies between the studio and the network, Walden and Newman want to ensure that the studio sells shows to thirdparty networks and the network buys from other studios.

Case in point: during the 2014–2015 television season, one of FOX’s breakout hits was Gotham, from Warner Bros. But by far, TCFTV’s Empire was last year’s biggest sensation among all broadcast networks.

The story of Lucious Lyon, a hip-hop artist and the CEO of Empire Entertainment, his sons and his blunt, uncompromising and often outrageous ex-wife, Cookie, not only boosted FOX’s ratings, it proved that the traditional broadcast model of releasing one episode per week—in a world of full-season releases online and binge viewing—still yields high ratings and ad sales, buzz and critical acclaim when the show is right and when it resonates with the audience.

Walden and Newman’s 16-year partnership is something of an anomaly in the television business. Their friendship predates their partnership, as Walden was the executive VP of drama at the studio and Newman was the studio’s executive VP and top-ranking business officer. They continue to rely on their shared commitment to taking risks as they lead the studio and FOX. They will be honored this year as Personalities of the Year at MIPCOM, marking the first time two executives will jointly receive the award.

DANA WALDEN & GARY NEWMAN

FOX TELEVISION GROUP

By Anna Carugati

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WS: In all the years you have overseen the studio, how have you viewed the U.S. television landscape and what have your priorities been?

NEWMAN: Our view hasn’t really changed. It’s an increasingly cluttered market. There is more programming on the air now than ever before. There are more outlets, platforms and opportunities for people

Rob Lowe is the star of the new legal comedy The Grinder, launching on FOX this fall.

to see original programming and also to consume library programming. Our priorities really haven’t changed. [They are] to create big, bold programs that break through the clutter. To play it safe just isn’t an option given how competitive the marketplace is.

WS: How have you worked with Mark Kaner and Marion Edwards at

Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution?

WALDEN: Starting a decade ago, maybe a little bit longer, we decided to shift our strategy from being what we like calling “network ordertakers” to suppliers and people who oversaw the development of content. Just because a network was interested in a different genre of programming didn’t necessarily mean that it made sense for our company. We started to rely very heavily on Mark and Marion and their very talented team not necessarily to direct our development, but their insights into the international marketplace have been so helpful to us as content creators. As Gary said, we’ve been rewarded in such an incredible way for taking big swings and for doing shows that defied U.S. trends. We’ve never been a studio that relied heavily on the development of procedurals, or any specific form of programming, just because that made good business sense.

We’ve looked to our creators to develop their passion and to break through the clutter with ideas that are distinctive, original and bold.

Those are the shows that have worked most successfully in the international marketplace. It’s become a calling card of our studio. We got to that place by listening to Mark and Marion about trends around the world and which of our shows were resonating with the greatest degree of enthusiasm with our international clients.

So it’s been an incredibly rewarding relationship. It’s been one that has benefited our creative process. Ultimately, our shows start with creative, but we’re trying to speak to a global audience, and when a show like Empire or Glee or The X-Files explodes around the world, that means it’s working in terms of our strategy.

WS: What are some of the lessons you learned from some of the riskier shows you decided to produce?

NEWMAN: Our riskiest shows also tend to provide us with our greatest returns. These are shows that are unlike others that are on our air. If you look at our studio historically, going back to the animated series The Simpsons and

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Family Guy, these have been incredibly lucrative to the studio.

Shows like 24, Glee, Prison Break and, most recently, Empire feel like shows that nobody else was doing.

They break through with the audience and ultimately they break through in ways that give us great financial returns as well.

WS: With as much as you had on your plates, what motivated the decision to want to run FOX? WALDEN: It was temporary insanity!

Then it was really an inevitable path for us given the way the marketplace has changed and how much networks are relying on their own content producers to supply a good amount of programming. Our mandate on both sides of the organization is for these two companies to remain independent. While there is a strong connection and alignment [between the studio and the network] and clearly we are looking to our studio to develop and produce great shows for the network, we are also looking to our studio to produce for third-party networks and for our network to buy from thirdparty studios. After so many years of working on our shows at the studio and investing so much of ourselves and the passion of our creators into the series that we develop, the idea of not having to just turn those shows over to another organization and not step away from the process was really appealing to us. Having the ability to now schedule, market, platform and meaningfully be a part of the cultural conversation about our shows has been very rewarding. Empire, Gotham and The Last Man on Earth last season were shows we prioritized and we invested in heavily from the marketing side of our business. We scheduled them in as strategic and opportunistic a way as possible.

When you are solely operating as a supplier, you don’t get to be part of those conversations.

WS: What is the role of a broadcast network today, and how much risktaking can a network allow itself?

NEWMAN: The role of a broadcast network hasn’t changed that much.

With regards to risk, it’s not how much can you afford to take, but

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can you afford to play it safe at all. I think the answer is no. There is so much competition for people’s attention. People only have so many hours that they are going to devote to watching content, and you just have to be aggressive and bold and not play it safe. It all comes back down to what we learned at the studio over all those years: get in business with the most talented creators, support their vision and ultimately trust that the audience is going to find the show.

WS: People claim that in today’s environment shows like Hill Street Blues and Seinfeld would not remain on the air because series aren’t allowed enough time to find their voice or audience. Do you agree, and how much patience can you afford to give a show in today’s crowded environment?

WALDEN: The true answer is that nobody has a crystal ball. No one knows what would happen if those shows were on right now. If you were just looking at the trajectory of how long it took at those times in history to really establish those series as juggernauts, perhaps you could extrapolate that there is not that kind of opportunity right now.

We base our decisions on whether we are going to move forward on a show or not and how long we are going to give a show to catch on based on a lot of factors, not just ratings. Sometimes if it’s a show that we own there are financial factors that we can take into consideration.

If it is a show that creatively our team has extraordinary passion for, we think a lot about that. Ultimately we are a collection of viewers, so when there is passion among the ranks here, it’s not different than finding a small pocket of viewers who have a lot of passion for a show, so we take that into consideration.

We think about whether the shows are in the hands of creators that can help characters get richer and deeper. You have to look at a variety of different metrics now than you did in the past. Are people watching in a time-delayed manner? We have several shows whose ratings increase more than 100 percent over a seven-day period. That is still a measurement that is meaningful

Fox 21 Television Studios produces the critically acclaimed drama Homeland for the premium cable network Showtime. to us; it’s meaningful to our clients in the ad-sales side of our business.

Without a crystal ball I would say it’s much harder to stick with smaller, more character-driven, low-concept series that don’t have something that breaks through the content being exhibited right now.

But lightning is captured in a bottle every once in a while. Sometimes, if there is a big enough creative point of view, even if it’s not a highconcept idea, you can get behind it.

WS: What were your expectations for Empire, and what kind of viewer reaction have you been getting?

NEWMAN: Our expectations were high from the inception of the project. It was a very big, exciting pitch that was special because it was such a specific world that Lee [Daniels, the creator of the show] in particular, but our other producers as well, pitched to us with such a great understanding of the characters and of their world. Probably the next stage at which it really started coming together was with the casting.

When you saw the initial footage with actors like Taraji [P. Henson, who plays Cookie] and Terrence [Howard, who plays Lucious] and the rest, you just felt you had something that resonated. Of course, as high as our expectations were, they were really exceeded by the way the show performed on air. Over the weeks that the show was on air last

season, we received phone calls and e-mails from so many people in the business, even our competitors, sending us notes saying this is great for broadcast television. One of the most notable things was the way in which the show grew week to week in live same-day viewing, which is not something you see happening at all. What it really spoke to is that our business model of putting episodes out a week at a time created an opportunity for fans of the show to get invested in it. The social networking that would occur while the show was on the air and in the days following were at record levels and our fans became our marketers.

They would be telling their friends, either in person or online, how much they loved Empire, how great the characters were, how special a show it was, and that began feeding on itself, which really drove that show. If you look at a 30-day viewership of the finale, there were nearly 27 million viewers, and even months later, online we were seeing a half a million people viewing one or more episodes of Empire every week. It really was a phenomenon and a juggernaut that we don’t see very often.

We feel very fortunate to have it.

WS: What upcoming shows from the studio or on the network are you excited about?

WALDEN: I would start with our new show from Ryan Murphy, Scream

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Queens. It has an extraordinary cast: Emma Roberts, Jamie Lee Curtis, Lea Michele, Nick Jonas, Keke Palmer, Ariana Grande, and it’s a mix of two of Ryan’s favorite genres of storytelling: horror and comedy. I would say it’s a bit of a mix of American Horror Story and Glee. It taps into what Ryan does incredibly well, which is a little bit genre bending, and there is a great whodunit mystery at the center of it. We’re also extremely excited about our two comedies on Tuesday night, Grandfathered and The Grinder, which star John Stamos and Rob Lowe [respectively]. They are genuinely funny, very original shows that are helmed by top-notch comedy talent.

We feel the time is right for some breakthrough comedy that people start talking about that would piggyback on what we did pretty successfully last year with Will Forte in The Last Man on Earth—series with comedy superstars at the center— and we have Jason Sudeikis joining that cast this year. You start with a comedy set after a virus has wiped out pretty much all of humanity!

A pretty risky place to start a comedy, but it was embraced by critics and audiences. I am incredibly excited about the second season of Gotham, [which will feature] the rise of the villains. They feel like classic DC Batman mythology villains, but you get to know them in a way that you never could

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The Will Forte comedy The Last Man on Earth was a hit for FOX with both viewers and critics in its first season and was quickly renewed for a second. in a film. There would never be the time to peel back the layers of who these people are and to also see the growth of Bruce Wayne into who we know he’s going to be, Batman, along with James Gordon, who has taken a lot on his shoulders protecting all of Gotham. It’s a beautiful show, and the second season hits the ground running.

WS: What considerations go into deciding whether or not to bring back a show, like The X-Files or 24 or Prison Break?

NEWMAN: It’s hard to articulate a particular process. Fan passion is what drives this, and our belief that there is [sufficient] fan passion [for a given show]. You also have to have a feeling that the story isn’t completely told yet. A show like 24 is almost a perfect series to bring back because as the world changes you can put new issues through the real-time storytelling prism with a hero like Jack Bauer.

Specifically, when we brought 24 back, it was just after the Julian Assange and WikiLeaks issues, and those became the spine of the last 24. It made for an incredibly compelling story. Prison Break had tremendous fan passion.

These brothers were beloved and

[the show’s creator] Paul Scheuring had an additional story that he wanted to tell. We have information about how the show has performed in the SVOD market and we know the show is incredibly popular and new generations are embracing it. It felt like the right opportunity, so we are in development on a Prison Break event series. Not only have fans been clamoring for The X-Files, but people have attempted to do their own versions of it on television for the decade or longer that it’s been off the air. We felt so fortunate we were able to align the stars and get everyone’s schedule to work out so we could make more episodes.

WS: When is a pilot the best option and when is going straight to series best, or is it entirely project driven?

WALDEN: It is entirely project driven.

We really try to look at our shows and our development on a case-bycase basis; it’s not one-size-fits-all development. For us to go straight to series on a project means that a creator has a fully formed vision of where the show is going from the moment we sit with them. It is a little bit easier on a show that has

anthological seasons. So, for example, Scream Queens is a show that will reset every year and tell stories set in a different environment and with potentially different actors. 24 felt like a miniseries event with a season-long arc and creators who were intimately familiar with the characters and the storytelling mechanism on that show. On the other hand, even for creators, having the ability to shoot a template prototype episode [a pilot] and see what works and what’s not working is always a huge benefit.

There are cost considerations sometimes, if you are doing a limited event series where you can amortize the cost over multiple episodes; that’s beneficial. Every piece of development is unique and deserves its own process and thoughtful consideration about how to best move forward.

WS: Tell us about your partnership. There aren’t others like it in the television business.

NEWMAN: It’s a little bit of a unique structure to have a partnership. It’s been 16 years that we’ve been doing it this way. Like any relationship, it is really based on communication, trust, respect and, in our case, a lot of friendship. We had worked

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together for a few years before we were put together as partners, so we knew each other well. We had a real admiration for the things we had done at the company prior to running the studio. Over time the relationship evolved. I think at first we were both trying to be all things at all times, at all places. After a while, as we became more comfortable, we realized we would be much more effective if we divided and conquered. In order to really keep the partnership functional, it’s really about being very disciplined and devoted to the notion of communication. We talk a lot, whether it’s in the evening after work or on the weekends, just to bring each other up to speed on things we’re thinking about, meetings one or the other of us might have had during the week that we hadn’t had the chance to really explore with the other. What I always like to say about this business is that there is plenty of credit to spread around when something goes well, and it’s incredibly great to have someone else’s shoulder to lean on when things aren’t going well. So I wouldn’t trade this partnership for doing this or anything else solo, ever; it’s been one of the great professional experiences of my life.

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IN CONVERSATION

ince TV Globo was founded in 1965 by Roberto Marinho, it has faced the challenges and opportunities that come with being the market-leading broadcaster in Brazil. In a country beset by income inequality, where for a long time a large segment of the population had very little, if any, disposable income, Globo benefited as television quickly became the nation’s main source of news and entertainment.

Globo’s CEO, Carlos Henrique Schroder, who began his career as a journalist, says that news is still a mainstay of Globo’s schedule today, with bulletins and newscasts airing throughout the day and evening. The national passion in prime time is the telenovela—that is, when a Brazilian soccer game isn’t being broadcast. Through the decades, telenovelas have reflected Brazilians’ mores and aspirations. They have served as a vehicle to introduce important social and political issues and shed light on topics—like domestic violence or health concerns—that might resonate more with viewers when told through a compelling character than through a news report.

Globo has developed extensive expertise in news and sports coverage and in producing lavish novelas. Its increased output of programming and the careful attention given to its novelas—to everything from sets and lighting to costumes and props—have been enabled by Projac, Globo’s huge production center on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. The quality of its programming has been recognized internationally—several of its novelas and news programs have won International Emmys, and a broad range of Globo programming sells around the world.

In an exclusive interview, World Screen spoke with Schroder in Rio de Janeiro during a visit to the Olympic Park, one of the many venues in the city that will host the Summer Olympics next year. Globo is already preparing its coverage of the 42 sports and 10,500 athletes—a massive undertaking for which Globo already had a rehearsal, of sorts, while covering the FIFA World Cup last year. Schroder talks about Globo’s ongoing commitment to serving its diverse audience and the importance of telling clear, engaging stories, whether in a telenovela, a news report, or sports analysis.

CARLOS HENRIQUE SCHRODER

GLOBO

By Anna Carugati

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WS: How have the facilities and the talent—in front of and behind the camera—at Projac contributed to Globo’s success?

SCHRODER: I think the history of Globo has two pillars. One was journalism, which began with Dr. Roberto [Marinho], who was a journalist himself and built a strong news and information structure— so strong that today we still air more than seven hours of daily news. The other pillar was the development of the telenovela, which is a very authentic Brazilian genre. The telenovela originated as a radio soap opera and has always enjoyed very strong public acceptance. Globo has been producing novelas for a long time and has been able to offer a product of everincreasing quality. At first, our facilities in [the neighborhood of] the Botanical Garden in Rio de Janeiro were too small. We had only one big studio and two small studios to produce three novelas. It was virtually impossible. So the idea was to take our studios to a larger area, and Projac was built in 1995. This has allowed us to produce multiple novelas at the same time in an appropriate environment. Since 1995 we have had the best structure for developing novelas, and from then on certainly a lot of talent has come to us, and many professionals from the industry have come to work with us. The quality of our novelas has grown exponentially, and this has allowed them to earn awards in international events such as the International Emmys.

The broad range of scripted content that Globo produces for its free-TV outlets includes, from top, the comedy Sweet Mother and the telenovelas Precious Pearl—winner of an International Emmy—and Verdades Secretas.

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WS: How does Globo balance its need to entertain its audience with the responsibility to offer information about issues—like organ transplants, which was presented in one telenovela—that are important to society?

SCHRODER: Today we have a programming grid that begins at 5 a.m. with live national news that airs across our network. At 6 a.m., local programming is shown until 7:30 a.m. Then comes Bom Dia Brasil [Good Morning Brazil, another live, national, daily news program] and we continue live until 3 p.m. In other words, from 5 o’clock in the morning until 3 o’clock in the

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Rules of the Game is the latest production from João Emanuel Carneiro, who was also behind Brazil Avenue, one of Globo’s top international sellers and a huge domestic hit. afternoon, we have a grid that allows for interruption if anything happens in Brazil or in the world. It’s almost nine hours of programming that can be interrupted by any relevant news story, and we have news for almost seven hours a day. That’s important.

Then, when it’s time for fiction [in prime time], we cannot lose this flexibility. So how do we manage to keep it? We do so through what we call social merchandising. If the country is experiencing a special situation, or if there is the need to call attention to an issue—if an alert needs to be sent out, or if something needs emphasis, help or focus—we can shed some light on it. Our writers come to us, on their own, with suggestions. There is no obligation; nobody tells them that they have to do it. They know that social merchandising works very well for a country that has so many needs, as Brazil does. So that’s when we talked about [organ] transplants. And we have other examples, such as when we discussed leukemia and had a call to

action for blood donations. Every time we bring an issue to the attention of the audience, the reaction is instantaneous. People understand that we are attempting to focus on real-world issues, even though they are woven into a work of fiction.

WS: Pay TV is growing in Brazil. As more of your viewers watch international channels, how do you avoid losing viewers from the Class A socioeconomic demographic as they are exposed to foreign programming and edgier shows like Game of Thrones, for example? How do you keep your audience at 10 p.m.?

SCHRODER: That’s a very good question. What have we realized recently? First, the penetration of pay television in Brazil, as a whole, is 30 percent. We conducted our own research, however, and in Brazil’s 15 most densely populated metropolitan areas we found that pay-TV penetration is already 47 percent. About half of the country, where we measured the audience, already has pay TV. Clearly,

95 percent of Class A is already subscribing to pay TV, then 80 percent of Class B, and then the percentage goes down for Classes C, D and E. It is obvious that Classes A and B are more relevant because of their purchasing power and their ability to generate more publicity, and they are of particular interest to advertisers. So what have we done?

We revised our schedule with a range of genres for the post-novela viewer. We didn’t have to change anything in the schedule before our novelas because we are very well positioned until then. After the novelas [which run three in a row from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m.], we air a number of specialized programs to draw attention to the fact that Globo can also offer bold, innovative, attractive programs—shows that are just as good as the international ones. This is proving to be the right strategy, since this year Globo’s audience grew compared to last year. We produced a series of new shows, to be aired between the last novela and the newscast at midnight. Before that, we used to

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have two fixed programs on Tuesdays and Thursdays, A Grande Família and Tapas e Beijos. Those had 40 episodes throughout the year. Today we have four series of 13 episodes each. In other words, we increased the number of shows to increase variety, so that the pay-TV viewer would begin to return to Globo—and that’s exactly what’s happening.

WS: And the writers have more time to make a better product.

SCHRODER: They have a shorter production period, only 13 episodes, and the duration of each episode is shorter too, 35 to 45 minutes each. Now we also have more writers contributing to the schedule. You attract more people this way. Our group of writers became more engaged. We used to have a very large number of writers in-house, but few actually participated in the final product. That is not so today. In addition, Globo used to have a very predictable grid. Now, we can aim shows at the young, the elderly, and the elites.

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Globo’s international-sales arm distributes a diverse range of Brazilian content to broadcasters with a lineup that includes Empire, set amid the diamond trade.

We can mix it up, and that has been attracting viewers back from pay TV. Today, we offer two sitcoms: Tá no Ar and Zorra. These two were able to attract the highest number of young people and members of Classes A and B that had pay TV. The result was exactly what we expected.

I would like to highlight something: channels coming into Brazil from abroad have an audience, of course, here and there, with products such as series, but deep down, when you look at their daily average audience, it is still very small.

Just to give you an idea, today pay TV’s daily average rating in Brazil reaches up to 10 [rating] points, and that is all channels combined. So today, the channel with the highest ratings has about 0.5 point or so.

It’s half a rating point. This is important to note. Pay-TV channels taken together may have peaks in their audience, but the ratings of any one channel are still too small to be relevant. Today, no channel alone can attract the audience throughout the day that Globo can.

WS: When you changed programming at 10 p.m., did you lose viewers in the C and D socioeconomic classes?

SCHRODER: No, because that’s when the way one tells a story comes into play. What have we discussed internally? Classes C, D and E represent mass, volume; you cannot lose them. Class C and women,

especially, are extremely important to us. Today our daily audience is divided 60-40: 60 percent women and 40 percent men. The women are at home and watch more television than men. So what do we do [to maintain those viewers and attract others]? The way to tell a story, even if it is difficult to understand, is to work on the language.

The language has to be understandable. This is the most important aspect of telling a story.

WS: How does one make language understandable to everyone?

SCHRODER: Every discussion with our writers includes this subject.

I have two examples this year: Verdades Secretas, which involves modeling agencies, prostitution and drugs, and, earlier this year, we aired Felizes para Sempre? which was about crime, corruption and politics. The way we tell those stories, their artistic design, is crafted in a way that can be understood by everyone. That’s the big issue for us; that’s the challenge all around the world, right? There is no use for Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones or House of Cards if they are not understood by the average viewer.

It’s no use if a story is understood by us [in the TV business] but not by the masses. I think that’s the challenge in the world of television. How do we tell a story that is understood by everyone?

That’s the big question. And we

have made an effort with our writers so that their product is not so hard to understand or so narrow that it can be enjoyed only by a close group of friends and not by a large audience. There is no story that cannot be understood by everyone. No story. It’s all in the way you tell it.

And now I turn to journalism. It’s the same thing, right? What if someone says a piece of news is too dry? Dry? How are you telling the story? You have to talk about Israel, about Egypt, about the recent attacks. They are far from Brazil, but if you describe them in a way that can be understood, discussing them becomes easier. And the audience grows every time an issue is well explained.

WS: Turning to sports, what lessons were learned in the coverage of the FIFA World Cup last year that you are applying or expanding on in the coverage of the Summer Olympics that will take place next year in Rio? SCHRODER: First of all, we offered brilliant coverage of the World Cup. You may have seen the numbers: eight out of ten viewers who watched the World Cup watched it on Globo. This took a lot of planning. It was a very large project. The World Cup tournament lasted 32 days, but it took years of preparation. We discussed its format and how we could offer something new to the

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public. You must have seen the tactical discussion table, the programs that offered analysis, the crowd’s engagement and the country’s engagement. We had a special campaign, “We are one, Brazil is one.” It was our exclusive campaign, from Globo, about the World Cup. So there was all that commitment—we were present in all stadiums, we followed each team. It was indeed a long process, because Brazil is passionate about soccer and Brazilians wanted the World Cup to take up a large space in Globo’s schedule.

The process is not so simple when we talk about the Olympics.

First, Brazilians are not as knowledgeable about most other sports as they are about soccer. There are sports that Brazilians don’t know.

So, during the Olympic coverage, we have to concentrate on the more traditional sports, follow Brazilian athletes who have medal potential and, at the same time, follow the big international stars, the record holders, etc. We are following everything, but we’re highlighting first the Brazilians who are able to get medals.

After that come sports that people know, and then international athletes who have more prominence. We will be looking at everything all the time, but there is only one city, Rio de Janeiro, and 10,500 athletes. It’s a crazy amount of coverage to offer, with competition in 42 sports.

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EXECUTIVE BRIEFING

he commercial arm of the BBC, BBC Worldwide (BBCWW) is one of the world’s largest distributors outside the Hollywood studios. It has achieved this position by tapping into the best of the BBC’s huge library of content and using it to sell individual programs; create multiplatform brands around cult entertainment hits, popular factual shows and children’s programs; and build channels in various territories.

Among BBCWW’s top-selling shows in the past year were the hugely popular Doctor Who as well as Top Gear, Orphan Black, Life Story, The Musketeers, Atlantis, Call the Midwife, Ripper Street, Sherlock and The Honourable Woman.

The company’s business areas are divided up geographically into the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, North America, and Global Markets. The lucrative North American market is the focus of many ventures, including program sales, consumer products and the channel BBC America, in which AMC Networks acquired a 49.9-percent stake last year.

In other markets, BBCWW operates a bouquet of channels, which includes CBeebies, the children’s service; BBC World News; BBC Lifestyle; BBC Brit, a premium factual-entertainment channel; BBC Earth, which looks at the wonders of the universe; and BBC First, which showcases the best of British drama.

BBC Worldwide Productions operates wholly owned production houses in the U.S., where Dancing with the Stars and Da Vinci’s Demons, among others, are made; as well as in India and in France, where Dancing with the Stars, Antiques Roadshow, The Weakest Link and other shows are produced.

BBCWW is charged with delivering proceeds to the BBC that can be invested in programming. For the year 2014–2015, BBCWW had headline sales of £1 billion ($1.57 billion); headline profits of £138.6 million ($217 million); and was able to return a record £226.5 million ($355 million) to the BBC. BBCWW has also been increasing the number of shows it produces around the world, and it has launched new channel brands. CEO Tim Davie highlights BBCWW’s key accomplishments in the last year and explains the potential for growth he sees in several areas.

TIM DAVIE

BBC WORLDWIDE

By Anna Carugati

WS: What have been some of BBCWW’s best-selling titles worldwide?

DAVIE: Core brands like Dancing with the Stars and Doctor Who have continued to go from strength to strength. In the last two years, Dancing with the Stars, the international version of Strictly Come Dancing, has reached more than 50 countries, with Cambodia, Serbia and Costa Rica being some of the most recent countries to launch local versions.

Doctor Who was our top-selling show last year. It was licensed to 189 territories, and fans across South Korea, Australia, the U.S., Mexico, Brazil and the U.K. got to meet the Twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi, and his companion Clara, Jenna Coleman, on the 12-day global tour.

We’ve also seen an increased appetite for premium British drama with titles such as The Honourable Woman, Wolf Hall and Orphan Black, as well as notable success for natural history landmarks like Life Story and factual-entertainment formats like Top Gear.

WS: How have you been boosting production in various territories worldwide?

DAVIE: We have continued to expand our production capabilities in India, the U.S. and 10/15 World Screen 511

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France. The production house in France had a standout year in 2014–15, increasing revenue by more than 50 percent. Well-loved BBC programs such as Antiques Roadshow, The Weakest Link and Love Productions’s Sewing Bee and Bake Off were produced for French audiences and performed well.

WS: Tell us about the strategy behind launching the channels BBC First, BBC Brit and BBC Earth.

DAVIE: The strategy was to focus on the BBC’s core strengths where we were clearly differentiated from others. If you look at U.K. drama, British factual entertainment or high-quality natural history, the BBC is a world leader.

To date we’ve launched these channels in eight markets, including BBC First in Australia, the Netherlands and Belgium; and BBC Brit and BBC Earth in Poland, the Nordics, Turkey, Romania and Hungary. In the coming months our genre channels will launch in Latin America, Asia and South Africa, helping to bring premium content to more audiences across the globe on multiple platforms.

WS: On which other global brands is BBC Worldwide focusing?

DAVIE: We see great potential in brands such as CBeebies. This year we’ve launched CBeebies Land at Alton Towers Resort [a theme park in Staffordshire, England]. We also rolled out our CBeebies Englishlanguage centers in China. We have other new children’s franchises such as Hey Duggee and Go Jetters, which offer exciting opportunities for the future.

BBC Worldwide is a significant provider of drama series to channels and platforms across the globe, with MIPCOM highlights that include, from top, the period pieces War and Peace and Dickensian and the contemporary crime thriller Unforgotten.

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WS: How did the venture with AMC Networks come about, and what does this bring to BBC America and BBC Worldwide?

DAVIE: The venture with AMC Networks (AMCN) for a 49.9percent stake in BBC America was born out of the belief that the BBC and AMCN have a common passion for high-quality television. We saw the benefit of working together, adding BBC America to AMCN’s channel portfolio, and developing new productions that we can utilize

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across our networks. The venture offers BBC America an opportunity to further expand its reach and build on recent success, including its tenth consecutive year of ratings growth.

WS: What is your strategy for the North American market in the areas of production, channels and licensing product?

DAVIE: Our strategy is to keep driving growth through constant focus on the high-quality programming that can be exploited on BBC America, SVOD partners and other channels. Over the coming year and beyond, you will see us proactively increase our development of new formats through our production business, and we’ll grow our core franchises, such as the award-winning drama series Orphan Black and Doctor Who, which have exceptionally deep fan bases.

WS: Tell us about the plans for BBC Store, the online downloadto-own service.

DAVIE: We launch BBC Store this autumn in the U.K. with a simple aim: to offer U.K. consumers the opportunity to buy and keep a wide range of the BBC’s back catalogue—both recent titles, which are no longer available after the 30-day catch-up window has expired on BBC iPlayer, and some previously unavailable gems from our archive.

WS: How is BBC Worldwide working with the BBC to help finance programming as its license-fee funding comes under pressure?

DAVIE: Through building the BBC brands and audiences across the globe, as well as increasing commercial returns, we continue to deliver growing returns to the BBC. This year we returned a record £226.5 million ($355 million), an

increase of almost a third from the previous year, which was the equivalent of 12.6 percent of the total content spend for BBC Television. We also invested £94.4 million ($148 million) in BBC commissions from both BBC Productions and indies. All of this goes some way to fund key titles, like Life Story, Doctor Who and Wolf Hall last year, and the highly anticipated War and Peace, The Hunt and the final installment of Wallander for the year ahead.

WS: How is BBC Worldwide helping the U.K. creative industry?

What investments has it made in British independent production houses?

DAVIE: We support more than 250 independent producers by selling their content around the world, and last year we returned £113.1 million ($177.3 million) to

the sector. We have also been active this year in securing stakes in new and growing U.K. independent companies, including Lookout Point and Curve Media, and we will continue to be active in this area. We have also increased our efforts to support creative industries export initiatives such as the GREAT Festival of Creativity, which took place in Shanghai, and the Technology Innovators Forum in both China and Los Angeles.

WS: In which areas do you foresee growth for BBCWW in the next 12 to 24 months?

DAVIE: There are a number of opportunities for growth: continuing to strengthen our content and production pipeline, expanding our global channel footprint and launching directto-consumer services like BBC Store.

Factual content is a pillar of BBC Worldwide’s portfolio, encompassing properties from the BBC’s Natural History Unit, such as Skyworld, which explores the science of flight.

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ADVERTISERS’ INDEX

4K Media 237, 341 9 Story Media Group 216, 217, 361 41 Entertainment 206, 207, 330, 331 108 Media 51 A+E Networks 411, 483, 515, 520 ABC Commercial 347, 577 ABS-CBN International Distribution 589 ABTA 679 AFL Productions 687 Alfred Haber Distribution 135 all3media international 419, 503 AMC Networks International 33, 386, 387 AMC Networks Latin America 639 American Cinema International 88, 89, 595 Anima 189 Ánima Kitchent 301 Animasia Studio 323, 325 Animation from Spain 321 Applicaster 75 APT Worldwide 561 Arab Telemedia Group 421, 621 Argentina Audiovisual 141 Armoza Formats 446, 447, 461, 463, 509, 677 ARTE France 535 Artist View Entertainment 20, 21 Asia TV Forum 153, 602 Astro 581 Atresmedia Televisión 183 ATV 90, 91 Australian Children’s Television Foundation 261, 263, 265, 267 Azteca 69 Bandeirantes Communication Group 114, 115 Basic Lead/DISCOP 163 BBC Worldwide 6, 7, 452, 453 Beyond Distribution 61 Blue Ant International 551 The Bold and the Beautiful 112 Boomerang TV 299 BoPaul Media Worldwide 105 Breakthrough Entertainment 222, 223 Brightcove 338, 339 CAKE 264, 266, 268, 270, 271 Calinos Entertainment 40, 41 Canada Media Fund 93 Canal 13 Sudmedia 99, 499 Canal Futura 143 Caracol Television 83 CBS Studios International 103, 409 CDC United Network 675 Cisneros Media Distribution 199 CJ E&M Corporation 97, 365, 415, 487, 587 Content Television 59, 523 Corus Entertainment 539 Cottonwood Media 373 Cyber Group Studios 208, 209, 241, 343, 367, 378 Daewon Media 293 De La Hoya TV 659 Deutsche Welle 545 DHX Media 229, 231 Dick Clark Productions 71 Discovery Networks Latin America 327, 633 Disney Media Distribution Latin America 627, 629 Distribution360 366, 525 Dori Media Group 166, 623 DreamWorks Animation 355 DRG 541 Dusyeri Animation Studios 349 E! Networks Latin America 672 Eccho Rights 394, 395, 454, 455 Electus International 39, 459 Endemol Shine International 55, 57 English Club TV 593, 653 Entertainment One 1 Entertainment One Family 283, 284, 285 Escapade Media 305 Federation Entertainment 433 Filmax International 177 FINAS 139 Foothill Entertainment 319 Forum des Images 437 FOX International Channels Asia Pacific 606 FOX International Channels Content Sales 438, 570 FOX International Channels Latin America 647, 666, 667, 686 FremantleMedia 167, 396, 443, 456, 510, 576, 609 FremantleMedia International 165, 383, 516, 517, 571, 607 FremantleMedia Latin America 635 Gaumont Animation 205, 228 Gaumont International Television 28, 29 Global Agency 388, 389, 390, 391, 444, 445, 448, 449, 450, 451 Global Screen 171 Globo 16, 17 Globosat 125 GMA Worldwide 113, 596 GRB Entertainment 127, 129, 131, 133 Gusto TV 569 Hasbro Studios 235 HBO 119 HBO Asia 579

Hola TV HTC Productions Imagina International Sales IMPS S.A. Incendo INK Global International Academy of TV Arts & Sciences ITV-Inter Medya ITV Studios Global Entertainment The Jim Henson Company Kanal D Keshet International KOCCA Legendary Television & Digital Media Lionsgate Entertainment m4e / Telescreen MarVista Entertainment Mattel/HIT Entertainment Media Development Authority of Singapore Mediatoon Distribution Miramax Mondo TV S.p.A. Multicom Entertainment Group Muse Distribution International NATPE NBCUniversal TV Distribution Nelvana NeweN Distribution NHK Enterprises Novovision Off the Fence ohm:tv ORF-Enterprise Park Entertainment Passion Distribution PBS International Peace Point Rights Planeta Junior Pol-ka Producciones Portfolio Entertainment Rainbow RCTV International Red Arrow International Red Bull Media House Reed MIDEM Reel One Entertainment Rio Content Market Rive Gauche Television RTL CBS Asia Saban Brands Sato Co. Scorpion TV Scripted Scripps Networks Interactive Scripps Networks Latin America SDI Media Group Secuoya Content Distribution Smilehood Media SOMOS Distribution Sonar Entertainment Sony Pictures Television SPI International Splash Entertainment Starz Storybox Entertainment Studio 100 Media Studio Glam STUDIOCANAL Sullivan Entertainment Sundance Channel Sunrights Superights TCB Media Rights Technicolor Animation Telefe Telefilms Terra Mater Factual Studios Televisa Internacional Televisa Networks Televisión Española (TVE) Titratvs & Les Studios De Saint Ouen TM International Tricon Films & Television TRT—Turkish Radio & TV Corporation Turner TV5MONDE Asia Twentieth Century Fox TV Distribution Twofour Rights Universal Cinergia Dubbing Universal Networks International Vision Films WDR mediagroup WWE Xilam Animation Your Family Entertainment ZDF Enterprises Zee Entertainment Enterprises Zodiak Rights

10/15 World Screen 727

657 303 175 259 81 224, 225 374 30, 31, 384, 385, 474, 475, 624, 625 220, 221, 397, 457, 732 218, 219, 353 18, 19 73, 491 42, 43, 311, 313, 315, 317 23 10, 11, 107 289 4, 5, 151, 210, 211 233 572, 573 308, 310, 312, 314 49 273, 329, 377 731 574, 575 601, 683 24, 25 359 401, 465 543 567 549 505 123 413 399 529 79 239 145, 507 291 214, 215 185 403, 405, 407, 481 45, 47 680 85 685 109, 557 583 2, 3, 294, 295, 333, 357 149 563 599 67, 533 649 251, 513 489 351 181 8, 9 631 137, 608 287, 363 35, 37 95 292 497 121 14, 15 65 309 226, 227 518, 519 307 191, 619, 645 637 87 169, 501, 585, 622 195, 651 200 245 12, 13, 269, 531 553 111, 179, 431 669 591 27, 63, 479 521 661 665 611 473 77, 641 212, 213 297 53, 344, 370, 527 147 392, 393, 467, 469, 471

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TRULY GLOBAL

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WORLD’S END

IN THE STARS Almost every national constitution forbids the establishment of an official state religion. But this secular bent doesn’t stop people from looking to the heavens for answers to life’s most troublesome questions: Will I succeed?

Will I find love? Will I do LSD with Susan Sarandon?

Every day, papers, magazines and websites worldwide print horoscopes—projections for people born in a specific month, based on the positions of the stars and planets. While many people rely on these daily, weekly or monthly messages for guidance in their lives, some readers skip over them entirely.

The editors of WS recognize that these little pearls of random foresight occasionally prove prophetic.

But rather than poring over charts of the zodiac to predict world events, our staff prefers to use past horoscopes in an attempt to legitimize the science.

As you can see here, had some of these media figures remembered to consult their horoscopes on significant dates, they could have avoided a few surprises.

Susan Sarandon

Justin Bieber

Matt Damon

Robert Pattinson

SUSAN SARANDON

MATT DAMON

some eyebrows during her trip to this year’s Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. Wearing a wacky wedding dress-like ensemble, Sarandon leads a procession in a ceremony honoring her late friend, LSD advocate Timothy Leary. She also drinks some of his ashes before burning them, along with her dress, in a chapel she helped build.

Horoscope: “Do what feels right to you today and don’t worry in the slightest if other people disagree with you.

They have no right to dictate what you should think, say or do.” (nypost.com)

ect Greenlight, which gives aspiring filmmakers the chance to direct a movie, Damon ruffles some feathers after interrupting accomplished African-American producer Effie Brown to explain how diversity works in Hollywood, seemingly implying that it is more important in front of the camera than behind it. His comments yield a flurry of Twitter activity led by the hashtag #Damonsplaining.

Horoscope: “Keep your opinions to yourself today, especially on the work front where your know-it-all attitude is unlikely to go down too well.” (theglobeandmail.com)

JUSTIN BIEBER

TERRY GILLIAM

Today, the singer—who either doesn’t realize or doesn’t care that he’s still on live TV—throws a hissy fit about the camera being too close to him. “Next time I won’t dance because the camera’s here the whole time,” Bieber says, clearly ticked off. “What do I do this for…” he carries on, before the show cuts away to a commercial.

Horoscope: “Watch out for unprofessional behavior today.... You could cause a crisis if you don’t put some thought into what you’re saying.” (minihoroscope.com)

online obituary for the comedian/filmmaker, who’s still very much alive and well. Using his iconic sense of humor, Gilliam acknowledges the editorial goof with a Facebook post that reads: “I apologize for being dead, especially to those who have already bought tickets to the upcoming talks, but Variety has announced my demise. Don’t believe their retraction and apology!”

Horoscope: “If there has been a misunderstanding…it’s important that you sort it out. At least start to talk about it rather than pretend that it hasn’t happened.” (astrologycom.com)

Global distinction: Liberal actress.

Sign: Libra (b. October 4, 1946) Significant date: September 10, 2015 Noteworthy activity: The Academy Award winner raises

Global distinction: Troublemaking music-maker.

Sign: Pisces (b. March 1, 1994) Significant date: September 10, 2015 Noteworthy activity: At the end of his performance on

TOM HARDY

Global distinction: On-screen hottie.

Sign: Virgo (b. September 15, 1977) Significant date: September 7, 2015 Noteworthy activity: In an interview with Sky News, the British actor talks about his scantily-clad MySpace pictures from several years ago that have recently resurfaced. “I’ve got no shame about my MySpace photos, especially the one of me in my underpants, which is a glorious photo of a man in his natural habitat,” Hardy says, referring to an image of him in tighty-whities posing proudly next to a houseplant.

Horoscope: “If you have any skeletons in your closet, no matter how minor they might be, you must have a plan for when they become public knowledge.” (nypost.com) 730 World Screen 10/15

Global distinction: Oscar winner.

Sign: Libra (b. October 8, 1970) Significant date: September 13, 2015 Noteworthy activity: During the season premiere of Proj-

Global distinction: Monty Python alum.

Sign: Sagittarius (b. November 22, 1940) Significant date: September 8, 2015 Noteworthy activity: Variety mistakenly publishes an

ROBERT PATTINSON

Global distinction: Twilight heartthrob.

Sign: Taurus (b. May 13, 1986) Significant date: September 4, 2015 Noteworthy activity: In an interview with ELLE France to promote his latest movie, Life, the English actor offends some of his diehard fans in the U.S. when he reveals that he doesn’t like being mistaken for an American. “I am British,” he says. “Let it be known once and for all!”

Horoscope: “You may not be the type to watch what you say, but the planets warn this is not a good time to upset people.” (nypost.com)

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