World Screen Pre-MIPTV and FILMART Edition

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THE MAGAZINE OF INTERNATIONAL MEDIA • MARCH 2015

www.worldscreen.com

Pre-MIPTV & FILMART Edition

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CONTENTS

MARCH 2015/PRE-MIPTV & FILMART EDITION DEPARTMENTS WORLD VIEW

Publisher Ricardo Seguin Guise Editor Anna Carugati

6

A note from the editor.

UPFRONTS

Executive Editor Mansha Daswani

8

Managing Editor Kristin Brzoznowski

New content on the market.

IN THE NEWS

Associate Editor Joanna Padovano

16

FremantleMedia International’s Jens Richter.

FOCUS ON

Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Elizabeth Bowen-Tombari

20

A+E Networks’ Joel Denton.

MARKET TRENDS

16 22

Red Arrow International’s Henrik Pabst.

BEHIND THE SCENES

25

In the stars.

Assistant Editor Joel Marino Contributing Editor Elizabeth Guider

SPOTLIGHT

14 STATE OF PAY

Aquarius’ Marty Adelstein & John McNamara.

WORLD’S END

32

Associate Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Jessica Rodríguez

FOX International Channels’ Hernan Lopez, Viacom’s Bob Bakish and Sony Pictures Television’s Andy Kaplan discuss the state of the global pay-TV channels business.

—Mansha Daswani

34

Special Projects Editor Bob Jenkins Production & Design Director Victor L. Cuevas Online Director Simon Weaver

SPECIAL REPORT

Art Director Phyllis Q. Busell

28 RAISING THE STAKES

Sales & Marketing Manager Faustyna Hariasz

A look at the new distribution and financing models being used to create high-quality drama today.

Sales & Marketing Coordinator Dana Mattison

—Mansha Daswani

ONE-ON-ONE

Sales & Marketing Assistant Erika Santana Business Affairs Manager Terry Acunzo

32 LIONSGATE’S KEVIN BEGGS The chairman of the Lionsgate Television Group talks about the studio’s flexible and creative-driven approach to its TV output.

—Anna Carugati

Senior Editor Kate Norris Contributing Writers Steve Clarke Andy Fry Juliana Koranteng Jane Marlow Joanna Stephens Jay Stuart David Wood Copy Editors Maddy Kloss Kathleen Payne

Ricardo Seguin Guise President

WORLD SCREEN is published ten times per year: January, February, March, April, May, June/July, September, October, November and December.

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Anna Carugati Executive VP & Group Editorial Director Mansha Daswani Associate Publisher & VP of Strategic Development

28 THE LEADING ONLINE DAILY NEWS SERVICE FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA INDUSTRY. For a free subscription, visit www.subscriptions.ws

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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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WORLD VIEW

BY ANNA CARUGATI

Fleeting Memories Chances are you’ve heard of the Brian Williams “misremembering” incident or, as members of the press have called it, the Chopper Whopper. Brian Williams, anchor of NBC Nightly News, embellished, or didn’t recall correctly, or lied, depending on the viewpoint, about what happened to him covering the war in Iraq in 2003.

He claimed on numerous occasions, and most recently on his newscast, that he was in a helicopter that was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade, was stranded in the desert and kept safe by U.S. Army troops, in particular by Command Sergeant Major Tim Terpak, whose retirement Williams was celebrating in a report. Within hours, other members of the unit, who had been present at the time, posted on social media that Williams’ story wasn’t true. He wasn’t in the chopper that got fired upon— he was in another chopper and arrived on the scene of the downed Chinook about an hour later.

As you can imagine, the Chopper Whopper triggered a firestorm on social media. NBC News initiated an investigation into Williams’ recollection of this event and others he reported on and suspended him for six months without pay. From the beginning of the incident, there was an avalanche of coverage in the press. There was even an article in The New York Times about memory and how reliable (or not) it is.

This really caught my attention. It states that, according to numerous studies, “memories can fade, shift and distort over time. Not only can our real memories become unwittingly altered and embellished, but entirely new false memories can be incorporated into our memory bank, embedded so deeply that we become convinced they are real and actually happened.”

Memory has always fascinated me. I remember attending a lecture in which memory was likened to a filing cabinet. When we try to remember something, it’s like opening a file-cabinet drawer, where all our memories are similar to files containing information. What stunned me is that brain science is showing that every time we recall something—pull up a file, look through it, then put it back—we alter that memory permanently. And the more times over the course of our lives that we recall an event, the more we alter it. This sent me into a tizzy, and I started doubting everything I remembered about my childhood, young adulthood and beyond. Did my mother not lovingly read me stories when I was stricken with tonsillitis and had a fever of 105 degrees Fahrenheit? Did my fever not reach 105? Did my sisters not tease me endlessly?

Was I not appreciated at CBS? Did I not hold my

Today’s shows, like great books, summon us to

go back and revisit them—all the better to remember them.

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babies enough? I’m OK with not remembering what I had for breakfast this morning, but am I not the person I believe I am?

Oh goodness, I better close that file-cabinet drawer; it is getting me nowhere. Maybe I should record all the important events and conversations in my life. Then, upon recalling them years later, I could fact-check them against the recordings.

Interestingly, during the interview I had with Kevin Beggs, the chairman of the Lionsgate Television Group, for this issue, we talked about the sophistication and complexity of today’s serialized drama, which is beautifully produced and features storytelling that often contains flashbacks or flash-forwards.

Sometimes viewers need to go back and re-watch certain episodes because they just can’t remember everything that happened or, armed with more information about a character because they just saw a flashback, they want to go back and savor certain scenes again with the benefit of this added insight. Beggs mentioned what I have heard several times over the past year (and which I have remembered correctly), that today’s top dramas are Dickensian, written like novels (or like Charles Dickens used to write novels), in installments, printed first in periodicals, and then published as books. Today’s shows, like great books, summon us to go back and revisit them—all the better to remember them.

In this issue we also talk about quality TV shows with FremantleMedia International’s Jens Richter, Red Arrow International’s Henrik Pabst and A+E Networks’ Joel Denton. I was reminded of how much memory, focus and attention to details are essential to the process of making shows. As our feature on the business of drama today points out, securing talent, tax breaks, distribution rights or co-pro partnerships requires knowing (and properly remembering) an awful lot of information, and having (and remembering) many, many contacts. Another key ingredient to co-productions is trust: trust that all of the partners will deliver what they promise and will work toward making the best possible series, miniseries or event movie.

Trust is also the key issue behind the Brian Williams Chopper Whopper. We all embellish, but to embellish as private individuals while telling a story to friends or family is one thing; to exaggerate a report as a news anchor is quite another—and so unnecessary.

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UPFRONTS

all3media international Kew on a Plate / Ancient Mega Cities / The Embassy Filmed at the world-famous Kew Gardens botanical center in London, Kew on a Plate sees Michelin-starred chef Raymond Blanc create a special kitchen garden to explore people’s relationships with fruits and vegetables. The title is part of all3media international’s factual catalogue for MIPTV, along with Ancient Mega Cities, which chronicles how early metropolises like Athens and Rome created the mechanics of modern life. Additionally, the company is presenting The Embassy, an insider’s look at the workings of diplomats within the Australian embassy in Thailand. “Quality, innovation and ambition run through all three of these programs,” says Stephen Driscoll, the senior VP of international sales at all3media international.

“We have a great range of scripted and nonscripted programming to launch this spring, and we intend to set the bar very high.”

—Stephen Driscoll Kew on a Plate

BBC Worldwide Wolf Hall / Banished / The Interceptor Based on Hilary Mantel’s best-selling novels, Wolf Hall paints a portrait of Thomas Cromwell, the consigliere to King Henry VIII. The six-part drama, which stars Mark Rylance and Damian Lewis, has already been sold by BBC Worldwide to a host of broadcasters, including SVT in Sweden, DR in Denmark, Yle in Finland and BBC First in Australia. The U.S. rights are with co-production partner Masterpiece. “[Wolf Hall is] such a big calling card for us,” says Liam Keelan, the director of scripted at BBC Worldwide. “It’s the type of drama that the BBC does brilliantly. It’s the type of drama that BBC Worldwide is very proud to stand behind.” Further drama highlights from the company include Banished, from writer Jimmy McGovern, and the fast-paced series The Interceptor.

“We’re in the enviable position in that people want British talent and British drama.”

—Liam Keelan Wolf Hall

Cisneros Media Distribution Route 35, The Escape Valve / Secret Love / Fallen Over Love Best known for its catalogue of classic telenovelas, Cisneros Media Distribution is increasingly being recognized for its slate of action-packed series. As the company gears up for MIPTV, it is looking to stir up interest for Route 35, The Escape Valve, an action series from acclaimed producer Cristina Palacio and starring Danna García. Other highlights include Fallen Over Love and Secret Love. “Fallen Over Love is an entertaining web of captivating stories in which love is a common denominator,” says Jonathan Blum, the president of Cisneros Media. “Continuing in line with our trademark telenovelas, Secret Love is an enchanting classic love story that endures time; its universal theme is sure to capture audiences of all ages, no matter the market.”

“We are excited to present a solid proposal at MIPTV of original programming that is diversified, running the gamut from classic telenovelas to action-packed series.”

—Jonathan Blum Route 35, The Escape Valve 8 World Screen 3/15

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GMA Worldwide Healing Hearts / More Than Words / The Half Sisters GMA Worldwide is heading to Hong Kong International Film & TV Market (FILMART) armed with a slate that includes a bevy of dramatic programs. Roxanne J. Barcelona, the company’s VP, selects as drama highlights Healing Hearts, More Than Words and The Half Sisters. “Our dramas contain compelling story lines and imaginative themes, and feature our country’s most talented artists,” says Barcelona. “These three dramas embody these qualities faithfully. Subject matters revolve around common real-life conditions, from young love (More Than Words) to family heartache (Healing Hearts) to sibling rivalry (The Half Sisters). GMA’s wide assortment of titles imparts sincere ideas, which is why our diverse clientele is able to enjoy and identify with our shows.”

“GMA’s titles appeal to all sorts of international broadcasters and audiences because of the growing exposure and appreciation of quality Filipino programming.”

—Roxanne J. Barcelona The Half Sisters

ITV Studios Global Entertainment Texas Rising / The Good Witch / Quiz Duel The game show Quiz Duel enables viewers to play along live using a mobile app, with their input potentially affecting the outcome of the show. The title has already launched successfully in Germany and is now being presented to worldwide buyers by ITV Studios Global Entertainment (ITVS GE). “We’re seeing interest in the TV show from all of the international territories that already love the app,” says Dan Gopal, the executive VP for EMEA distribution and global digital partners at ITVS GE. On the scripted side, the company’s big drama launch is Texas Rising, an epic series boasting all-star talent such as Ray Liotta and Bill Paxton. “The series is cinematic in its scale and visual style,” Gopal adds. Also part of ITVS GE’s scripted slate is The Good Witch, a tale about a magical mother-daughter duo.

“Our focus is always to bring fantastic content to our global partners and to maximize the international audience for that content across all platforms.”

—Dan Gopal The Good Witch

Rive Gauche Television I Almost Accidentally Killed Myself / Fix It & Finish It / APB with Troy Dunn Self-inflicted mishaps take center stage in I Almost Accidentally Killed Myself, one of the titles that Rive Gauche Television is presenting at MIPTV. “Many of our clients across every region are continuing to look for quality documentary programming with an extreme hook, and we think I Almost Accidentally Killed Myself is the answer,” says Jon Kramer, the company’s CEO. Rive Gauche is also showcasing Fix It & Finish It, a design show led by Antonio Sabato Jr., and APB with Troy Dunn, an investigative series that sees the titular host use his expertise to help individuals locate someone they’ve lost contact with.

“These programs all come from very different genres; however, all three fit specific programming needs that we’ve been hearing from our clients are very much in demand,” says Kramer.

“Our catalogue is a direct reflection of our desire and proven ability to respond to the needs of broadcasters.”

—Jon Kramer Fix It & Finish It 10 World Screen 3/15

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Sky Vision 1000 Heartbeats / 7 Deadly Sins / Big Fish Man In the high-tension game show 1000 Heartbeats, part of the Sky Vision portfolio, each contestant has just 1,000 heartbeats to win a big cash prize; the faster contestants’ hearts beat, the quicker their time runs out. In 7 Deadly Sins, Richard E. Grant uses the seven deadly sins to give viewers a unique way of understanding animal behavior, all in 3D. The series Big Fish Man, meanwhile, follows Jakub Vágner, a world-recordholding fisherman, survivalist and adventurer, as he searches for the world’s biggest freshwater fish. “We believe each of these shows can generate wide appeal across all demographics,” says Leona Connell, the head of global sales at Sky Vision.

“They also fit into a range of time slots, making them highly versatile titles for international schedules.”

“These titles illustrate the breadth and variety of our current catalogue, as well as demonstrate our commitment to delivering quality content.”

—Leona Connell 1000 Heartbeats

STUDIOCANAL Spotless / The Five / Crossing Lines STUDIOCANAL has streamlined distribution and marketing of all film and TV content under the STUDIOCANAL banner.

“This restructuring allows us to better serve all of our partners and clients worldwide,” says Romain Bessi, the company’s COO and CFO. “It’s a win-win situation for all, enabling us to play to the strengths of STUDIOCANAL while providing a one-stop shop for high-quality TV and film content.” STUDIOCANAL titles include Spotless, a sexy, one-hour drama peppered with black humor, starring Marc-André Grondin, Denis Ménochet and Brendan Coyle; The Five, a thriller following four friends united by a terrible childhood event; and Crossing Lines season three, with Goran Visnjic joining an all-star cast led by Donald Sutherland and Tom Wlaschiha.

“We are now able to position STUDIOCANAL’s thirdparty, quality television projects alongside our film library and with productions from Tandem, RED and SAM.” —Romain Bessi Spotless

ZDF Enterprises Crime Watch XY / The Invasion: The Outbreak of World War II / Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs ZDFE.drama, the scripted catalogue of ZDF Enterprises (ZDFE), is offering a new season of the screen adaptations of Arne Dahl’s crime novels about an elite force within the Swedish police department. From ZDFE.entertainment comes Crime Watch XY, a reality show. ZDFE.factual features The Invasion: The Outbreak of World War II, a German-Polish co-production focused on the Third Reich. In the way of kids’ programming, ZDFE.junior is presenting Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs, an animated action/adventure comedy series. “[Our] content is created by an ensemble of great international partners, thus ensuring that the storytelling is universal and can travel across cultural borders,” says Fred Burcksen, ZDFE’s executive VP and COO.

“Our slate is comprised of high-end series produced with renowned partners in the industry, many of them through international co-productions.”

—Fred Burcksen Crime Watch XY 12 World Screen 3/15

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SPOTLIGHT

From left, World Screen’s Anna Carugati, SPT’s Andy Kaplan, FIC’s Hernan Lopez and VIMN’s Bob Bakish.

STATE OF PAY

By Mansha Daswani

OX International Channels’ Hernan Lopez, Viacom’s Bob Bakish and Sony Pictures Television’s Andy Kaplan said that the global payTV channels business is as healthy as ever in a NATPE session moderated by World Screen’s Anna Carugati.

The session, Global Navigators: The Continued Vibrancy of the World’s Leading Channel Groups—What It Means to You, featured Lopez, the president and CEO of FOX International Channels (FIC); Bakish, the president and CEO of Viacom International Media Networks (VIMN); and Kaplan, the president of worldwide networks at Sony Pictures Television (SPT). They discussed the challenges of operating a global pay-TV channels business today.

While the landscape has dramatically changed since these groups first began operating in the global market, what pay-TV operators want hasn’t changed much, Lopez said—they’re seeking out “a combination of content, brands and consumer experiences that let them get new subscribers, retain existing ones and increase ARPU.” Bakish added that platforms want to “showcase the value of the capital expenditures they’ve made in their [systems]. So it’s incumbent on us as programming and content suppliers to provide brands that people know about, make sure programming reinforces those brands and give people a reason to watch. Clearly people don’t only want programming on linear anymore, so we’re providing product on catch-up VOD, TV Everywhere, maybe bundling with a mobile service. We’re working with these platforms to drive their businesses.”

Kaplan added, “[Platforms are] also looking at the value for money proposition in a much more surgical way than they did in the past. They’re being much more

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circumspect about which channels are working for them and which aren’t.”

The opportunities for growth exist around the world, the panelists noted. Bakish stated that there are less mature multichannel markets, like Brazil, India and Indonesia, where the pay-TV bases are still growing at healthy rates. In more mature markets like the U.K. or Spain, there are opportunities to launch new services.

Stated Lopez, “In 2014 we actually added subscribers faster than we did in 2013. It was a really good year for pay television around the world.”

BRAND PLANS Carugati then moved the conversation on to the importance of having a strong channel brand in addition to popular programming.

“Content is king, but brands are the castle,” said Lopez.

“Content does rule, but even the mightiest, most powerful king can go away. The brand—the castle the king lives in—if you build it right, if you continue to maintain it and associate it with great kings, it has the potential to be around for a long, long time.” It was this thinking that led to the global rebrand of the FOX channels recently announced by FIC. Bakish added, “In this sea of ever-expanding choice, the brands are the beacon you can follow. Now once [viewers] get there, of course you have to have great content.”

Kaplan agreed, noting, “The consumer needs some help and focus in trying to figure out where they want to go. Brand affinity gives you a leg up.”

In terms of programming, the three panelists all spoke of the importance of having a good mix of local

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and imported product. At SPT, some markets it operates in have entirely local product—notably India— while others are using a mix of U.S. titles, locally developed fare and format adaptations.

Bakish discussed Viacom’s “glocal” strategy, by which titles from the U.S. channels are complemented by locally relevant content. He used Comedy Central as an example, mentioning local stand-up specials for some markets around the world and a British adaptation of the American hit Drunk History. MTV has also been formatting U.S. titles, with versions of Jersey Shore on air in a number of markets. He also pointed to the success of the Nickelodeon Latin America hit Grachi, which spawned an English-language version, Every Witch Way, that is airing on Nick in the U.S. and around the world.

LOOKING LOCAL FIC has been in the local content business for a long time, Lopez said, first with National Geographic Channel and now with sports. It is also expanding its scripted and unscripted entertainment originals. Original drama is now being produced in Spanish, Mandarin, Turkish and soon Italian, with “budgets between $200,000 and $4 million. They all have to measure up to the expectation of quality that viewers have of the FOX brand,” Lopez said.

The panelists were then asked about how their businesses have adapted to a multiplatform era.

“We are still primarily a linear television business,” said Bakish. “That said, the other platforms are growing at a rapid clip.” As such, VIMN is supplying content to OTT systems and working with its traditional partners on brand extensions like the My Nick Jr. app.

“Only a minority of homes in the world have pay television,” Bakish said. “These [digital] platforms provide an opportunity to serve everybody else. Sometimes that will be in partnership with an existing operator, sometimes it will be with another entrant, but it’s an extraordinary opportunity and one we’re very focused on pursuing.”

“You need to be able to offer your consumer and the operator a multitude of rights and different products,” Kaplan added. He referenced the Plus-branded VOD services that SPT offers in Japan as extensions of its channel brands. AXN Plus is also available in Central Europe, where it has been “very attractive to the operators in terms of a value-add as well as another way to attract the consumer.” Offering content on multiple platforms comes with its own set of challenges—notably securing those rights, which, Kaplan said, can be “hard to get or expensive.... That’s another reason the originaland local-production conversation is so important.

Those are situations where you can control all of those rights and all of those offerings. It gives you a more powerful seat at the table with your operators.”

Lopez added that “viewership is migrating from linear, so we need to be where the viewership is. Most of the viewership today is in linear, so that’s where we are.

Some is on demand, and that’s where we are as well. Our job is not to defend at all costs the linear business model, but it is to increase the relevance of our own brands and our own content. What matters, at the end of the day, is that we have the best shows that consumers watch on our brands first, that they associate them with our

brands, and that we make them available to as many platforms as possible on as many devices as possible.”

Advertisers are following viewers to nonlinear platforms, making the need for reliable ratings from those services even more important.

“One of our responsibilities as an industry is to fight for measurement,” said Bakish. “The reality is, in the nonlinear world there is a tremendous amount of consumption that is going unmeasured and therefore is effectively

“Content is king, but brands are the castle.

Even the mightiest, most powerful king can go away. The brand—the castle the king lives in— has the potential to be around for a long, long time.”

—Hernan Lopez being given away for free.... We need a better view of aggregate consumption.”

Discussing how channels are working with marketers outside of the linear channel, Bakish referenced the work Viacom is doing around its live events and social media, while Kaplan discussed the opportunities presented by Crackle.

The discussion ended with the panelists speaking about the continued importance of live events and global premieres.

“Live cuts through clutter and gets people to corral around something and associate it with your brand,” said Lopez. “We’ve done several day-and-date premieres with the U.S. We want people to always remember they watched a great show on FOX first, ideally as close as possible to the U.S. air date.”

“We’re all trying to cut through the clutter,” said Bakish. Events like MTV’s Video Music Awards and Nick’s Kids’ Choice Awards help that effort. “You’ve got to get people to pay attention. In this crazy digital interconnected world, there’s no substitute for live.”

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IN THE NEWS

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FREMANTLEMEDIA’S

JENS RICHTER When Jens Richter became CEO of FremantleMedia International (FMI) earlier this year, he brought with him years of experience distributing, financing and acquiring programming.

Early in his career he worked for an advertising production house, a sports media company, and then for Beta Film. Most recently, he was the managing director of Red Arrow International, the international sales arm of Red Arrow Entertainment Group.

Among his numerous responsibilities, he oversaw the international distribution of a slate of U.S. and U.K. scripted shows and of formats such as The Taste and Off Their Rockers. He brings all this expertise to FMI, whose catalogue contains more than 20,000 hours of programming. Richter tells World Screen that he believes local productions and the global rollout of shows will become increasingly important in today’s constantly evolving multiplatform world.

WS: What appealed to you about joining FremantleMedia International?

RICHTER: Years ago, if you had asked me what company I would have liked to work for, it would have been FremantleMedia. It was one of the first big global production companies. FMI is a leader when it comes to branding. The combination of FremantleMedia and the RTL Group as the mother ship and the global structure on the production side makes it a very strong company.

I believe very much that in the future our business will, on one hand, be very local when it comes to programming, and on the other hand, it will become increasingly important to be able to roll out content internationally.

FremantleMedia is unique in both respects. There are a lot of shows being produced by FremantleMedia that will never leave the countries they are produced in. And that is alright because that is what the power of local free TV will be all about in the future, very local content; FremantleMedia is amazingly well positioned there.

The production of formats on a local level will become more and more important as we have more platforms and more outlets. So, global rollout becomes more important as well. FremantleMedia is one of the very few companies that can play in both worlds.

WS: Drama has been an important genre for FMI. Are there other genres you are focusing on?

RICHTER: We are focusing on the big talent shows. At one of my first meetings here we spoke about the global reach of those talent shows. Our Asian office just closed a deal [for Got Talent] in Mongolia! These talent shows are still selling everywhere. They are very high in importance and we continue to take care of them.

As we further build out our slate, there is a clear push into drama. The Returned was launched with FremantleMedia North America, where they have their own drama development and production going. It’s great that we have the first series coming from them. We have production labels in the U.K., in Australia. We are

probably the biggest drama producer in Germany with UFA Fiction. We have drama going on in Italy and in the Benelux. We have a Scandi production company, Miso Film. They have a drama going in Denmark and one launching in Norway, and they just entered the Swedish market and are in production for TV4 in Sweden. Within the group there is a clear push into drama, and we are also focusing on third-party relationships in drama. We have secured MTV’s new drama Eye Candy.

The good thing is that the drama market is changing.

You have prime-time procedural drama that is still received very well by terrestrial broadcasters, especially in Europe. You have serialized drama, especially on U.S. cable and in the U.K. You have some amazing serialized drama also being introduced in Europe. And there is more openness as to where drama can come from.

English-language drama will always be at the forefront, especially series from the U.S. However, U.K. drama, which has always been strong in some territories, now also travels into more and more territories. For the past five years or so, you’ve had Scandi noir, and it is still going strong. They have developed their own USP [unique selling proposition]. Out of Germany we had Generation War, produced by our company UFA Fiction, which had really good sales. It received an International Emmy. I spoke to the guys at Netflix and it did really well for them in the U.S. We launched Deutschland 83 at Berlinale [the Berlin International Film Festival], which is the next big serialized event coming to market from UFA. Deutschland will travel really well, in a way that we haven’t seen German drama travel up to now. Platforms like Hulu and Netflix are not only opening opportunities as customers, but they also serve the function of bringing new programming to areas where that programming hasn’t been exposed before. Now you do have German drama and Scandi drama in the U.S. and in other territories as well. You have subtitled drama on SVOD platforms. I think that will have an impact on people’s viewing habits and tastes. It opens the market. It is easier to find a place for outstanding non-English drama today than it was five years ago.

Besides drama, we are always pushing for the next reality and the next factual show. That is a sweet spot for FremantleMedia. Over the last couple of years they have been very good coming to the market with the next reality, the next factual. We look for the next big brand. A lot has been written in the U.S. about the big factual properties losing a little bit of steam, and some of the time slots have been taken by drama. But it’s just a matter of time until the next big factual or reality show comes about.

WS: FMI will be distributing AOL’s series Connected.

Are you working more with digital platforms, not only selling content to them but also representing their original programming?

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By Anna Carugati

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FMI has the worldwide sales rights for the Cold War drama Deutschland 83, produced by the FremantleMedia-owned German outfit UFA Fiction.

RICHTER: We had a meeting recently and I was asked if in ten years there will be traditional broadcasters.

Obviously there will be local broadcasters. I don’t know how many languages are spoken in the world, more than 200 for sure, so these local languages will require local productions. Platforms and signal transmission will change. Some will be more linear broadcast and others will be more VOD platforms. Moving forward, we also will have local versions of global content. The same way that companies like ours provide more and more programming to the Netflixes and Amazons and Hulus, it’s just logical that we will also see these platforms as content providers and work with them to distribute their product. The lines will blur more and more, and at some point there will be no lines between digital and linear on-demand. The differentiation in the future will be more like local and regional content versus global content.

WS: FMI has the advantage that, because it distributes globally, if one country is hit by a recession there are others that are doing better. Which regions are doing well and which are facing more challenges?

RICHTER: In my first week here I was introduced to the sales structure and how FMI’s revenues are spread across the globe. I was blown away when I saw the business figures, for example, in the Middle East. I was blown away by the business created in Asia. I haven’t seen those numbers before, and I haven’t only worked at other companies and seen their sales numbers, I’ve also seen the numbers of many other companies over the years from colleagues. The regional sales structure at FMI is a big, big advantage. And it isn’t only regional

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offices, it’s regional people. It’s the people on the ground that we have on our teams. Ganesh Rajaram, who is running our Singapore office, is from Singapore. He knows everybody there. Our people are really linked to their markets and you see the difference in the sales numbers. You see the depth of their market knowledge and their ability to sell into the market. You see the difference in finding the right home for an individual show. And the other big advantage, when we talk about content and shows, is getting really good feedback out of a territory for a particular show—feedback that we can give back to the producer. That is critical, to be able to go back and say, Your show did amazingly well because of this and this. Or you have to say sometimes as a distributor, Well it didn’t do as well as we all thought it would because of these reasons. And then you have those productions where you can go back and say, The first season did OK, and this is the feedback we got from the market. If we change it a bit like this and that, we can make an even better show. There the global structure is a mega-advantage.

And then sometimes, as you said, you have some territories that are doing better than others, but it all goes in cycles. For many distributors, Russia was an amazing place to be for the past two years, and this year it’s going to be really challenging with the decline of the ruble and the cut in advertising. That’s hard.

But hardly anyone outside of the Hollywood studios has a global sales structure like ours. To push that even further, that could be a goal. Maybe there are one or two markets we should go into in addition to the ones where we already are.

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FOCUS ON

A+E NETWORKS’

JOEL DENTON Whitney Houston movie [Whitney] came out recently and had fantastic ratings. We’ve got really high hopes for that internationally. In a lot of the big territories TV movies are in daytime or shoulder-peak slots. Occasionally we’ll have a movie that leaps up and can actually play in prime time, and we have high hopes that Whitney will be one of those movies.

WS: What type of product is coming out of A+E Studios?

DENTON: The studio has been established for just one year now, so it’s very new. There’s a mix of product coming out of the studio. About 50 percent of it is co-produced and 50 percent of it is product that we own and are distributing. We have series such as The Returned, which is coproduced with FremantleMedia North America. They are taking the series out internationally, but as co-producers, we are very much a part of that. Then we have series such as UnREAL, which we’re producing and distributing globally.

The studio is still in its early days, so everything is just ramping up in terms of production and development. We’re really excited about what we have coming up in the shortterm and also the medium- and long-term, taking control of more of our own scripted product for our channels.

By Anna Carugati

Reflecting A+E Studios’ expanding output of scripted series, miniseries and TV movies, the A+E Studios International banner was launched late last year to showcase this content to the global marketplace. As managing director of international content sales and partnerships at A+E Networks, Joel Denton is leading the charge to ensure that the company becomes as well known for its high-quality drama as it is for its factual offerings. Denton shares with World Screen some of the highlights coming down the A+E Networks pipeline, including historical event series, biographical TV movies and female-skewing shows.

WS: Tell us about A+E Networks’ increased focus on scripted content.

DENTON: We’re in the early stages with our scripted series and miniseries. We’ve been in the TV-movie business for years now, and our partnerships are pretty well established. The initial response [from the international market] has been good, but a lot of people are waiting for ratings from the U.S., which obviously have a big bearing on things.

There’s been good initial reception for Sons of Liberty, which came out at the end of January on HISTORY. We have the ten-hour series UnREAL for Lifetime; again, there’s good initial reception and we’ve presold it into quite a lot of territories already. That’s exciting for us because it’s the first scripted series we’re selling. The

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WS: Has the company’s strategy always focused on owning as much of its own product as possible?

DENTON: Yes, and that’s really been true in the unscripted space. We own the vast majority of the shows that go out on our channels. In the scripted space, traditionally we’ve worked with studios in a licensing model that’s very easy, very straightforward. As most things go through cycles, scripted product was really important for us in the early days, with A&E for example. From there it was mostly about licensing from studios and elsewhere. Now again, as scripted is becoming more channel-defining than it has been for a number of years, it’s more important that we own those shows going forward. The rise of Netflix in the States and channels being launched internationally means that we really need to control a bit more of our own destiny. We’re putting a lot of time, money and energy into taking more control and thinking very carefully about the sorts of shows we’re developing and producing.

WS: What are some of the new highlights coming up?

DENTON: In the scripted area, we have Marilyn coming up for Lifetime. Biographies generally seem to be doing well again; they went through a slightly lean period internationally, but they seem to be popular again. Having a decent flow of those is great for us.

They do really well for female-skewing networks and also for general-entertainment channels.

Gangland is also coming up, for HISTORY. It’s very commercial, has a contemporary feel to it and is actionoriented. We have the first episodes coming through now and are starting to show it to buyers.

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MARKET TRENDS

RED ARROW INTERNATIONAL’S

HENRIK PABST authentic and powerful TV version of the books. And I think the outcome is a pretty special piece of television.

Looking at the lineup of non-scripted content that our creative team has put together from production companies both inside and outside the group, the diversity is very impressive. We have a number of new shows coming with U.S. or U.K. commissions, alongside our evergreen titles that continue to perform well. The runaway success of Married at First Sight has proven especially satisfying. Everyone strives to redefine a genre and shake things up a bit, and this show has really cut through and resonated with audiences.

By Kristin Brzoznowski

Having recently taken over full responsibility for Red Arrow International as managing director, Henrik Pabst is now overseeing the distribution of a catalogue that has a broad mix of scripted, factual and format titles. These hail from the global production companies housed within the Red Arrow Entertainment Group, along with content from third-party creators and digital-content partners. Red Arrow International also acts as a co-producer and provides production financing for projects, including the recent Amazon Studios drama Bosch. Pabst tells World Screen about the types of projects the company is currently looking to invest in.

WS: What has been fueling the success at Red Arrow International?

PABST: For both Red Arrow International and Red Arrow as a group, we continue to identify projects with exceptional creative value. We always want to be on board at an early stage of the project to make sure that the IP and rights are managed properly for the benefit of all partners involved. This early involvement ensures that we deliver the type of high-end, premium content that our broadcast partners and international viewers want to see.

Bosch is a good example. Working with Amazon has proved to be a great experience. Producers Henrik Bastin at Fabrik Entertainment, part of the Red Arrow family, and Michael Connelly, the author of the Harry Bosch novels, had all the freedom they needed to really make an

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WS: What key growth areas have you identified for 2015?

PABST: We are always looking for new and exciting talent, and to engage in any kind of deal that helps them and us grow together. We will continue to build on the relationships we have established across all platforms and genres.

We have great partnerships with Netflix, Amazon and channel groups across the world. They trust us and see us as solid and creative producers and partners who come up with fresh and unique ideas.

In addition to content generated within the Red Arrow group, we are a great home for third-party producers. A big percentage of our catalogue and lineup is always driven by third-party properties. I like to think that producers, whether from large or small territories, trust us to turn an idea into something significant by putting our distribution power behind it. If we believe in a project, we do everything we can to turn it into a success.

Our relationship with the multichannel network Collective Digital Studio is crucial for the future. Using content that has already proven successful on digital platforms, and then transforming it into more traditional TV shows, is a great challenge but also a fascinating new field that we continue to experiment with and explore.

WS: What types of projects are you looking to invest in?

PABST: In scripted, it’s a given that everyone hopes to find a show—for example, a hit crime series—that travels to all the major international outlets. We are no different, but we’re also open to serialized drama, mysteries, thrillers, miniseries and movie cycles. We’re looking for high-end, quality drama in every shape and form.

When we see an opportunity, we try to secure the project very early on. We want to be seen as a “mini studio” that comes in early, helps to finance the project and supports the development and packaging. A great example is our work on the new drama co-production 100 Code.

The major outlets in Europe are all opening up for international co-production, and so is the U.S. It is important to put the pieces together for these projects based on what is best for the actual show itself—there’s no “one size fits all” easy solution. We are doing this very successfully at the moment and have a great scripted team that already has two big new projects in the pipeline.

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BEHIND THE SCENES

Marty Adelstein & John McNamara

The Age of

Aquarius David Duchovny makes his return to broadcast-network television this year with NBC’s upcoming Aquarius. The actor, known to audiences around the world from his years on Californication and The X-Files, plays a detective in 1967 Los Angeles whose work on a missing-persons case leads him to encounter a young Charles Manson (played by Gethin Anthony).

Aquarius, which was given a straight-to-series order by NBC, is being repped globally by ITV Studios Global Entertainment. It is the first show to come out of Tomorrow Studios, a joint venture between ITV Studios US Group and noted producer Marty Adelstein. The series grew out of an idea that writer and producer John McNamara had for a quintet of novels. McNamara and Adelstein share with World Screen the story of Aquarius’ long road to NBC, and their views on the opportunities writers and producers can seek out today in the increasingly globalized business of drama.

WS: How did the idea for Aquarius come about?

MCNAMARA: I had wanted to do a police show set in Los Angeles in the ’60s for a while. Who was the seminal figure of the ’60s who ruined the ’60s? It was Charles Manson. I went to Marty [Adelstein], who is a friend of mine and was my agent once, and I said, I’m going to write a quintet of novels called Aquarius. He said, You don’t even want to read five novels, why would you want to write five novels? I told him the idea

for the story and he said, It’s totally wrong. I said, Why? He said, If you write it as a series of novels, you will not be able to hear the music, and the music is the era. I said, Oh my God, we’re going to be doing a TV show!

[Laughs] That was six years ago. We sold it to another network and developed it, then it got dropped like a hot rock and sat around for four or five more years.

ADELSTEIN: John then came to me and said, Maybe I will write that quintet of novels! It’s always been my favorite script, and I had been leaving FOX to set up this new company with ITV, so I said, Let me read it again over the weekend. It got me reinvigorated about it. I happened to have lunch set for that Monday with David Duchovny’s manager. I called John and said, Duchovny would be great for this, it’s like the next evolution in his career for him to do a role like this after Californication. John said, That’s the guy. I gave it to his manager, she read it and said, I’m going to get him to do it. Three days later, he was in the role.

WS: How did you approach casting the part of the young Charles Manson?

MCNAMARA: We read 150 actors worldwide and literally only found one, and that’s the guy playing Manson! There was no second choice.

ADELSTEIN: I think we knew from the beginning he would be a Brit who was classically trained, who you

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By Mansha Daswani

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NBC gave the period thriller Aquarius, which stars David Duchovny, a straight-to-series 13-episode order.

haven’t seen that much. If he was somebody who was well known, it just wouldn’t ring right.

WS: How do you meld historical facts with this fictional story?

MCNAMARA: Have fun, make things up that you need to make up, stick to the truth when it’s helpful, but don’t be afraid to bend reality. It’s historical fiction, so it’s malleable, it’s bendable. But, we’ve stuck to the timeline of Manson’s major actions, the major characters in his life and the family, the events, over four seasons, leading to the Tate-LaBianca murders.

WS: What have been the biggest challenges in recreating 1960s Los Angeles?

MCNAMARA: The budget.

ADELSTEIN: It’s not cheap to do, especially since we had to do it in L.A. It’s very expensive to shoot in Los Angeles.

WS: Is the distinction between broadcast-network drama and cable-network drama fading?

MCNAMARA: It is with Aquarius [laughs].

ADELSTEIN: They’ve let us do things that I’ve never seen on network television. I think they have to.

MCNAMARA: And they know it.

ADELSTEIN: They’re losing their audience and their acclaim. It used to be that broadcast television would be water-cooler television. You’d talk about what happened on a show last night. Now it’s the cable shows we’re talking about.

WS: When you’re mapping out a season, do you take into account those viewers who will skip the week-toweek viewing and wait till they can watch the entire season in one sitting?

MCNAMARA: Some people should wait. There’s going to be a version you watch on free TV. It’ll be very good. But there’s another version: the digital version. We’re shooting one version, but we’re cutting it two different ways.

The NBC broadcast version is safe for 10 o’clock, has no bad language and no nudity. The digital version, which you will buy on some pay service the next day, is longer,

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has scenes that were cut, has more depth of character, has nudity and has ferociously bad language. [Laughs] So that’s the world we’re going to be in.

ADELSTEIN: The world is changing.

MCNAMARA: The people who bingewatch will binge-watch [the digital version]. The legacy version of this show that will live forever is the digital version that is shown the next day. That’s the DVD version, the download version, the Hulu version, the Amazon version, the iTunes version, the Netflix version— a completely different cut.

ADELSTEIN: And you can’t do that at a regular studio. They don’t think like that.

MCNAMARA: This is entirely our idea.

Good or bad, our idea was, we shoot something that is basically rated R, we cut it back to PG for the network, but we release that R version the next day. But you have to pay for it.

ADELSTEIN: With this model, and with what’s going on with the chaos in the world, what you can dream up you can do now. And with some of the studios, it’s like turning the Titanic around—they’re just not equipped to do it. But in this sort of structure, we can do what we dream.

WS: Do you think the Hollywood studios will eventually have to become more flexible, given the competitive environment?

MCNAMARA: I’ve benefited greatly from studios paying me money to make shows, as has Marty—I have nothing against studios, but they’re generally so big and so encumbered by stockholders, boards, protocols that are decades old. The best we can expect from them in the future is that they’ll imitate us.

That’s all. They’ll see that what we do works and they’ll imitate it.

There’s no reason why a show like Hannibal or The Good Wife doesn’t shoot an R-rated version, since you can cut around stuff in the editing room.

You don’t have to show topless, you don’t have to hear the word “f**k”; you can bleep it out or cut it.

But if you shoot it, you’ve got it; if you’ve got it, put it in a digital version and sell it.

WS: What does David Duchovny bring to the role?

ADELSTEIN: When he talks he’s fantastic, but he can just convey emotion, tone and feeling with a look. It’s amazing to watch.

MCNAMARA: He’s incredible. He is also the nicest person I’ve worked with in a long time. He’s very secure.

He’s the leader on the set. He comes to work sometimes shooting ten pages of dialogue and he has it all memorized. The rest of the cast is like, Whoa, we better step up! And they do, everyone does. He sets a good tone.

ADELSTEIN: This has been one of the most fun shows to work on. The staff that John has assembled, people he’s worked with a lot, who are extremely talented— it’s just a cohesive unit, and it’s fun to be around.

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ITVS GE’s Texas Rising.

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RAISING

THE STAKES

Distributors are pioneering new distribution and financing models in the increasingly high-stakes business of drama. By Mansha Daswani t remains true that a good story, well told, will always find a home. If only the business of making those good stories were that simple. Deficit financing, pod deals, co-pro partnerships—some based on shared creative input, some structured to take advantage of tax breaks—and a complex web of relationships between broadcasters, distributors and producers have made drama a very complicated affair.

Not that anyone is yearning to go back to simpler times—drama may be expensive to make, but the potential upside, if you have a hit on your hands, appears to be well worth the risk.

“We are witnessing increased competition between producers for commissions and the rights to the best scripts, between distributors for global rights, and between buyers for the best content,” says John Wagener, the chief financial and operating officer at all3media international.

“Demand for drama is so high it can feel like we are in a bubble.”

And no one wants that bubble to burst anytime soon. “While it may be a cliché, it genuinely appears to be a golden age for TV drama,” notes Stuart Baxter, the president of Entertainment One (eOne) Television International. “The sector is benefiting from an explosion of investment, as more and more channels and platforms seek to define themselves by the shows they commission and make.”

For distributors, the days of waiting till a show was commis-

I

sioned and produced before taking it out into the international market are long gone. Top sellers of drama are getting involved in the development and production process as early as possible to help land coproduction partners, secure additional financing, seek out tax incentives and even offer input on what makes a show a valuable international proposition.

EARLY BIRDS “The earlier the better,” says Baxter on when eOne likes to get involved in projects, “so that we can bring our full range of resources, experience and international know-how to create and deliver the best show possible. Our scripted-drama teams have years of production knowledge and relationships to attract top creative talent to shows, and to craft, produce and package these projects. This includes where to produce the show to get the best talent, locations and financial assistance.”

Early involvement—and being able to offer up a significant amount of deficit financing— means a bigger seat at the table and, most importantly, rights retention. In a world of multiple windows, the ability to exploit a show on as many platforms as possible, in all territories, is key.

So how are distributors landing those rights in this increasingly competitive landscape? For most, it involves a multipronged approach that includes tapping into

your resources in-house and being open to a myriad different partnership models.

Take, for example, BBC Worldwide, much of whose drama slate comes via a “very valuable pipeline from the BBC,” says Liam Keelan, director of scripted. “I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t our most important source of product. It’s fantastically varied and always of high quality, so that’ll be the first port of call.”

Independents that BBC Worldwide has stakes in or output deals with are becoming increasingly important, Keelan says. “They’re developing things on their own or in tandem with us, and we meet with them regularly and discuss where the gaps are in the market and what particular broadcasters are looking for.”

And then there are relationships like the one BBC Worldwide has with Spain’s Atresmedia for the English-language sci-fi drama The Refugees. “The traditional route of first going to a U.K. broadcaster still stands, but it doesn’t have to be the only route,” Keelan says. “Could this have happened two, three years ago?

Absolutely not, because there just wasn’t the appetite to take the perceived risk. Now there is.

There is such demand for quality drama that crosses borders, it just makes this kind of model more attractive. What I’ve learned from [the experience of making The Refugees is] to not worry too much if a project hasn’t already

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been commissioned by a BBC One or a Channel 4 or a Sky. It can still get made if it’s the right project and the right proposition.”

IN THE FAMILY It’s a similar situation at fellow British behemoth ITV Studios Global Entertainment (ITVS GE), which reps a huge slate of content from ITV Studios, including Mr Selfridge and the upcoming Beowulf.

“Through the in-house angle, there are five creative directors delivering drama straight through our owned-and-operated model,” says Ruth Clarke, the executive VP of global content and co-productions at ITVS GE. The company is also sourcing drama from ITV Studiosowned outfits like Big Talk Productions. “The next level is the people we partner with on a multiyear basis, which is us investing in overhead and development with those production companies,” Clarke continues, referencing pacts with Warp Films and 42. She also mentions a partnership with Mammoth Screen, “which is an equity stake, rather than the funding model. We do a whole host of programming with them,” including the period drama Poldark.

Like ITVS GE and BBC Worldwide, ZDF Enterprises is certainly able to draw from its home base through projects commissioned locally by German public broadcaster ZDF. But in order to be able to diversify its slate, the company has been looking to external partnerships. Among its upcoming

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ZDF Enterprises is set to launch the new European co-production Blue Eyes this MIPTV. highlights are the German drama Blochin: The Living and the Dead and the European co-pro Blue Eyes, which counts ZDF as a broadcast partner but is being driven creatively by Strix Drama out of Sweden.

ZDF Enterprises was among the first distributors to bring Scandi drama to the global market, but as the market has become more crowded, “it’s getting more and more difficult and complicated to find properties,” says Fred Burcksen, the company’s executive VP and COO. “Many of the independent Scandinavian companies have been bought and [their new parents] want to keep control of production, talent and distribution.”

Red Arrow International is similarly not relying on the output of its parent company, ProSiebenSat.1 Media, to cater to its international broadcast clients. “We are in the great position that we don’t depend on any one specific model,” says Henrik Pabst, the managing director of Red Arrow International. “The majority of our catalogue comes from third-party producers, followed by content from Red Arrow Entertainment Group companies and ProSiebenSat.1.”

The company’s current top drama highlights, however, do come from within the family. Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot hails from Red Arrow-owned Endor Productions in the U.K., and Red Arrow’s U.S.

outfit Fabrik Entertainment is behind Bosch, Amazon Studios’ new crime drama with Titus Welliver. Fabrik also originated 100 Code, which Red Arrow International then financed out of Europe; it’s being made for Kanal 5 in Sweden and Sky Deutschland.

“With Red Arrow Entertainment companies, if a project is not financed by just one broadcaster, we can go out and find complementary partners,” says Amelie von Kienlin, the VP of scripted acquisitions at Red Arrow International.

Being able to help producers close the gap is crucial, notes all3media’s Wagener. “We look to match the financing requirement of the production as closely as we can. We have a ring-fenced fund of £10 million to £20 million annually across all genres. In the last few years we have grown this fund as we have sought to supercharge the drama acquisition slate. In the current marketplace, competition for content is at the highest we have seen it, with producers looking for higher budgets to deliver the best show possible.”

The all3media drama lineup includes properties from sister companies as well as other pro-

ducers via first-look deals. “Typically we look to fund the full deficit and acquire global rights, but each project is different,” Wagener says. “There is a level a budget or deficit may reach such that we need certain territories or rights to be underwritten from an early stage. In a period of great ambition in drama, we need to make sure our funding models adapt. Projects gather momentum fast once commissioned, and being able to make a quick decision on funding can be crucial.”

COMING TO AMERICA Being flexible is especially important in the U.S., where holding onto your distribution rights can be a complicated and fraught task. “Once investment from a U.S. broadcaster hits above a certain level, it gets difficult to retain the rights,” affirms Red Arrow’s Pabst. “In an ideal scenario, we secure a big portion of the financing before we talk to U.S. partners.

This increases considerably the chances of a show going straight into production.”

At ITVS GE, the key to rightsretention on U.S.-commissioned projects has been having a scripted

Spotless is Tandem’s brand-new ten-part series being shot in London for the CANAL+ Création Originale banner.

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Wolf Hall is a Company Pictures and Playground Entertainment co-production for BBC Two and Masterpiece, in association with BBC Worldwide, which is distributing the series globally. business within its well-established ITV Studios America venture. The distributor has the international rights to the NBC straight-to-series order Aquarius, produced by Tomorrow Studios, the joint venture established by ITV Studios America and noted producer Marty Adelstein. Similarly, ITVS GE also reps Texas Rising, a new HISTORY commission from ITV Studiosowned Thinkfactory Media.

North American drama has been a strength for eOne for the last several years, with the company producing Hell on Wheels for AMC and co-financing shows like Halt and Catch Fire with AMC and Matador with El Rey. “Our Canadian production business invests and coproduces a wide range of shows like Bitten, Rookie Blue, Haven and Saving Hope, all of which have U.S. broadcast partners,” adds Baxter.

“These come from a mix of equity relationships, first-look deals and some show-specific investments.”

The company’s latest expansion of its U.S. drama business came in the form of the acquisition of a 51-percent stake in the Mark Gordon Company. Gordon and eOne are establishing an independent studio to finance

and produce content that eOne will distribute internationally.

Based in London, Baxter is also leading eOne’s efforts to build out its European scripted business. It has a first-look deal with U.K. outfit Eleven Film that has already seen eOne roll out Glue internationally, with a second project, The Enfield Haunting, launching at MIPTV. “We are building our international co-production business and expanding the number of producers and production companies we work with in Europe, Australia and Asia,” Baxter says. “To this end, we are increasing our international development budgets, and putting more resources on the ground in these locations to work with potential partners.”

IT TAKES TWO Co-productions have certainly dominated deals in the international drama business for the last few years. But whereas in the past they may have been structured purely for financial needs, there are more and more today that are as much about creative collaboration as they are about fiscal necessity.

Tandem is among the companies behind this trend with drama proj-

ects that meld European and North American sensibilities. Its slate includes Crossing Lines, which is heading into its third season, and the new CANAL+ commission Spotless. Both have writers’ rooms set up in the U.K.

WRITE ON TIME “A lot of people don’t have that system in the U.K.,” says Rola Bauer, the president of Tandem. “They have traditionally written independently of each other. Writers in the U.K. are also used to discussing with producers what they would like to do, but not always collaborating as a group. We have a hybrid: we encourage the writers to come in and we have discussions about what their vision is, what we would like to do, and then work with them to see if there is common ground.”

Tandem, like so many other companies, is also looking to strike agreements with independent talent, as it did with producer and writer Frank Spotnitz.

“Red Arrow International is in active talks with various talent to find ways to work with them and support them, be that legal, financing, structuring or simply attaching them to one of our production

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companies,” says Pabst. “With the current round of mergers, a lot of very good creatives are on the market. I think our size, which allows us to be efficient with decisions and to quickly take things to the next level, appeals to them.”

“We’re getting more involved in talking directly to writing talent,” says BBC Worldwide’s Keelan.

“Because we’ve got this breadth of knowledge and breadth of relationships, indies, writers and talent from countries around the world are coming directly to us.”

Having a deep base of relationships that can bring you a diverse pipeline of drama is paramount in the ever-more-fragmented distribution landscape. “It doesn’t matter so much where the programming comes from—we’re just focused on securing the strongest programming that will fit in our catalogue,” says ITVS GE’s Clarke.

“There are so many different outlets looking for programs, and what they’re asking for is very eclectic,” notes Red Arrow’s von Kienlin. “At the end of the day, finding a show that is original, well written and with characters that really cut through is what you are after.”

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ONE-ON-ONE

hen Lionsgate first started producing for television more than a decade ago, the studio used the same approach it had taken with films: identify underserved niches and offer them quality projects. Lionsgate Television quickly built a reputation for working with top talent and giving them room to follow their visions, the results of which have been critically acclaimed hits such as Mad Men, Weeds, Nurse

Jackie and, more recently, Orange Is the New Black.

Today, the studio, which has won 21 Primetime Emmys, among other awards, is producing for broadcast networks, cable channels and online streaming services. As Kevin Beggs, the chairman of the Lionsgate Television Group, explains, remaining creatordriven, flexible and willing to form partnerships has been key to the studio’s success.

KEVIN BEGGS Lionsgate

By Anna Carugati

WS: Lionsgate has a reputation for pursuing various production models. Tell us about that.

BEGGS: Every show has a different model. We have the traditional model of script development and production of a pilot, the way we developed Nashville at ABC or, most recently, The Royals at E!, which had a script, then a pilot, then an evaluation period, then a first season order. E! has really fallen in love with The Royals.

They announced a [second] season renewal six weeks before the first season premiered. That’s really rare.

Then, we are working with [platforms] like Netflix and Hulu and WGN [America]—those are straight-to-series models, which involve just a script or two and then a pickup to series. So each project is different.

WS: Your projects are also known for being creatively driven.

BEGGS: We are creatively driven and often creatordriven. That is exciting and it gives the people we work with a certain amount of autonomy and freedom. As a studio, we look for buyers that will be a good fit with the creative team [of each show]. We also look to be champions of the [project] that the creator is putting together and sometimes its defenders if there is a fight or a dispute [with the network].

We think that an arms-length relationship between an independent and a network, whatever kind of network it is, is healthy for the business. It’s healthy for the show, because everyone’s interests, while sometimes different, are pulling toward the same goal of a great show. And everyone gets to a great show a little bit differently. A network gets focused on the network’s needs. The studio is focused on maximizing value and distribution and ensuring creator integrity.

The creator is usually just focused on making a great show and on having the freedom to deliver on that.

And to the extent that we can make their jobs easier in any way possible, that’s one of our roles.

WS: You work with a wide range of creators.

BEGGS: Everybody comes into a show with a certain level of experience. So someone like Jenji Kohan, who does Orange Is the New Black and did Weeds with us, is so highly experienced, she knows exactly what she wants and how to accomplish it. She just needs a framework, sometimes financial, to work within, and we just more or less stay out of her way. Others are new showrunners or are new to the medium entirely; they may be coming out of feature films. There are a whole bunch of different things that they want to know that are germane to the creative process, but are

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Adding to its growing stable of TV content, Lionsgate produced the six-hour event series Ascension with Canada’s Sea to Sky Studios, in association with Blumhouse Productions. new for them. For example, we are working with Jason Reitman and Hulu on Casual. Jason is an amazing director and filmmaker but has never done television before. I ran into him at the AFI Awards and I asked how Casual was going, and he said he was just so excited about the writing process. He mentioned that, as a film screenwriter, he is typically alone writing in a solitary place, while in the television writers’ room it’s a free-flowing space for ideas, where one good idea is improved upon by another idea.

The excitement and enthusiasm about that, we’re used to it—it’s the process we have all known in TV— but for him it was like finding a new toy! He had no idea how much fun it would be! So that was just great. Casual went to camera in March and represents yet another business model.

It feels like a great time to be in the content space, to be a seller and supplier. That is where we are putting our focus. We are looking to do more, and it feels like a lot of new clients are coming to the party, including existing networks that are reinvigorated or turning to scripted for the first time, like E! with The Royals. It’s an experiment for E!, one that they have completely gotten behind in a huge way. They have

been an amazing partner. We are expecting great things of The Royals. It could completely change the fabric of a network that is well known and incredibly successful but looking to add yet another facet to itself. Our job, hopefully, is to help that happen.

WS: And you’ve been game changers for channels before: Mad Men with AMC, Orange Is the New Black for Netflix. Do digital channels have a different set of requirements than linear channels?

BEGGS: [Digital channels] don’t run commercials, so they have a longer running time [per episode]. The set of rights that they are looking to control and protect are different.

The business side of [streaming services] is evolving. The creative is similar in most respects [to a linear channel], except that the way the audience member engages with them is so different. You can watch whenever you want. You can watch a whole series in a weekend.

You can go back and re-watch and the storytelling becomes really interesting because people do go back and re-watch, and then watch again, from the beginning, knowing everything about how the season unfolded, viewing characters in a different way. I would say Jenji has really done

that brilliantly on Orange, with the whole conceit of depicting flashbacks that give insight into the characters on the show. [A flashback] just changes your entire perspective on everything you know about that character and it drives you, as a viewer, to want to go back and watch again.

Everyone talks about these serialized shows that are novelistic and Dickensian in structure. Great novels cry out to you, after a certain period of time, “re-read me!”

Reading The Great Gatsby now is a completely different experience than when I read it the first time.

Now I know a lot more and it has more context for me. I feel the same way about these serialized shows. The streaming services give you a really good chance, whether they are originals like Orange or Mad Men or Breaking Bad, to catch up and watch shows.

So streaming services have allowed more people into the conversation for both the original platform and the downstream user, even if these services become purveyors of originals. If someone asked today if it’s good for the TV ecosystem to have streaming services or if they add something, I would say I think they do; more people come in and they have an experience. People

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discover one show and say, Wow, if that one is so good, and everyone has been talking about this Golden Globe winner over here, I’ve got to start on that. And then [watching] just becomes a habit, and that is good for the business.

WS: Lionsgate has partnered with other companies to finance and produce shows. Do you continue to do that?

BEGGS: Chasing Life is part of our South Shore venture with Televisa. We did Ascension with our partners in Canada, Sea to Sky Studios, which is a venture with Thunderbird. [Lionsgate CEO] Jon Feltheimer has always espoused the wisdom of partnerships. He had a lot of partnerships going at Sony. He certainly made many partnership deals on the theatrical side, Pantelion [Films] maybe being the most visible, which led to South Shore. We’re smart enough to know what we know and what we don’t know.

There is wisdom to a portfolio that is a mixture of solitary bets and covered bets. So we don’t mind that at all. And many of the networks that we’re selling shows to are looking for participations and partnerships, and if we can make the right deal, we are always open to that.

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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 go dancing at a gay bar with Eric Stonestreet?

Every day, papers and magazines 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.

Eric Stonestreet

Mila Kunis

Kerry Washington

Zach Braff

AMY PASCAL

KERRY WASHINGTON

from Sony Pictures in the wake of a cyber attack that revealed many leaked emails from Pascal featuring offensive material, the outgoing co-chairman gets candid about the events that transpired. Pascal now claims that she was fired, as opposed to having left by mutual accord, and says she learned from the experience that it’s hard to be direct with celebrities because they are “bottomless pits of need.”

Horoscope: “Keep in mind: after all this time it still holds true, ‘Honesty is the best policy.’” (susynblairhunt.com)

graces the cover of the March edition of InStyle. When the image hits the Internet, fans are outraged at how light her skin looks. In response to the controversy, the magazine releases a statement saying, “While we did not digitally lighten Kerry’s skin tone, our cover lighting has likely contributed to this concern.”

Horoscope: “Be true to who you are and what you believe, even if it means you clash with someone in a position of power.” (nypost.com)

Global distinction: Hacked Hollywood mogul.

Sign: Aries (b. March 25, 1958) Significant date: February 11, 2015 Noteworthy activity: Following news of her departure

ERIC STONESTREET

Global distinction: Modern Family funnyman.

Sign: Virgo (b. September 9, 1971) Significant date: February 4, 2015 Noteworthy activity: The two-time Emmy Award win-

Global distinction: Scandal star.

Sign: Aquarius (b. January 31, 1977) Significant date: February 5, 2015 Noteworthy activity: The African-American actress

ZACH BRAFF

Global distinction: Scrubs alum.

Sign: Aries (b. April 6, 1975) Significant date: February 8, 2015 Noteworthy activity: While live-tweeting during this

ner, who plays a flamboyant gay man on the hit comedy Modern Family, is spotted on the dance floor at the West Hollywood gay bar Flaming Saddles. A video shows the actor, who is actually straight, singing and dancing joyfully to Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”

Horoscope: “You might not realize that you’re sending out mixed signals or that you’re giving a misleading impression of yourself. Take extra precautions.” (astrologycom.com)

year’s Grammy Awards, the 39-year-old actor posts a pic of African-American musician Pharrell Williams— who performed at the event dressed as a hotel bellhop—next to an image of the monkey Braff voiced in the movie Oz the Great and Powerful wearing a similar getup. Many people are displeased with the comparison due to its racist connotation, even though the offense was likely unintended.

Horoscope: “If you have the tendency to talk about others in a way that is not entirely affirming…you might want to think about the consequences of your actions.” (dailyom.com)

MILA KUNIS

WILLIAM SHATNER

the former That ’70s Show star talks about how she now has a bigger chest thanks to her pregnancy last year. “I’ve always dressed for a flat-chested girl and all of a sudden, I’m busty,” she tells host Conan O’Brien.

“I needed to start wearing bras. That was a whole new experience for me.”

Horoscope: “You’ll have a chance to introduce many changes to your life. Time has come to have your dearest dreams come true.” (gotohoroscope.com)

makes an embarrassing confession while doing press for his Priceline Super Bowl commercial. The actor/director/author/singer, known for his distinctive voice and roles on Star Trek and Boston Legal, shares details of an incident where his pants fell down at airport security, exposing his undergarments to dozens of onlookers at LAX. Horoscope: “Learn to laugh at life since it is certainly laughing at you.” (sanjuanhorseshoe.com)

Global distinction: Petite brunette.

Sign: Leo (b. August 14, 1983) Significant date: February 4, 2015 Noteworthy activity: During an appearance on Conan,

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Global distinction: Star Trek captain.

Sign: Aries (b. March 22, 1931) Significant date: January 29, 2015 Noteworthy activity: The cult pop-culture legend

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