CANNES – Go worldwide, young man and woman.
That's the message out of MIPCOM where the trend towards international funding of TV dramas featuring partners and talent beyond Canadian shores is playing out this week in networking and deal-making.
An example is Blue Moon, the French-language drama starring Karine Vanasse and Caroline Dhavernas for Club Illico. That's a local story with universal themes now being adapted by Cineflix Media into an English language drama to be monetized on a global scale. "We would rather go to the international market – Canada is the last territory," Cineflix Media president Peter Emerson told Cartt.ca. He oversees growth through content partnerships with foreign producers on co-productions, joint ventures and first look deals to feed the Montreal-based company's distribution pipeline.
Here, Cineflix is riding a wave of international producers buying up the rights to remake Nordic, Dutch, Israeli, novellas and other popular foreign language TV shows that, hopefully with a few tweaks and A-list talent, can pop worldwide like the Scandi drama The Bridge and Homeland, which originated in Israel as Hatufim.
To get Blue Moon and other Quebec shows onto the world stage, Cineflix and SODEC at the Cannes TV market unveiled a $750,000 development fund.
Cineflix also took the Canadian crime thriller Pure, which got six episodes on CBC before being cancelled, onto WGN and Hulu in the U.S. market to keep the drama alive.
The upshot is the days of producing only for legacy broadcasters who had their pick of indie producers, writers and actors, and then having distributors sell local dramas abroad, are over. Cash-rich streamers like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, and increasingly Facebook and Apple, are ushering in global dramas conceived and financed internationally, and often instantaneously delivered to the world via the Internet.
“We're looking at superfans finding shows in a particular place and loving that show. Where that show is based, what language they're speaking, matters less than how good is the show, how well is it shot and acted.” – Maria Kyriacou, ITV Studios
Where a popular drama originates, and whether it's English language and preferably American to better international sales, is less important than the creative quality. "We're looking at superfans finding shows in a particular place and loving that show. Where that show is based, what language they're speaking, matters less than how good is the show, how well is it shot and acted," Maria Kyriacou, president, international at ITV Studios, a unit of U.K. TV giant ITV, told a MIPCOM panel on Monday.
The Cannes TV market had the usual chatter about whether the Golden Age of TV boom will turn to bust any time soon, or how head-scratching producers can grapple with the skyrocketing cost of talent these days. However, Moritz Von Kruedener, managing director of Germany's Beta Film, insisted his company needs to partner up with international producers through commercial and creative alliances because the world is opening up to global dramas.
"It's still not open for primetime on U.S. networks, same in England, that will take some more years, if we get there ever, but it's much more open than it was. That's also helped by the platforms, Netflix and Amazon, they're great partners in developing this trend," Von Kruedener said.
His scepticism about the U.S. market may not be entirely deserved, though.
HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler on Monday during a keynote address announced the premium cable giant is bringing the best of its global local-language dramas created for regional operations in Europe, Asia and Latin America to American viewers via HBO Go, HBO Now and HBO On Demand. '
That U.S. opening for dramas like HBO Europe's Czech drama Wasteland and the Polish police thriller The Pack is heartening to North American producers no longer holding exclusively to roads that lead to Los Angeles. "We want to be co-producing for projects that may or may not find a home in the U.S.," Patrick Vien, executive managing director, international at A+E Networks, told a MIPCOM panel.
That means the U.S. market is no longer the main part of the financing puzzle for global dramas. The world market is the main focus. The U.S. market is still a key piece of the puzzle, of course, but the future is in global stories in which Americans are a willing partner, not the driver.
And it's streaming and other emerging digital platforms driving that trend.
A financing model familiar to Canadian producers of Between, Anne and The Handmaid's Tale where a local show does a co-commission deal with Netflix or Hulu to secure top writers, directors and cast is being played out in Europe and elsewhere internationally.
Rola Bauer, managing director of StudioCanal TV, pointed to Safe, a crime thriller from creator and best-selling writer Harlan Coben, a screenplay by Emmy winner writer Danny Brocklehurst, and starring Dexter alum Michael C Hall.
"It is for Channel 8 in France, but it felt like a global event, so we also did a deal with Netflix to give the project the scale it needed," Bauer said.
