CANNES – It's late Wednesday in Cannes and the whirling blades of a helicopter momentarily interrupts discussions at the Cineflix Studio's balcony stand at the Palais des Festivals.
"That must be Tony," says Cineflix co-CEO Glen Salzman, tapping his watch. He's talking about British drama producer Tony Wood who, along with Montreal’s Cineflix Studios launched London-based Buccaneer Media to produce high-end dramas and other scripted TV fare for international broadcasters.
Wood is transferring from Cannes to the nearby Aeroporte Cote d’Azur in Nice via an Uber helicopter. Salzman explains you download an app to request a 7-minute chopper lift to the airport from the U.S.-based tax service for 160 Euros (~$235.00). A regulator cab fare to the Nice airport would run you 100 Euros (~$145.00), another Cineflix exec says. That makes Uber helicopter good value, everyone agrees.
That's one of those conversations among the Canadians at Cannes that's telling. If those were Hollywood execs, they'd have had a stretch limo roll up to their Palais suite or regal hotel to get them down the road to Nice.
Different spending habits, different business model.
Here Cineflix, Entertainment One and rival Canadian studios face a slew of U.S. and other foreign competitors pursuing a similar import-export development strategy, putting big dollars into building out overseas production arms to sell TV shows and formats into Canada and internationally.
That's made the Canadians in Cannes the Switzerland of TV programmers, able to work with varied international partners to satisfy increasing demand for content.
That's especially so with Vancouver’s Lionsgate, an increasingly global content player moving away from theatrical movies and into original and owned TV content like Orange is the New Black and Mad Men. "When you add it all up, international broadcasters have a lot of choices," Lionsgate president of worldwide television and digital distribution Jim Packer told Cartt.ca.
"We need to swing big and for shows that can cut through the clutter and be smart and edgy and define brands for international partners. If we do that, we're going to be just fine," Packer added.
The irony is, just as Packer and other U.S.-based players look to marry Hollywood talent with foreign money and markets, they are aligning with Canadians who have long looked abroad through co-productions and foreign sales to sustain their small-market TV business.
Mark Gordon, the prolific Hollywood producer of Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds and Quantico, this year followed suit after leaving behind an overall deal with ABC Studios to partner with Toronto’s Entertainment One on an indie film and TV studio after the Canadian partner acquired a controlling stake in his production shingle, The Mark Gordon Company.
"My focus has always been pretty much purely as a storyteller, creating things, and relying on ABC to take the best opportunity to exploit the product," Gordon explained during a Cannes keynote address. "I'm getting the opportunity now to learn from the folks at eOne, and they're really good at it," he added about creating TV shows, especially procedurals, for the international market.
"Increasingly, creative development is being driven by foreign markets, almost exclusively.” – Les Tomlin, Peace Point Productions
All of which indicates that, in today's anything-goes world of Canadian TV, producers and distributors at MIPCOM are doing something new, and old, to survive and thrive.
Les Tomlin, president and CEO of Toronto’s Peace Point Productions, pointed to Canadian celebrity chef Anna Olson as a marker of Canadian TV's globalization. "Anna Olson is a brand. She's in over 190 territories," he said after Peace Point sold Bake with Anna Olson to Food Network Canada initially, before Scripps Network Asia and Scripps Network UK & EMEA jumped on board.
Today, the Canadian license fee represents a small part of the financing of the Anna Olson vehicle. "Increasingly, creative development is being driven by foreign markets, almost exclusively," Tomlin told Cartt.ca.
Another example is Peace Point's reality series Escape or Die, whose first season was with OLN in Canada, NBC Universal for the southeast Asian region, and Discovery India.
Tomlin expects the international partners to likely drive a possible second season. "It's not the way of the future. It's the way of now," he said of international collaboration for Canadian TV producers.
