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Striking fear: A world after the walkouts
Fall 2023
Wikander on taking scripted reins at Banijay
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PLUS: AI and creativity | Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies StoryFit | Metaphysic | Dark Slope’s Raja Khanna
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Channel21 International | Fall 2023
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Christian Wikander Three Little Birds
With his feet under the desk at Banijay, Christian Wikander is welcoming the return of international coproductions into the spotlight and investigating his colleagues’ attitudes towards AI. By Nico Franks
Scripted smörgåsbord W
ith a portfolio of over 50 drama labels under his purview, Christian Wikander justifiably leans into his Swedish roots to describe the array of prodcos at production and distribution giant Banijay as a “smörgåsbord of different flavours.” From the Americas to Australasia, India to Israel, as well as a vast swathe of prodcos across Europe, Banijay’s scripted companies span many different cultures and local TV industries. The former head of drama at Swedish pubcaster SVT has been on quite the tour since joining Banijay as global head of scripted at the beginning of May, visiting the offices of many of these scripted labels in markets all around the world. This has given the Swede something of a bird’s-eye view of the global drama business in 2023, albeit through the eyes of production companies who enjoy the benefits of being part of the world’s largest independent content producer and distributor. In order to get to know his colleagues, Wikander has been asking bosses a list of 15 questions on subjects including artificial intelligence (AI) to find out what makes them tick. “Something that I brought back after visiting all of these labels was that there are very clear identities and differences in markets,” says Wikander, who prior to Banijay served as commissioning editor and VP of original programming at WarnerBros Discovery-owned HBO Max Nordic, as well as “the sense this is a global market and industry.” Now Wikander is charged with spearheading strategic IP creation, driving collaboration across Banijay’s production portfolio, exploiting format potential and identifying third-party acquisition opportunities, reporting to Banijay CEO Marco Bassetti. Ultimately, Wikander sees his role, which was previously held by Lars Blomgren, now head of Media Res International, as asking “critical questions” of the creatives who are building Banijay’s pipeline of local dramas at prodcos such as Kudos, Tiger Aspect, Douglas Road, Filmlance and Jarowskij Finland.
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AI is already having, and will have, a big impact on everything from prepping production to producing and post-production. That’s going to have an impact on employers and on how processes are done and how quickly.
Christian Wikander Banijay
“With my background as a commissioner I can maybe sometimes help by guiding and giving feedback on projects where I see potential that they haven’t thought of or maybe strengthen arguments for them to go in certain directions,” says Wikander. Some of these shows will break out from their domestic territories, either in their finished versions or as formats, but not all. For every delicious piece of fresh smoked salmon on the smörgåsbord, there may be some lumpfish roe that isn’t to everyone’s taste. Wikander’s experiences at HBO Nordic, where he spent just under three years, and as MD at London-based Twelve Town, saw him ride the crest of the wave of the drama boom, before it came crashing down around him following the messy mega merger between HBO owner WarnerMedia and Discovery. “All those salaries and production costs just went through the roof,” recalls Wikander. Budgets in the Nordics rose to levels seen in bigger territories like the UK and Germany, which created an unsustainable situation, given not every non-English-language show can be a massive international hit, he adds. As of last year, HBO Max no longer produces local
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originals in Denmark, Sweden, Norway or Finland – something Wikander says could make “business sense.” Meanwhile, the executive’s conversations with drama producers around the world highlight how such experiences aren’t restricted to the Nordics. Indeed, HBO Max has also halted local originals in markets such as Central Europe, the Netherlands and Turkey, while the business came to a standstill in the US over the summer due to the writers and actors’ strikes. “We are in a market correction. Everyone has experienced a cutback. Everyone has experienced buyers taking a step backwards. They are risk-averse, more into the mainstream and commissioning fewer titles. And each decision is taking a long time. That is across the board.” Banijay’s network of producers sharing knowledge and support is a source of strength in this challenging market, something Wikander says must be “tough” for truly independent producers. One upshot is that coproductions are back on the agenda for buyers who previously wanted to take exclusivity around the world, a model that threatened the lucrative international sales strategies of distribution giants like Banijay. “It’s great news that more and more buyers aren’t as interested in global rights anymore,” says Wikander, who in the past has put together deals for shows including Conspiracy of Silence at Viaplay, another Nordic player that recently reined in its international ambitions significantly. Banijay has various funds available to its producers to help boost projects with international ambitions and secure “gamechanging” IP, adds Wikander, who will be at Mipcom in October alongside scripted colleagues such as former HBO Europe exec Steve Matthews, who joined the company at the beginning of the year. Among the scripted titles Banijay Rights will be bringing to the market are This Town (6x60’), a major new drama from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight for the BBC, described as a high-octane thriller and family saga set in the world of ska and two-tone music in the English midlands of the late 70s and early 80s. Banijay Rights will also be bringing Three Little Birds (6x60’), an ITV/BritBox International series from Sir Lenny Henry about a family who move from Jamaica to the UK in the late 1950s; Fallen, a European crime drama copro created and written by Camilla Ahlgren, the screenwriter behind iconic series The Bridge, which Wikander worked on as an executive producer during his time at SVT; and Murder in Hanko (10x60’), a crime series set against the backdrop of a picturesque Finnish coastal
Channel21 International | Fall 2023
town and scheduled to launch on Nelonen and Ruutu in spring 2024. Meanwhile, Banijay’s AI Creative Fund will provide opportunities for unscripted producers in the 21 territories in which Banijay operates to showcase ideas for the rapidly advancing and often controversial technology. Wikander dismisses any chance of a similar AI fund for scripted being initiated at Banijay, but does believe its roster of producers need to engage with the tech whether they like it or not. “We are aware we need to have AI around the table so that we can learn and understand when things can shift or change. We cannot be passive. We need to be open and interact,” he says. “AI is already having, and will have, a big impact on everything from prepping production to producing and post-production. That’s going to have an impact on employers and on how processes are done and how quickly. So that’s coming. “On the creative side, it is going to be used to create scenarios or things like that. But so far I am sceptical whether it can really create an original idea – a unique, new story - which is our living and what scripted is all about. I really don’t see AI having an impact in that area.” The tech has been central to the heated negotiations in Hollywood between writers, actors and producers in recent months, with Wikander speaking to C21 prior to the deal being struck between the US studios and the Writers Guild of America in late September. “From a personal perspective, I would say that it’s really not a surprise that we came to this point where there are some essential questions that need to be solved for everyone’s sake. Whatever the US lands on will impact the industry,” says Wikander, who adds writers need to be paid fairly if “we want great stories.” “There will be adjustments to the market and how things are commissioned, valued and paid for. If you are a talented writer, you need to be able to live,” he says. Meanwhile, Wikander adds very few of the producers he visited as part of his tour of Banijay companies earlier this year have worked with AI beyond getting suggestions for show titles. But none of them were actively dismissive or hostile towards the tech. “No one said, ‘That’s not for us,’ or ‘Fuck AI,’” says Wikander, who believes fears over AI’s impact on the business should be weighed against the capacity for producers to adapt to new scenarios and overcome obstacles, as proven during the Covid-19 pandemic. “It’s an amazing power. So whatever AI comes with, I’m quite sure producers are going to find solutions and work with it, not against it.”
Banijay crime series Murder in Hanko (inset), for Nelonen and Ruutu, and cropro Fallen
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NEXT BIG THINGS: Generative AI
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Channel21 International | Fall 2023
Embracing the machine
Some executives believe the rise of generative AI will lead to an ‘explosion of creativity’ – but the television and film industry must be willing to embrace it or risk being left behind. By Jordan Pinto
His logic is that AI is simply a tool. It will not replace human involvement in creation, but rather those humans who use the tool most effectively will prosper. “If creation is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration, it’s just shifting the balance, because the 99% side is getting more and more efficient,” said Khanna, who previously rom hardly being spoken about 12 months ago, the served as CEO of TV and digital at Blue Ant Media, on a use of artificial intelligence (AI) has arguably become panel at C21’s Content Canada in September. “So you don’t have to spend 99 minutes out of every 100 the defining issue of the day in the entertainment on the boring stuff. You can now spend, say, 30 minutes of sector. And for good reason. The capabilities of generative AI were put on full display in 100 on the fun stuff. It’s shifting the balance, and that’s why late November 2022 with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, I believe we’re going to see an explosion of creativity.” However, Khanna warned that creators, production a large language model-based chatbot that uses natural companies and studios must be swift to embrace AI in language processing to interact in a entertainment – because if they don’t they might be left conversational way. behind. It didn’t take long before workers Platforms such as YouTube have from across the industry were tinkering AI is already started releasing AI tools with the chatbot, realising that with a that allow online creators to level up few fairly simple prompts it could spit here out ideas for storylines and characters and it’s going their production capabilities, including those that generate new video ideas, and generate full scripts in a matter of to allow simplify the editing process and minutes. Cue mass hysteria. amateurs to create content create animated visuals based on text People are divided on the true prompts, known as text-to-image. capabilities of ChatGPT today. But that looks and smells “AI is here and it’s going to allow few would argue that generative AI competitive to yours. So amateurs to create content that looks won’t have an enormously disruptive how do we compete? How and smells competitive to yours,” said impact on the TV and film sector – a do we not become the Khanna. “So how do we compete? reality underscored by the fact AI was dinosaurs here? How do we not become the dinosaurs the hot-button issue of the contractual here?” disputes that led to the writers and Raja Khanna The exec’s answer to that question actors’ strikes that brought Hollywood Dark Slope is to “adopt all the tech” and use the to a screeching halt this year. While the early months of 2023 saw concern and storytelling expertise already within the traditional TV and scepticism around AI and its applications, that sentiment film industry to create the best content – with the assistance appears to be somewhat shifting towards an acceptance of AI. “I don’t think we can win by building regulatory walls around this; you win by having the best creative,” he said. that those who refuse to embrace it might be left behind. Other speakers on the Content Canada panel included Raja Khanna, CEO of Toronto-based virtual production and gaming company Dark Slope, argues the rise of AI will Matt Panousis, chief operating officer of Canadian visual lead to “an explosion of creativity” as it will speed up the effects tech firm Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies (MARZ), and Monica Landers, founder and CEO of Texas- process whereby humans create stories.
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Channel21 International | Fall 2023
based StoryFit, a company that provides AI analytics for the media and entertainment industry. Former Netflix exec Erik Barmack, founder and CEO of LA-based WildSheep Content, moderated the session. In the VFX sector, Panousis said that text-to-image programmes such as Runway are rapidly accelerating the process of building out characters and worlds, especially in genres such as sci-fi. He compared it to a “sounding board where you can very quickly bounce ideas back and forth.” “As an artist, you can now, in seconds, iterate on ideas that used to take you weeks or months. For example, if you are building a creature that’s never existed for, say, Stranger Things, it used to take you maybe two months to see the first creature. Now, [with the new tools,] if something has come into your mind, you can see it, and that interplay is supercool and inspires you.” Panousis’s company also built LipDub AI, an automated lip-syncing technology that enhances dubbed content by seamlessly syncing the lips in any language. The fully automated tool can dub an entire feature film in around 20 minutes. Improvements in dubbing tech will ultimately lead to more people watching content that is not in their language, said Panousis. “We know from speaking to studios that there’s a huge appetite in terms of international markets wanting to watch content from not only North America but other regions. There’s absolutely going to be growth.” In addition to advanced technology that recreates the movement of lips almost perfectly, tech pioneer and CEO of Metaphysic Tom Graham believes viewers will be able to ‘star’ in their favourite TV shows and films in the not-toodistant future. Speaking at the RTS Cambridge Convention in the UK in September, Graham said streaming companies will soon possess AI technology enabling viewers to take a lead role in their favourite content, with deepfake tech superimposing their faces on to the heads of fictional characters. “For example, viewers on Disney+ click on Star Wars and select their face to play Anakin Skywalker, or Princess Leia,” he said. “Disney+ would then stream that back to the viewer as they star in the movie.” Of course, AI has shortcomings in multiple areas, particularly in storytelling. Elements like introducing characters and then having those characters change or evolve is not something generative AI programmes do well right now. “It’s doing a horrible job of making good stories. It can’t yet do the basic [storytelling] elements that we know and love,” explained Landers. “What it doesn’t do well is hold the entire story. It’s not good at connecting the dots all the way through and creating an actual storyline.” That may not always be the case though, warned Landers, and generative AI’s storytelling capabilities will improve as the technology becomes more advanced. An episode of South Park released earlier this year was ‘co-written’ with ChatGPT. The episode, from the show’s 26th season, sees Stan Marsh become reliant on the software to write school essays and texts to his girlfriend, which leads to conflict with her and his classmates. While humans being replaced by machines has been a preoccupation of screenwriters since the dawn of the film age, the arrival of generative AI has spooked many across the entertainment sector.
Content Canada’s panel discusses the future of AI in entertainment
South Park episode Deep Learning was co-written by ChatGPT
Khanna acknowledged that the rise of the tech will change some of the jobs and functions in the TV and film industry, but insisted that is not a reason to steer clear of it. “To me, it’s like the internet in the late 1990s. It creates new possibilities and creates way more efficiencies. But did e-commerce completely destroy the retail industry? Or phrased another way, are people buying less stuff today because of e-commerce? No, the retail business is stronger than ever. “Are the jobs different? Yes. Some jobs there are fewer of, some more of, but to me this is going to cause an explosion of new content and the question is, is that new content going to come from within this industry or is it going to come from outside? To me, that’s the more interesting question.”
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If you are building a creature that’s never existed for, say, Stranger Things, it used to take you maybe two months to see the first creature. Now, if something has come into your mind, you can see it, and that interplay is supercool and inspires you. Matt Panousis
Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies
Monica Landers of StoryFit
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AHEAD OF THE CURVE: US strikes aftermath
Channel21 International | Fall 2023
Writing’s on the wall A
WGA and SAG-AFTRA picket lines
fter five months of pain suffered by The 2023 US strikes put a final the US film and television business, it nail in the coffin of peak TV, is now abundantly clear the so-called ‘generational’ strikes by the country’s writers and inspired an international labour actors will have multi-generational ramifications. movement and raised a number While the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike of uncomfortable questions of 2007/08 had a profound long-tail impact on the – chiefly, did the writers North American market, history will remember actually get a good deal? 2023’s double strike as far more consequential in dictating the direction of the entertainment Photo: Nicholas Mageras By Jordan Pinto business. The WGA strike came to an end after 148 days in late September, with the writers walking away with questions about where the US industry goes from by 25% over the last decade,” he says. protections against generative artificial intelligence here – and whether fractures between the creative “There was this true awakening, (AI), improved domestic and international community and Hollywood’s executive elite can especially among millennial and Gen Z streaming residuals and staffing requirements ever be healed. writers, but also Gen X and others too, that Media commentator Evan Shapiro tells C21 there was an absolute imbalance. That imbalance is for writers’ rooms. At the time of writing, actors’ union SAG-AFTRA has just resumed negotiations certain myths about the content boom, which in the process of being corrected.” The way the strikes have decimated the fall with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television started, in essence, when Netflix entered the broadcast season for Producers (AMPTP) for the first time since mid-July. There was this true awakening, especially among scripted is also likely to “hasten the speed at which But what Hollywood millennial and Gen Z writers, but also Gen X and will look like in the direct others too, that there was an absolute imbalance. That the broadcasters all become streamers,” argues Shapiro. aftermath of the strike, and imbalance is in the process of being corrected. Retransmission fees in the years to come, is very that have netted billions much an open question, Evan Shapiro of dollars annually for especially considering the original content business a decade ago, have been broadcast companies are in steady decline. For a deeply acrimonious nature of these disputes. sports network like ESPN, it may be possible to For now, what appears clear is the dual strike laid bare by the labour disputes seen this year. “There was this misperception that more shows reconstruct a new direct-to-consumer model with has been a catalyst for a broader international labour movement in the TV business, a bookend meant more pay and opportunity for workers, favourable economics. However, retransmission to the spending excesses of the peak TV era and an when, in reality, the length of the series shortened, fees for broadcast networks will remain in decline accelerant for the decline of traditional broadcast the number of writers hired for each show was as viewers continue to cut the cord. “What you’re going to see is a hastening television. It has also raised a lot of uncomfortable declining, and average writer pay actually decreased
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AHEAD OF THE CURVE: US strikes aftermath
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There were a lot of absurd choices made, and the idea that every new entrant was just going to overpay to have a star be in a show – or overpay on a budget that wasn’t necessary, or didn’t correspond to the quality – needs to be redirected. Ben Silverman Propagate
of Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC all turning into massive streaming channels where they take, in the case of Comcast, all their cable channels and mould them into one massive channel that becomes a part of Peacock. And the same thing for ABC and all the [Disney-owned] cable channels becoming part of Disney+. I also think you’ll see [AVoD service] Tubi and Fox mash into something combined,” says Shapiro. “You’re watching the end of the broadcast era in the US.” American broadcasters are using the strikedisrupted fall season to experiment. In the absence of new scripted shows, CBS is airing season one of Yellowstone, which launched in 2018, in primetime – and with surprisingly good results. When it made its broadcast debut on CBS in mid-September, the show garnered an impressive 6.6 million viewers. Ben Silverman, chairman and co-CEO of LAbased Propagate, says this could be the start of new ways of windowing content across platforms. “The broadcaster is now the second window instead of the first window, and for companies like Disney (ABC), Paramount (CBS) and NBCUniversal (NBC), there are great opportunities there. Coming up with a new windowing strategy is of great value to broadcasters,” he says. While the business continues to shift toward streaming, Silverman believes broadcast television will remain relevant post-strike by playing to its core strengths. “They still amass [audiences] and do news, information, sports and live better than anyone, and have the resources and skilled professionals that know how to pull that stuff off in a way that no streaming organisation has,” he says. The post-strike commissioning picture will likely be very different, says Silverman, as the studios and streamers reduce costs after almost a decade of unfettered content spending increases. The caveat, however, is that audiences have grown accustomed to large volumes of high-quality content, and that demand still needs to be met. “There were a lot of absurd choices made, and the idea that every new entrant was just going to overpay to have a star be in a show – or overpay on a budget that wasn’t necessary, or didn’t correspond to the quality – needs to be redirected. But at the same time,
the overall investment in high-quality content needs to remain to sustain these businesses – and the audience has gotten used to really good stuff,” he says. Of course, the popping of the scripted bubble has been prematurely forecast in the past. FX chief John Landgraf, who famously coined the term ‘peak TV,’ predicted the overall number of American shows would start to decline in 2015 or 2016 after 400 US scripted series were released in 2014. That did not happen and, save for pandemichit 2020, the number continued to rise, hitting a whopping 599 in 2022, per Landgraf’s annual tally, up 7% from 2021. In January, however, even before the strikes throttled US production,
Landgraf predicted that 2023 would finally see the end of peak TV. With streamers and studios having slashed shows and budgets in the roughly 12-month period before the strike, coupled with the impact of the action, Landgraf’s prediction will certainly come to pass this year. But how much will scripted output in the US decrease? That remains an open question, but given the way entire development slates were torpedoed as part of the great scripted reset, insiders predict the volume could fall by around 25%. The cancellations began during the strike as streamers and studios culled shows, partly due to the legitimate issue of momentum being lost with long gaps between seasons. Among the shows cancelled over the summer were Amazon Prime Video’s big-budget sci-fi series The Peripheral and baseball comedy-drama A League of Their Own, after they had previously been renewed. A great many more cancellations are expected to follow in the coming weeks and months. Once the strikes are resolved, most producers are expecting the commissioning volume to be limited. Miura Kite, exec VP of global television at USbased Participant Media, says she expects there to be “constricted appetite” from networks
Prime Video sci-fi series The Peripheral was cancelled amid the strikes
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Channel21 International | Fall 2023
Right: Amazon baseball comedy-drama A League of Their Own. Below: Hulu reality series The D’Amelio Show. Inset: Miura Kite of Participant Media
and platforms in a post-strike environment. “They’ve all been reassessing and making cutbacks and they’re going to have fewer shows. They’ll definitely want to do some projects, but it’s going to be a little more about curating,” she says. If the buying appetite is indeed minimal, it will be a far cry from the spending frenzy that came when filming resumed following the Covid-related shutdowns of 2020. A lot has happened in three years, however, and where the studios and streamers were chasing subscriber growth at all costs in 2020 and 2021, they are now pursuing cost-cutting with the same urgency. Many have suggested the strikes could prompt US-based buyers to do more commissioning internationally. Silverman says he agrees, but only to a certain degree. “As strong as the international marketplace’s stories are, America’s Hollywood storytelling engine remains best-in-class by a long way from the competition around the world. And it’s hard to compete, especially for the North American audience, and the Western European audience [without US programming],” he says, adding that “international opportunities for content creators are the best they’ve ever been.” Others believe the strikes may accelerate the migration of audiences, and talent, to the creator economy, particularly on platforms such as YouTube, which is already the most-watched streaming platform in the US with a 9.2% share of all streaming consumption in the month of July, according to Nielsen data. Netflix is not far behind with 8.5%, with Hulu a distant third (3.6%), followed by Prime Video (3.4%), Disney+ (2%), Max (1.4%), Tubi (1.4%), Peacock (1.1%), The Roku Channel (1.1%), Paramount+ (1%) and Pluto TV (0.9%). “It’s instructive to look at how history continues to repeat itself,” says Shapiro of how the creator economy – or as he calls it, the “community economy” – is gaining ground on streaming content made by the US studios. “TV did this
to radio, then cable did this to broadcast, then streaming started doing that to cable. Now, the community economy is doing that to streaming.” In the years ahead, the community economy and Hollywood will be “co-equal partners in the entertainment industrial complex,” argues Shapiro. That brings with it inherent challenges for the traditional business, as the creator economy, for the most part, bypasses the Hollywood gatekeepers altogether and goes direct to its audience. With the Google-owned video platform buying the rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, more viewers are poised to be pulled into the YouTube ecosystem in the US. That, in turn, will solidify the stardom of social media content creators such
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The eye-opening thing, in my opinion, is how little control talent has in this business. This business is purely controlled by these huge companies – it’s a line item to them. US agent
as MrBeast, Charli D’Am elio and Logan Paul, and create many more. This may lead to some interesting talent moves, suggests Shapiro, with performers and stars going back and forth between the traditional studio system and the creator economy. For example, D’Amelio, who has the world’s second mostfollowed TikTok account, is already the subject of a Hulu reality series, The D’Amelio Show, following the lives of her family. “You’re going to see a lot of corporate economy stars move over and create direct-to-consumer entertainment packages for themselves, where they’re competing directly with the gatekeepers, and basically using their own community and
channels as leverage to get better deals out of the gatekeeper economy,” says Shapiro. The public consensus has been that writers got a good deal that protects their long-term position within the content creation ecosystem. The WGA heralded the new agreement, which it valued at around US$233m per year, as “exceptional.” However, some are not so sure. One top US agent says: “I don’t think the deal is as good as they’re saying. I’d like to see how they break down that US$233m – I think that’s a bullshit number. I don’t see where they’re getting that.” The agent stresses the deal is a “step in the right direction” for writers, but feels it doesn’t justify the pain the impasse inflicted on the sector. “You took five months away from people. That’s money, truly, that they will never get back,” says the agent source, adding that he believes the studios and streamers will lean slightly further into international programming as a result. “I don’t think they want to be dependent on these strikes. I really don’t.” The leverage the studios and streamers have in the context of labour negotiations has been on full display over the past six months, he argues. “The eye-opening thing, in my opinion, is how little control talent has in this business. This business is purely controlled by these huge companies – it’s a line item to them.” Given the enormous amount of pain inflicted by the near total shutdown of US-based production since May, many in the industry are now questioning why it took so long for the WGA and AMPTP to strike a deal. While AMPTP members are certainly contending with financial challenges of their own, many lay the blame at the feet of the streamers and studios. Among them is Shapiro, who questions whether new thinking is required atop the big companies. “In the end, after five months, the studios wound up giving the writers nearly everything they demanded. So what these strikes taught us, perhaps more than anything, is that the ‘powers that be’ who currently run Hollywood are 100% willing to burn down our industry just to prove how big their dicks are,” says Shapiro. “Which is 1,000% proof that what the industry needs right now, more than anything, is new leadership.”
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Development Slate Wiip Limited series may be falling out of favour with streamers, but international coproductions are on the up, according to David Flynn, creative lead at the Mare of Easttown studio. By Nico Franks
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he phrase ‘limited series’ has always felt like an oxymoron in the world of TV, given the contradictory nature of the two words. And for every Mare of Easttown – a huge hit that HBO impressively resisted the temptation to spin-out into multiple seasons – there are limited series that suddenly become un-limited, such as Your Honor or True Detective. Truly limited English-language series, however, may be on the way out as the European and North American markets continue to contract and newly cost-conscious streamers look for returnable projects to attract and retain subscribers. David Flynn, creative lead at Mare of Easttown studio Wiip, believes the market among streamers for limited or miniseries such as The Queen’s Gambit has dried up as they rein in spending on content and try to limit subscription churn. “We’re sensing a little bit that a lot of the streamers are going more for the middle. They’re realising that the super-premium, Queen’s Gambits of the world Former literary agent Flynn cost an awful lot of money to has served as an executive make, go on for one season, get producer on Toast of Tinseltown a lot of attention, but they can’t for the BBC and dark comedy capitalise on it with a second Bodkin, the first scripted drama season,” said Flynn at C21’s from Barack and Michelle Content Budapest event over Obama’s Higher Ground, the summer. I love working with starring Will Forte, for Netflix. “They either want to do local channels. Wiip has also made Danny returnable or movies they can There’s also much more Boyle’s Pistol for FX/Hulu have multiples of, or reality shows that have a much lower openness from streamers and Dummy, starring Emmynominated Anna Kendrick, for cost of production and higher to not take all rights and the Roku Channel. engagement. It’s a financial be totally monopolistic. Led by CEO Paul Lee, Wiip business and they’re carrying searches for programming from a lot of debt and they need to They’re more open to around the world to develop for balance that,” he told C21’s doing coproductions. the global market. Flynn is in editor-in-chief and managing David Flynn development with Sky, Channel director David Jenkinson. 4, Prime Video and Freevee on As well as Mare of Easttown, Wiip has been behind limited series such White shows in Korea, the UK, Brazil, Australia, France, House Plumbers for HBO, which also ended after Italy and Ireland. A US version of South Korean series Bargain is one season, as initially intended. Meanwhile, for streamers, Wiip has made in the pipeline, while the studio, bought by South Amazon-owned Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Korea’s JTBC-owned SLL (fka JTBC Studios) in Pretty and Apple TV+’s Dickinson, both of which 2021, is working on English-language adaptations of various Korean short stories. have run for multiple seasons.
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Korean drama Bargain is being adapted for the US
A meeting with webtoon creators in Paris over the summer may also result in more adaptations of Korean IP on Wiip’s development slate, while Flynn is also looking for stories from Latin America as the company seeks to grow its Spanish-language slate. Flynn believes thinking too much about what audiences want while developing projects can be a “dangerous rabbit hole” to fall down and Wiip’s intent is to back producers’ creative ideas. This has resulted in the company providing development funding to various London-based production companies, with one eye on them being able to piece together international coproductions rather than sell global rights to a streamer. “I’m excited by companies like Sky and what they have the potential to do. I love working with local channels. There’s also much more openness from streamers to not take all rights and be totally monopolistic. They’re more open to doing coproductions,” says Flynn. “Every commissioner I speak to seems to be saying that, although they’re not necessarily announcing it in the press. So that’s also positive. We might be going back to a slightly more traditional version of TV where studios and production companies have a stake in the game, with rights and ownership.”