I’m a terrible co-production partner

‘I’m a terrible co-production partner’

Xilam Animation CEO Marc du Pontavice launched his Paris-based business in 1999 and has built it into one of the world’s leading animation studios. Hit series including Oggy And The Cockroaches and Zig And Sharko have sold to more than 190 countries. Here he speaks about producing for the international market

ARECENT breakout success for Xilam includes Mr Magoo, a reimagining of the classic animation property created in 1949— a title that fits perfectly into Marc du Pontavice’s list of rules for what genres work best internationally. “Slapstick comedy, action adventure, sci-fi, anything that takes audiences away from their day-to-day lives” are his top choices. “But that only gets you so far. You also need characters that are universal and relatable; and you need relationships between characters that audiences can connect with.” Oggy And The Cockroaches doesn’t just work because of the slapstick and gags, it works because audiences relate to the situation Oggy is in, he said. “They find him adorable, and they recognise the challenges he faces. Another show of ours that connects with global audiences is Moka’s Fabulous Adventures. It has a lot of visual comedy and weirdness, but what really makes it work is Moka’s relationship with Cherry. Of course, one of the luxuries of animation in terms of export is that we can work with animals and imaginary characters. That can take the audience away from the frustration they might feel at seeing human characters that don’t really reflect the way they live their own lives.” Co-production works for many producers, but for Marc du Pontavice: “I’m a terrible co-production partner, which is why I haven’t done it very often over that last 25 years. I love working with broadcaster notes, but I find sharing a vision between entities is difficult. I also think co-production equates to a loss of energy and time even when it involves two great producers. So ideally I don’t do it, if I can avoid it.” But if you do enter into a co-production you need to be really clear about who controls the vision, he said. “While I don’t co-produce a lot, Xilam Marc du Pontavice: “You need characters that are universal and relatable”

does a lot of physical production abroad. The key here is to maintain strong control over the pipeline — because the client depends on you for quality and timing. We have a studio in Vietnam and we do some animation in the Philippines. We used to do a lot of work with South Korea but as that got more expensive we moved south. India wasn’t so much of an option for us when we first started working abroad because we were focused on 2D and their industry was geared more around CGI.” Meanwhile, du Pontavice is happy with the disruption the SVOD players have brought to the marketplace. “As a distributor, it has been great — because streamers now account for 43% of our revenues [2019]. And that is not just substitutional — some of it is incremental. It’s also really interesting to see your show reach the whole world via one platform instead of the traditional distribution rollout. As a producer, global platforms make dealmaking more complex. For us, controlling rights is still important — we don’t want to be work-for-hire. So we still need to be financing shows and doing deals that allow us to retain ownership of our programming.” And while animation has long production lead times, Xilam has not been tempted to go big on live-action. “It’s more difficult to make it universal than animation and its long-term value is not so great,” du Pontavice said. “For us, diversification has been about expanding into CGI and building our pre-school slate with shows like Paprika. Pre-school is, of course, interesting to us because of its licensing and merchandising potential.” Another area of growth for the company is adult animation. “Our Oscar nomination for feature film I Lost My Body has put us on to a different piece of the animation map and secured us a major deal with Netflix. This is a great development for us — a new frontier in a fast-growing business.”