World Screen AFM, DISCOP Africa & Scripted Edition 2015

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THE MAGAZINE OF INTERNATIONAL MEDIA • NOVEMBER 2015

www.worldscreen.com

AFM, DISCOP Africa & Scripted Edition

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CONTENTS

NOVEMBER 2015/AFM, DISCOP AFRICA & SCRIPTED EDITION DEPARTMENTS WORLD VIEW

Publisher Ricardo Seguin Guise

10

A note from the editor.

UPFRONTS

Group Editorial Director Anna Carugati Editor Mansha Daswani

14

New content on the market.

SPOTLIGHT

Executive Editor Kristin Brzoznowski

26

The Art of More’s Dennis Quaid & Kate Bosworth.

IN THE NEWS

14

30

40

Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Elizabeth Bowen-Tombari

28

Associate Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Jessica Rodríguez

Heroes Reborn’s Tim Kring.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Assistant Editor Joel Marino

30

Contributing Editor Elizabeth Guider

Outcast’s David Alpert.

FOCUS ON

Special Projects Editor Bob Jenkins

45

Production & Design Director Victor L. Cuevas

eOne Television’s John Morayniss.

MARKET TRENDS

Online Director Simon Weaver

47

Art Director Phyllis Q. Busell

Keshet International’s Alon Shtruzman.

WORLD’S END

Associate Editors Joanna Padovano Sara Alessi

Sales & Marketing Manager Dana Mattison

50

Business Affairs Manager Terry Acunzo

In the stars.

Contributing Writers Steve Clarke Andy Fry Jane Marlow Joanna Stephens Jay Stuart David Wood

36

Copy Editor Maddy Kloss

SPECIAL REPORT

36 SHORTER COMMITMENTS Distributors weigh in on the rising global demand for limited series, TV movies and miniseries.

—Anna Carugati

ONE-ON-ONE

The CEO of Starz talks about working with talent, original programming and expanding the premium pay channel’s business.

—Anna Carugati

CONTENT TRENDSETTERS

48 ACQUISITION SUPERPANEL World Screen Content Trendsetter Awards were presented to programmers from MTG, FOX International Channels, Channel 5 and SVT following the Acquisition Superpanel at MIPCOM. —Mansha Daswani 8 World Screen 11/15

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

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

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Ricardo Seguin Guise President

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WORLD VIEW

BY ANNA CARUGATI

The Power of Connection It’s time I fessed up. I’ve been keeping a guilty-pleasure secret. Some people smoke, sip martinis too often, read trashy novels, drown their sorrows in chocolate, use recreational drugs or partake in kinky activities. There’s nothing so salacious here. My secret is much more mundane: I’ve been watching a soap opera for nearly 30 years.

In the late ’80s, when my son was a baby, I was living in Italy and feeling the isolation many new mothers experience, and I was so homesick for the U.S. The Bold and the Beautiful aired during my son Chris’s nap time. I found it while flipping through channels and was intrigued.

The actors were beautiful, and so were the clothes—oh, so gorgeous—because the show centered on the Forrester family, owners of the couture fashion house Forrester Creations. There was the requisite amount of love, passion, intrigue, backstabbing, seduction, husband stealing—all the usual soap fare—but there was so much more. There were the fashion shows—did I mention the clothes? The shots of Los Angeles—Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive and Sunset Boulevard—were as much a part of the show as the members of the Forrester family. I was hooked.

The show was a massive hit in Italy. When the actors came to Rome on a press tour, throngs of fans caused traffic jams so big they were front-page news the following day in major newspapers. I learned the show had also sold around the world, more so than many other soaps, but I was much more involved in the drama and glamour that was unfolding on the TV in my living room. And as my living room changed— I moved back to the States, then back to Italy, then back to the States again—and my life changed—divorce, remarriage, new job, another baby—among all the tumult there was one constant, The Bold and the Beautiful. Even though I was watching it late at night, recorded on my VCR and later on my DVR, the characters, whom I had followed for so many years, were always there—five days a week, every week.

The show started dealing with important issues, not the type one would associate with a soap opera: AIDS, homelessness, alcoholism, immigration and, most recently, gender identity, as a main character was revealed to be transgender. As much as transgender individuals have been in the news of late, Maya’s story line on The Bold and the Beautiful gave me a 360-degree view of the challenges they face from partners, family, colleagues and society. It was eye-opening, all the more so because such a layered, serious topic was being illustrated to me by the Forresters— who, after nearly three decades in my life, had become like family members. I felt so connected to them.

This type of connection is nothing new or unique. Soaps in the U.K. and Australia develop the same loyal viewership. So do telenovelas in Latin America. For years they have been presenting important topics such as organ

Interconnectivity between

fans and characters is central to all successful

scripted programming.

10 World Screen 11/15

transplants and domestic violence. More recently, Turkish dramas have been captivating audiences around the world, and they, too, often deal with heavy issues such as rape. Generally, all sides of complex, difficult stories can be better explained by beloved, trusted characters than by the pages of a newspaper or magazine because viewers make very special connections with shows.

That connection certainly isn’t limited to soaps or novelas. Shows like The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones, among many others, develop crazy-loyal global fan bases.

These shows are products of the new golden age of television, which was set in motion by The Sopranos. In this issue, the One-on-One interview is with Chris Albrecht, former CEO of HBO and the executive who shepherded The Sopranos and a string of other hits on the channel. He is now CEO of another premium service, Starz, and he talks about working with showrunners to create groundbreaking shows that develop loyal viewership.

One of the first showrunners who understood fans’ demand for storytelling beyond the plots that unfolded on the small screen was Tim Kring. He was a pioneer with Heroes, providing extra material on multiple platforms.

We talk to Kring about his new show Heroes Reborn, which picks up five years after the original series left off.

He has made interconnectivity between characters on the show and fans around the world a central part of his storytelling technique.

That interconnectivity between fans and characters is central to all successful scripted programming. Our feature looks at the ever-present demand for limited series, miniseries and TV movies, which often allow broadcasters to minimize risk in the high-stakes business of drama.

We also hear from David Alpert, executive producer of such hits as The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead and the upcoming demonic-possession series Outcast; as well as Dennis Quaid and Kate Bosworth, who co-star in Crackle’s first original drama, The Art of More. In this issue there are also interviews with eOne Television’s John Morayniss and Keshet International’s Alon Shtruzman.

Because viewers become so connected to all this addictive television, they want to watch their favorite shows on whichever screen is most convenient. This puts a burden on program buyers to acquire all the rights necessary to be able to offer shows on multiple devices. A recap of a panel discussion I moderated at MIPCOM with some of the world’s leading acquisition executives outlines not only what types of shows these buyers are looking for—and so many of them are scripted—but also how viewers want to enjoy them.

Enjoyment and engagement are really at the heart of good TV, aren’t they? Same with guilty pleasures.

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UPFRONTS

A+E Networks Roots / Whitney / Bring It! Directed by Angela Bassett, the A+E Networks TV movie Whitney chronicles the relationship between Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, from the time they first met at the very height of their celebrity through their courtship and tumultuous marriage. Another scripted offering is the miniseries Roots, a historical portrait of American slavery recounting the journey of one family’s will to survive and ultimately carry on their legacy despite enormous hardship. Spanning multiple generations, the lineage begins with young Kunta Kinte, who is captured in his homeland of The Gambia and transported under brutal conditions to colonial America. As for reality, Bring It! follows a troupe of young hip-hop dancers as they do whatever it takes to win competitions each week.

Whitney

Adler & Associates Entertainment The Terrorist / Ditch Party / Some Are Born Led by CEO Marie Adler, Adler & Associates Entertainment is a full-service production outfit. Among the titles housed within the company’s catalogue is The Terrorist, a suspense thriller focused on racial profiling and government surveillance. Ditch Party, meanwhile, is an action thriller that portrays the real-life issues of bullying and mass shootings. “It’s like Die Hard meets The Breakfast Club,” says Adler. “It’s smartly cast and filled with talented young actors from backgrounds that appeal across demographic lines.” Other highlights include Some Are Born, which explores the potential evil that can exist within seemingly innocent individuals, and The Menkoff Method, a workplace comedy.

“We will continue to take risks and rise to the challenge of a true indie company by championing new talent instead of following the easy corporate approach that Hollywood has adhered to.”

—Marie Adler Some Are Born

Artist View Entertainment A Rising Tide / Girl on the Edge / Desiree Events leading up to and following Hurricane Sandy are at the center of A Rising Tide, a love story starring Jonathan Togo (CSI: Miami), Tim Daly (Wings), Ashley Hinshaw (True Blood) and Hunter Parrish (Hand of God). Another highlight from Artist View Entertainment is the film Girl on the Edge, about a young woman whose behavior spirals out of control. Her father has no choice but to send her away to a ranch where she can put the past behind her. By contrast, the streets of New Orleans provide the backdrop for the thriller Desiree, which is based on the bestselling book Dermaphoria. “All three titles will be very well accepted in the marketplace,” says Scott J. Jones, the company’s president. “Each title brings its own unique style, high production values, captivating story lines and well-known, veteran casts.”

“As we move forward, it is our goal to seek out new high-end productions, continue to service and supply our established buyer relationships around the world and to develop new relationships, especially as the ‘digital platform’ business continues to expand.”

—Scott J. Jones Desiree 14 World Screen 11/15

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Breakthrough Entertainment Anne of Green Gables / Blood and Water / Bruno and Boots: Go Jump in the Pool The character Anne Shirley is an imaginative girl who touches the lives of everyone she meets in Anne of Green Gables. Based on the books by Lucy Maud Montgomery, the feature tells the story of Anne, who is taken from an orphanage to serve in the household of an older couple. Breakthrough Entertainment’s president of distribution, Nat Abraham, is also highlighting Blood and Water, in which homicide detective Josephine “Jo” Bradley must confront her past as she investigates the murder of Charles Xie and learns dark family secrets. Bruno and Boots: Go Jump in the Pool, meanwhile, sees the infamous duo from the MacDonald Hall book series attempt to stop their school’s rival from getting students to transfer after an embarrassing defeat at the semi-annual swim meet.

“We have a lot of family features.”

—Nat Abraham Bruno and Boots: Go Jump in the Pool

Calinos Entertainment Relationship Status: It’s Complicated / Emergency Love / Miracle The challenging romance between an aspiring screenwriter and a famous actor takes center stage in Relationship Status: It’s Complicated, one of the titles from Calinos Entertainment’s catalogue. The company is also offering up Emergency Love, which follows the relationship between a doctor’s assistant and her mentor. “They are not heavy dramas,” says Asli Serim, the international sales director at Calinos, of Relationship Status: It’s Complicated and Emergency Love. She points out that both shows have more elements of romantic comedies.

There is also Miracle, a film based on the real-life tale of a disabled man who makes a unique transformation thanks to the power of love. “It appeals to audiences all over the world with its true and touching story,” says Serim.

“We are exploring possibilities and strategies for coproduction with countries in Latin America.”

—Asli Serim Relationship Status: It’s Complicated

Caracol TV Internacional Emeralds, the Color of Ambition / Laura, an Extraordinary Life / The Voice of Freedom, Helenita Vargas Laura, an Extraordinary Life tells the story of a woman who challenges the expectations of her time, giving up the opportunity to be a wife and a mother in order to follow her vocation.

The production is one of two new series dubbed in English that Caracol TV Internacional is offering buyers, the other being Emeralds, the Color of Ambition. “Emeralds and Laura have great production values, being shot in 4K and 100 percent outdoors in beautiful locations,” says Berta Orozco, the distributor’s sales executive for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. “Both of them have very interesting plots and I’m sure our clients will be delighted with them.” Caracol is also presenting the free-TV rights for three English-dubbed series: The Voice of Freedom, Helenita Vargas, The Sweetest Love and Fugitives.

“Since the year is almost ending, our plan is of course to close as many deals in Africa as we can.”

—Berta Orozco Emeralds, the Color of Ambition 16 World Screen 11/15

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Cisneros Media Distribution Separated by Love / Urban Legends / XRC Cisneros Media Distribution recently signed a deal with Getty Images Latin America for the development and worldwide commercialization of programmable content, exploiting the agency’s archive of millions of images and thousands of hours of audiovisual material. The agreement led Cisneros Media Distribution to establish MOBIUS.LAB Productions, dedicated to the creation and production of content and innovative formats in a variety of lengths. “We are offering the possibility of customizing each thematic show according to local needs and in a very short window for production and delivery,” says Marcello Coltro, the executive VP of content distribution at Cisneros Media. Cisneros Media Distribution also has in its catalogue Separated by Love, Urban Legends and XRC.

“We are investing vast resources in MOBIUS.LAB Productions and launching the second phase of the business, which entails identifying important production houses to work on the development of new stories.”

—Marcello Coltro Separated by Love

Global Agency Magnificent Century Kosem / I Wanna Marry You / All For One Seven women and seven men participate in the reality show I Wanna Marry You for the chance to get hitched. Over the course of 20 weeks, they spend 12 hours a day getting to know each other. Global Agency’s slate also features the drama Magnificent Century Kosem. “The production quality and story will be beyond expectations again and we are sure that Magnificent Century Kosem will be really successful all around the world,” says Izzet Pinto, the CEO of Global Agency. “The story is universal, as it was with Magnificent Century, but this time it is younger, more colorful and thus much more dynamic.” Meanwhile, money is up for grabs in the game show All For One, as 12 relatives compete to answer 12 questions correctly. “It is an original and dynamic show,” Pinto says.

“I Wanna Marry You has started airing on Turkey’s Kanal D and the ratings are doing very well in the female demographic.”

—Izzet Pinto I Wanna Marry You

Globo The Party / Precious Pearl / Helena’s Shadow With programming produced in various genres and formats, Globo is looking to fill the need for scripted content from traditional and new broadcast platforms. “The content market is booming and we want to conquer new spaces with our offer of high-quality products, produced in unique ways, with innovative narratives and technologies,” says Raphael Corrêa Netto, the executive director of international business at Globo. The company’s slate includes Precious Pearl, which won an International Emmy, and Helena’s Shadow, filmed in locations throughout Brazil and Austria. There’s also The Party, set in a luxurious soiree that turns into a crime scene. The Party has “a great suspenseful atmosphere that completely hooks the audience, as well as impeccable aesthetics,” says Corrêa Netto.

“Our intention is to strengthen our role as a producer of multi-genre content.”

—Raphael Corrêa Netto Helena’s Shadow 18 World Screen 11/15

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GMA Worldwide Carmela / My Faithful Husband / Beautiful Strangers The story in the drama series Carmela illustrates how physical beauty can be a curse or a blessing. That program is represented

by GMA Worldwide, as is My Faithful Husband, which shows how love can be restored after infidelity and betrayal. Then there is Beautiful Strangers, focused on true friendship and trust. “GMA’s dramas are written using universal themes such as love, revenge, coping with tragedy, adolescence and the like,” says Roxanne Barcelona, the company’s VP. “These themes are interwoven with Filipino culture and values, resulting in dramas that our viewers, local and foreign alike, can relate to. GMA’s dramas attract not only Filipino viewers but international viewers as well. We find that during markets, our clients always request dramas with traditional themes.”

“The final quarter of 2015 is geared toward two main goals: to surpass our sales targets and to prepare the groundwork for 2016’s sales efforts.”

—Roxanne Barcelona Carmela

Kanal D For My Son / Matter of Respect / War of the Roses Among the highlights from Kanal D is For My Son, a drama series focused on a police officer named Poyraz Karayel, who was suspended for a crime he did not commit. Poyraz subsequently joins the Mafia in order to get his son back from his father-in-law. Another drama series from Kanal D is Matter of Respect, which begins when the Kilic family moves to Istanbul. At first everything goes well, but then a number of unfortunate events take place, leading one of the sons to become involved with organized crime. There is also War of the Roses, about the battle between Gülru, who grew up in the servants’ quarters of a mansion, and Gülfem, the beautiful daughter of the mansion owner.

For My Son

War of the Roses

Keshet International Who’s on Top? / Knockout / Trade Up Entertainment formats lead Keshet International’s catalogue, among them the game show Who’s on Top? The series uses air pods built into in-studio towers that rise and fall, depending on how contestants answer trivia questions. Trade Up, meanwhile, is a quiz show that gives players the opportunity to win a new car. Another offering is the hidden-camera prank show Knockout, in which celebrities go head-to-head trying to pull off the same complex prank scene with as much flair and creativity as possible. “Our formats tend to be ‘genre busting,’ which gives them the feeling of being something brand new,” says Kelly Wright, sales director at Keshet International. “Each one has a simple premise and game mechanism that makes them easy to follow and fun to play along with.”

“We continue to look out for strategic deals for content development, production and acquisition that will propel our business forward in 2016 and beyond.”

—Kelly Wright Who’s on Top? 20 World Screen 11/15

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Multicom Entertainment Group The Go-Go Boys / Bereave / William Kelly’s War The documentary The Go-Go Boys is about Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who founded the successful independent film company Cannon Films. Multicom Entertainment Group is presenting that title to buyers at this year’s AFM, along with Bereave, a feature film starring Jane Seymour, Malcolm McDowell and Keith Carradine, about a husband and wife coping with old age and the health problems that go along with it.

There is also William Kelly’s War, a World War II movie that tells the tale of a heroic sniper who is awarded the Legion of Honor. According to Irv Holender, Multicom’s chairman, the company is also promoting its proprietary film and television channels, including IndieMax, BabyBoom, FactFiction, ThrillGore, FamBrand, Streetz TV and Cold War TV.

“These three new feature films will support our ongoing theatricalrelease strategy.”

—Irv Holender Bereave

NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) Discover Science / Carnation Viewers can see scientific theories in action in the educational program Discover Science. The series features “ridiculously huge experiments shot with the latest filming techniques,” says Hiroshi Yamamoto, the deputy head of group planning and the management department at NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation). The series “fascinated people around the world and for the first time, NHK co-produced this series with SABC [South African Broadcasting Corporation],” he adds.

NHK also represents the drama series Carnation. Yamamoto says, “It is not just the success story of a woman, but one can see…how Japan stood up from the ashes of war and how the society began to thrive. This drama series has been inspiring lots of audiences, especially in developing countries.”

“NHK is hoping to expand its partnerships with more African nations and also worldwide.”

—Hiroshi Yamamoto Discover Science

SPI International FilmBox / 360TuneBox / MadscreenBox A number of SPI International’s channels are already available across Africa, and with its attendance at DISCOP Africa, the company is hoping for further penetration in the region. Current offerings include FilmBox, a movie channel; FilmBox Arthouse, for independent cinema and art-house films; FightBox HD, featuring combat sports; FashionBox HD, dedicated to fashion, shopping and lifestyle; DocuBox HD, with factual series and documentaries; 360TuneBox, a music service; and MadscreenBox, a live, interactive gaming channel. “We are also planning to offer a couple of channels with local content to make our bouquet even more in demand than it is now,” says Loni Farhi, the company’s president. “SPI may also be the first to offer a native 4K/Ultra HD channel in Africa.”

“We are currently in talks with several operators in the African region that are interested in delivering our channels to their customers.”

—Loni Farhi 360TuneBox 22 World Screen 11/15

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Starz Ash vs Evil Dead / Flesh and Bone / The Girlfriend Experience Bruce Campbell reprises his role as a monster hunter in Ash vs Evil Dead, part of the Starz catalogue. The new series picks up three decades after the end of the last film from the Evil Dead franchise. “More than 100 countries and territories debuted Ash vs Evil Dead worldwide on October 31—a remarkable industry accomplishment,” says Mara Winokur, the senior VP of digital at Starz. Other highlights include Flesh and Bone, a limited-run ballet drama, and The Girlfriend Experience, about a law student who gets caught up in the world of transactional relationships. “All three Starz original series are truly premium shows with compelling, entertaining story lines, incredibly talented stars and superb production quality,” says Gene George, Starz’s executive VP of worldwide distribution.

Flesh and Bone

Televisa Internacional The Wacky Old Games / Little Giants / Passion and Power In Little Giants, a Televisa Internacional talent format, children showcase a variety of skills, from singing to dancing to comedy sketches. Other programs presenting the talents of young performers include Stand Up for Your Country, featuring parentchild singing duos, and Mini Me, in which teens seek to emulate top stars. The game show The Wacky Old Games follows couples as they take part in challenges inspired by traditions and rituals to win a cash prize or an all-expenses-paid trip around the world. As for telenovelas, Passion and Power tells the story of lovers whose romance seems impossible because their fathers hate each other. Anything but Plain chronicles the life of a young woman who dreams of becoming her company’s creative director.

Passion and Power

Zee Entertainment Enterprises Wedding Bells / Dance India Dance / Good Food America The series Wedding Bells (Kum Kum Bhagya) is a highlight of Zee Entertainment Enterprises’s expansive catalogue, which is made up of 210,000 hours of premium Indian entertainment content. That title is part of a recently launched drama slate that includes Agent Raghav: Crime Branch, among others. “Audiences around the world continue to love drama deeply,” says Sunita Uchil, Zee’s global head of syndication and the chief revenue officer for ad sales. Regarding formats, the group presents the dance competition Dance India Dance. The company also offers English-language selections, among them the restaurant-themed Good Food America and the series The Incurables, about people who used alternative methods to heal their diseases.

“Zee dramas are known as some of the best in the world, presenting emotions in a powerful way, with complex characters and engaging stories.”

—Sunita Uchil Wedding Bells 24 World Screen 11/15

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SPOTLIGHT

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Dennis Quaid & Kate Bosworth

The Art of More The online video service Crackle has moved into the original-drama space, launching the hour-long series The Art of More this month. The show, set in the fast-paced, cutthroat world of premium auction houses, is toplined by Hollywood heavyweight Dennis Quaid, who is also an executive producer. Kate Bosworth co-stars in the ten-episode series, which Sony Pictures Television has already sold into 25 territories. Quaid and Bosworth sat down with World Screen to discuss the new drama, their characters and why now is the best time to be working in television.

WS: What appealed to you about doing television?

QUAID: Television right now is where movies were in the ’70s.

The inmates have taken over the asylum. There are a lot of very exciting, interesting stories going on [in television].

BOSWORTH: There’s such strong material, and I’m always attracted to adventurous material. If you can expand on that in a serialized way, that’s so exciting. That’s always what we’re attracted to.

QUAID: In a way, it’s like doing a novel, in a long-form story.

WS: What led you to sign on for The Art of More?

BOSWORTH: Well I heard Dennis Quaid was involved and I said, Sign me up immediately! [Laughs] It’s true, actually. I have been such a big fan of him forever. I adore him.

The character [Roxanna Whitman] is one I really love— she is one of the smartest people in the room but has to really fight for her position because [she works in] such a man’s world. She works for her father and is constantly trying to prove herself, so I really responded to this kind of strong, tough woman who has a lot of vulnerabilities and is emotional as well.

QUAID: She’s really a woman out to prove herself in the world.

BOSWORTH: She’s tough, that Roxy.

QUAID: She knows how to party, too. [Laughs] I love the character of Sam Brukner. He’s just himself, and he lets it all hang out. You don’t often get to play a character like that, where you have so much fun.

BOSWORTH: It’s so much fun to watch, too.

QUAID: Is he the good guy or the bad guy? Even he doesn’t know! He’s very self-involved, I know that.

BOSWORTH: The series is set in the world of auction houses, selling art, trading pieces. It really explores the idea of what’s valuable—whether something has an emotional value to it or a monetary value. Roxanna Whitman is the daughter of one of the owners of a big auction house. She’s sexy and confident, at least on the exterior. Beneath the surface there are a lot more emotional vulnerabilities.

QUAID: [My character] Sam Brukner started out building malls in Indiana, and then he moved to New York and was putting up big office towers. Over time he worked his way up to being a billionaire [in real estate]. Once he gets money, he wants power. He wants to be accepted in society, but he’s an outsider at the same time.

BOSWORTH: I think a lot of the characters are outsiders, and in many ways that’s why they’re attracted to each other.

My character always looks to his character for guidance. I feel like Dennis’s character really makes my character tick.

QUAID: Yeah, same with yours. I look at your character as the one to soften mine up a little bit.

BOSWORTH: Our characters soften each other’s edges.

WS: This world of high-stakes auctions seems to be fertile ground for drama.

QUAID: It brings out all of the basic human emotions. It brings out desire, greed, lust, envy, all those things that we love to feel—or love to watch other people feel, actually—and it makes for great drama.

WS: Did it add to the show’s appeal (or add pressure!) for you to know that this is Crackle’s first original drama?

QUAID: It was a lot of fun to do, that’s for sure. It’s great to be a part of launching a network. Crackle’s been around for a while, but it’s really making a play now [in original series], and this is where television is going. This is the future of what people are going to be watching.

BOSWORTH: It feels really exciting, too, to be a part of something that’s original in tone but is also the first original scripted series for a network. It feels like your firstborn child, so everyone’s really careful with it and they really care about it. I feel so grateful for that. Everyone we work with—the cast, the directors, the producers and the writers—truly looks at every line, every situation, and just wants to make it better all the time. That’s a really neat position to be in.

WS: Why do you think this show is going to resonate with audiences globally?

QUAID: It’s set in a very interesting world. It’s actually a world that I have always been fascinated by, the art-auction world.

Every time there’s a story about a van Gogh or a Cézanne sold for some huge amount, everybody turns around to listen to it and shakes their head and goes, Whoa. [There’s more to the art world than] just what you see and hear in news stories; there’s this whole underworld that has been around for centuries. And where it comes from, how it got there and who made it makes it fascinating.

BOSWORTH: It’s about the sharing of stories through history, and what kind of value that holds and how people perceive it. That’s relevant anywhere you are in the world. It’s about the stories that we’re sharing with each other.

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By Kristin Brzoznowski

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TIM KRING HEROES REBORN IN THE NEWS

WS: Where does Heroes Reborn pick up from Heroes?

KRING: We left off the series at a really dramatic moment, when Claire Bennet, the cheerleader, basically outs herself to the world as someone with these powers. She jumps off of the top of a Ferris wheel in front of news cameras and then the whole world knows. For four seasons nobody knew about these powers. Then the whole world knew and we ended our series. In Heroes Reborn, we pick up five years later, [which is the same] amount of time that has passed for the audience. The world has had five years to deal with the idea that there are people with powers. And human nature being what it is, we’re positing the idea that it didn’t go well. These people who have powers have now been labeled as Evos—evolved humans.

Evos are persecuted and exploited and hunted. We pick up our story with that being the world that they inhabit and we introduce the idea of a major catastrophic event that’s coming. Our heroes need to save the world, but this time they have to save it while being hunted and persecuted. Last time, there was kind of a warning bell that was going off that the world needed saving. This time it’s really an alarm bell, and I think that really fits where we are as a planet.

By Anna Carugati

Tim Kring had worked as a writer on several prime-time dramas, including Chicago Hope and Crossing Jordan, before creating Heroes. The NBC series premiered in 2006 and became a huge hit in the U.S. and around the world. NBC recently brought the show back as Heroes Reborn. Kring talks to World Screen about the new show and today’s different viewing habits and media landscape.

WS: How did Heroes Reborn come about?

KRING: The conversation with the network had never stopped. When we went off the air five years ago, it was a very different time. The paradigm shift of how people were consuming content had really begun and Heroes was, I think, right at the forefront of that. Our ratings had dropped, and coincidentally at the same time that they dropped, in our last calendar year of the show, we were the number one most downloaded show in the world— mostly illegally, of course. We were the number one most streamed show, the number three most DVRed show, and we had sold a couple million units of DVDs. The network, I think, really struggled—rather than canceling a failed television show, they were canceling a brand that was still pretty potent. When it became clear that [different types of viewing could be counted] then the brand suddenly became very viable again.

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WS: How is Heroes Reborn living beyond the TV screen?

KRING: Heroes Reborn is not the fifth season of the original series—I look at it actually as more like the tenth season and there are five years of missing story. And it gave us this fertile ground to play with. We have two video games that we are launching [that] unpack some of that missing story that happened in the intervening five years.

We are launching six eBooks, which go into detail on the backstory of some of the new characters. We have a whole series of comic books. We did a digital prequel called Dark Matters that we launched at Comic-Con with an app. We have this beautiful app that NBC has launched, which allows you to watch not only the original show, but also all of the new content. I always felt that the Heroes brand was bigger than a television show, and this allows the fans to play these games and read these books and really immerse themselves in the Heroes world.

WS: There was a lot of anticipation for Heroes Reborn.

When expectations are so high, do you play to the existing fans or do you worry you won’t be able to satisfy them?

KRING: The big dilemma was how much to make it like the old show and how much to move forward. I’ve always felt that the Heroes brand was elastic enough to have all kinds of characters and stories, and it could grow outside of the original cast. That being said, we really wanted to honor the attachment of the loyal fans of the show to the original series. You want to have enough in this new series to say that it wasn’t a waste of your time to watch [the first] four seasons of this show. But at the same time, you have a chance to get all kinds of new viewers. This was both the dilemma and the challenge.

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BEHIND THE SCENES

DAVID

ALPERT OUTCAST

By Mansha Daswani

In 2010, with its landmark deal with AMC to take on all international rights to The Walking Dead, FOX International Channels (FIC) made clear that it had aggressive ambitions when it came to landing top-notch, premium content for its global network. The zombie drama, based on Robert Kirkman’s graphic novels, has been a huge hit for the pay-TV powerhouse, airing day and date with the U.S. in 120-plus markets.

When FIC decided it was going to start developing its own IP, it’s no surprise it turned to Skybound Entertainment, the venture founded by Kirkman and David Alpert, for original ideas.

Outcast is the first show to come out of the newly launched FOX International Studios (FIS). It stars Patrick Fugit as a man struggling with demonic possession and is slated to air on FIC’s global network next year, with a U.S. slot on Cinemax.

Alpert, the president of Skybound and executive producer of The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead and Outcast, among other projects, sat down with World Screen to talk about horror on TV, working with FIC and more.

WS: How did Outcast, and the partnership with FIC, come about?

ALPERT: It all started with The Walking Dead. Robert Kirkman and I at Skybound were trying to figure out what was going to be our next project. The Walking Dead had become this big hit. A big portion of its global success was due to our partnership with FOX

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International, and specifically our relationship with Sharon Tal [Yguado, executive VP of scripted programming and original development at FIC and head of FIS].

We were at an AFI Awards luncheon and Sharon turned to us and said, What are we going to do next? Robert said we’d been kicking around this idea of trying to treat the genre of demons and exorcism with the same degree of respect and care as we did zombies. And Sharon, in her typical fashion, said, “We’re doing it!” We didn’t know where the story was going, we were just starting to figure it out. She said, “It doesn’t matter, let’s go! I’ll get into the deal tomorrow.” It took a little while to figure everything out and do the deal, but we got up and running, and we’ve been moving pretty fast ever since.

The premise starts with a guy named Kyle Barnes. Kyle Barnes is our “outcast.” He’s cut himself off from the world around him, and he’s living in a hovel in West Virginia. It’s the house he grew up in, but the water and power have been disconnected. He basically gets by because his sister drops off groceries. He doesn’t even really want to talk to her. He thinks that bad things happen when he’s around people. His mother used to beat him as a child. He was married and had a kid, but there was a mysterious incident and he feels that somehow he’s responsible for what happened [to his family]. He feels like he’s being altruistic by living away from everybody else—he’s protecting them

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Outcast, premiering on FIC and Cinemax next year, is the first series to come out of FOX International Studios.

from the evil that comes if he’s around. Through a series of circumstances, we’re going to see him dragged out of his seclusion and brought back into the world. He tries to find out whether [the evil is] him or not. If it is him, what can he do about it? If it’s not, what’s happening?

WS: What was the approach to casting Kyle Barnes?

ALPERT: We went through a pretty broad casting process. We’ve been fans of Patrick [Fugit] for a long time, but honestly he wasn’t necessarily the person we all had in mind. But when Patrick came in and did his first reading, we all looked at each other and Robert said, “I don’t think I can ever imagine anybody else saying those words again. He says them the way I hear them written in my head.” When we heard that, we all felt the same—we’re done, we have our Kyle Barnes!

WS: In the case of The Walking Dead, the graphic novels had been out for a long while before the TV series launched.

What’s the strategy for the Outcast graphic novel?

ALPERT: This was an interesting thing for us at Skybound.

It’s something we haven’t really done before. The comic book just came out with its 14th issue. The writing of the script and the writing of the comic were happening simultaneously. As the idea became fully fleshed out, we started writing in both media.

WS: Placing zombies in prime time, The Walking Dead really helped open the doors for the horror genre on television. How are you now approaching the perhaps even more terrifying subject of demonic possession?

ALPERT: It’s not just The Walking Dead that’s treating the genre with respect. The Walking Dead does that and has done it very well. But if you look at Game of Thrones, it’s taking fantasy, a genre that had really been campy on television, and treats it with utmost respect. Because of those two shows, you’re now seeing other genres being treated the same way, with the same amount of respect.

That’s been exciting for us. It’s really paved the way for Outcast, because there’s an aspect of Outcast that in some way is easier to sell: most of the world believes that

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demonic possession is real. Most people do not think dragons are real; most people do not believe zombies are real. But most people believe demonic possession is real, so we’re starting from an easier place. In a way, that sets the bar higher for us in that we have to treat this [subject with] even more respect and have to be more factual and diligent in our research. We’re going to ask the questions that I would want asked. If touching [a possessed person] with a cross makes the demon howl in pain, why is that?

There should be a reason for that. Is it a metal cross? Is it a wooden cross? Is it crossed fingers? What about that actually works? Why does holy water work? Is it the blessing in and of itself? If the blessing is rendered in Latin, does the pronunciation of the Latin matter? Since Latin is a dead language, can we know that someone actually rendered the blessing correctly? These are questions I have when I watch exorcism movies—everything from The Exorcist to The Conjuring, two movies I absolutely love. I always have those questions. How are those things possible? What degree of them being possible makes sense? We’re going to really examine that. And then slowly, because it’s Robert, the mythology itself is going to evolve to have its own consistency within the Outcast world.

WS: How has the relationship with Sharon and FIC been in terms of helping you and Robert tell the story you want to tell?

ALPERT: We have a great domestic partner in Cinemax, but working with Sharon and the team at FOX International, we’re able to say that we know this is going to work well around the world. Getting that insight and that [deeper] level of notes and thought has been fantastic for us.

WS: Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about Outcast?

ALPERT: I would say if you like The Walking Dead, then this show is for you. If you like Game of Thrones, this show is for you. If you like good television, this show is for you. If you do not like good television, then you will not like this show.

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A+E Networks’s The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe.

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Shorter Commitments The global demand for limited series, TV movies and miniseries has reached a new high. By Anna Carugati eginning in the late ’90s, you could frequently hear the phrase “500 channels and nothing to watch.” You don’t hear that said much anymore. In fact, it’s not the number of channels that’s the problem—it’s the number of hours in a day. There isn’t enough time to watch all the shows available. For fans of scripted fare, linear channels and digital platforms are offering a veritable feast of options.

An interesting trend is emerging: with so many long-running series, which demand such a considerable investment of time, limited series— six, eight, ten episodes—are becoming increasingly popular with viewers around the world. They join miniseries and TV movies as more bite-sized forms of television storytelling.

“The demand is more for six to ten episodes, just because of the fear of failure,” says Henrik Pabst, the managing director of Red Arrow International. “Viewers are less inclined to commit to a longrunning series because there is such demand for their attention.

They are more willing to commit to a closed run.”

Red Arrow recently unveiled two such limited series: Cleverman, a six-parter for ABC Australia and SundanceTV set in the near future; and the ten-part spy thriller The Romeo Section from Chris Haddock, a former co-executive producer of Boardwalk Empire.

B

In addition to limited-run projects, Starz has the anthology series The Girlfriend Experience, about a law student who moonlights as a courtesan, from Steven Soderbergh.

“The Girlfriend Experience continues the channel’s strategy of bringing in content that is very cinematic in quality and aligning with established and critically acclaimed filmmakers,” says Gene George, the executive VP of worldwide distribution at Starz. “That’s why we are working with Steven Soderbergh on this project, and we are excited because we have worldwide rights to the series.”

THE MAIN EVENT Shorter scripted narratives are increasingly enticing viewers and for sure the most traditional of them all is the made-for-television movie.

In the 1970s and ’80s in the U.S., the movie of the week on broadcast networks dealt with topical subjects or events in the news. They generated a lot of buzz and drew substantial audiences.

As the U.S. television landscape was changed by the mushrooming cable industry, TV movies migrated to cable. Lifetime and Hallmark Channel led the pack, offering a constant flow. The most popular TV movies were, and still are, romantic comedies, female-skewing thrillers and holiday movies, and they continue to garner a loyal following.

Lifetime still airs TV movies, but the “Lifetime movie” has evolved.

“It’s changed so radically,” explains Joel Denton, managing director of international content sales and partnerships at A+E Networks.

“There are a number of fairly traditional women-in-jeopardy crime pieces, but even those skew in a different direction now. They tend to be a little bit newer, younger and fresher, with new talent, writers and directors. There is more breadth to what Lifetime is doing with movies. There are more event pieces like Big Driver, based on a Stephen King story, or big bios like Whitney, which we would have done in the past, but these are not, as you say in wildlife programming, ‘womb to tomb.’ They take a period and focus in on it in a fairly dramatic way rather than trying to tell the whole life story. They don’t work that way anymore. The audience doesn’t have the patience for that, so Lifetime picks a big, dramatic period and tells the story through that lens.”

The international market is still searching for the traditional female thrillers, rom-coms, holiday movies and disaster movies, and there are a number of distributors happy to fill the need.

The core of MarVista Entertainment’s business consists of TV movies. Each year the company brings some 50 movies to the global market, a mix of productions, co-productions, co-financing and acquisitions, which run the gamut of genres—like thriller, rom-com, family and tween.

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A new title is Caught, inspired by the true story of a desperate housewife who kidnaps her husband’s teenage mistress as a prank. It stars Anna Camp of Pitch Perfect fame and combines two elements that have long made TV movies successful in the U.S. and internationally: current subject matter and a known star.

As CEO Fernando Szew explains, MarVista is expanding into genres it wouldn’t have considered a couple of years ago, thanks to two main factors: the growth of MarVista’s creative team and the launch of MarVista Digital Entertainment.

“Our focus on getting closer to the consumer, primarily in the North American marketplace, has pushed us to move into genres that we didn’t see as attractive to the international marketplace, such as slightly edgier comedies that we are now acquiring for the North American marketplace and in some cases have worldwide rights to,” says Szew.

HORROR HAPPENINGS One such movie is a horror flick called Most Likely to Die. “Two years ago MarVista would never have done a movie like that,” adds Szew. “Now we give ourselves the luxury of doing that because of the excellent creative team that we have and the skill sets and relationships that they bring to the table, as well as because of the changing landscape in digital and home

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Martin Sheen stars in the new Anne of Green Gables TV movie, from Breakthrough Entertainment, based on the classic book series. entertainment. We decided that is where we want to invest.”

Breakthrough Entertainment has a substantial slate of movies each year, including TV movies and films for theatrical release. “We have a full movie division,” says Nat Abraham, the company’s president of distribution. “We have a lot of family features, a lot of talking dog movies!”

Genre movies have also worked well for Breakthrough. “We have a team of very talented filmmakers making thriller-horror pictures for us,” explains Abraham. “There is a big appetite for thriller and horror movies with a certain demographic. You don’t necessarily have to have the kinds of budgets that Hollywood requires to make these, because it’s all about the impact and the CGI and the effects as opposed to the cast.”

range of genres but it has found success with the niche of inspirational movies. “We want to fill the afternoon slot when the whole family can sit down together,” says Chevonne O’Shaughnessy, the cofounder and president of ACI. One recent inspirational strand is Love Finds You. “We finished the third one, Love Finds You in

Valentine, which will be airing on Valentine’s Day on the UP channel in the U.S.,” adds O’Shaughnessy.

Finding Love in Bridal Veil is also in the family/inspirational vein. Other ACI titles include Strangers in Amish Country, the suspense thriller Burn, and the holiday movies Royal Family Thanksgiving and Royal Family Christmas.

CLASSIC APPEAL Abraham also points to the benefit of producing movies based on classic books. “We just finished Anne of Green Gables as part of our [slate of] holiday movies, with Martin Sheen in the lead. We will typically work with established brands as opposed to 100-percent original ideas. It’s just a safer bet for a smaller company to take brands that already have recognition internationally and try to make the best film or series out of them.”

Another type of TV movie that is in demand is the one geared toward the whole family. American Cinema International (ACI) distributes a

Artist View offers a wide range of TV movies, including dramas such as Girl on the Edge.

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Movies focusing on Christmas always sell well. Starz has built its TV-movie business primarily around holiday movies as well as female thrillers and action-disaster titles.

“We continue to have a flow of about eight to ten TV movies per year,” explains George. “We usually have two or three new ones each market. One of the reasons we continue to focus on movies is because there is still a real demand from a lot of our broadcast partners, and they complement the series we sell.”

New TV-movie titles for Starz include the holiday film A Prince for Christmas and the Lifetime movie A Secret Life.

Made-for-television movies have dedicated audiences around the world. France, Italy and Spain have been particularly good markets, as a number of broadcasters in those countries dedicate afternoon and late-night slots for TV movies.

“In the case of the holiday and family movies, they are primarily for daytime, while the actiondisaster movies and the female thrillers usually air in late night, but many do make it to prime time and that is the upside,” says George, who sells movies to free-TV and pay-TV channels.

His colleague Mara Winokur, the senior VP of digital at Starz, is starting to see SVOD platforms take TV movies, even though up to now they have preferred series. “If we are looking at output deals in different territories and we tie up our series in a deal with a digital player, we include our TV movies.”

Scott J. Jones, the president of Artist View Entertainment, is beginning to see a bit of series fatigue at some of the digital platforms.

“I got a sense at MIPCOM that there have been so many series that have been pushed into the market that the buyers are starting to back off from them,” he notes. “There seem to be holes opening up for movies. There has been a glut of series, which has caused the public to turn away from them—there are just so many choices.”

Artist View has been specializing in TV movies for more than two decades. Jones attributes part of the company’s longevity to its philosophy.

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Romantic telefilms are perennially popular, and MarVista Entertainment has a number of these in its catalogue, including Perfect Wedding.

“Our niche is that we don’t have one,” he says, referring to the fact that Artist View offers a wide range of TV movies. “I started in business with video stores and always believed you need something new for each section, like ‘We need a new horror movie,’ or, ‘We need a new romantic comedy.’ From the time I started Artist View, I kept that mentality, so we’ve got a very wide variety. It makes more sense than ever now because one moment you’re talking to a buyer from Disney Channel and the next minute it might be a video buyer from Asia.

They are probably looking for completely different types of product, but being a sales company we’d like to sell everybody something.”

MAKING A BIG SPLASH A new title from Artist View is A Rising Tide. “It starts off as a disaster movie with events around Hurricane Sandy and then becomes very much a love story,” says Jones.

It joins the other new releases, the thriller Desiree and the dramas The Architect and Girl on the Edge.

With so much product on the market, linear channels need pro-

gramming that is bold and noisy, that they can promote smartly in an effort to draw viewers.

TV movies and miniseries that can be presented as events are becoming increasingly important, and Red Arrow’s Pabst is seeing high demand for these among buyers. “You absolutely have to have programs that come along as events, even if they are one-offs.

[Broadcasters] need to get viewers to the good old TV because the live TV experience is going down and down. So the louder you can shout, the better the program is, and the more of an event it is, the better.”

Berlin One, set in Berlin in the 1920s, is an event movie. “You have a lovely game between the underground gangsters and the local police; it’s very theatrical in its look.

It’s a big-budget production by Wiedemann & Berg, who produced the Academy Award–winning film The Lives of Others,” says Pabst.

Another event movie on Red Arrow’s slate is Peter and Wendy.

“It’s a huge movie about Peter Pan, told a bit differently,” says Pabst. “It’s a magical family adventure that stars Stanley Tucci and Laura Fraser. How

do you get the audience in front of the TV, and how do you get the family watching all together? We think it’s these kinds of movies that give you that experience. We still see high demand for high-end, event family entertainment. These programs need to be outstanding, with high production values.”

MOVIE MAGIC Starz has the event movie The Dresser, based on Ronald Harwood’s classic play, which tells the story of one fateful night in a small regional theater during World War II, as a troupe of touring actors stage a production of Shakespeare’s King Lear. It stars Anthony Hopkins and Ian McKellen.

A+E Networks is looking to make an event of the four-hour miniseries And Then There Were None, based on the Agatha Christie book and coproduced with the BBC. “I’m very excited about it,” says Denton. “It’s very dark, very mysterious, and it offers a contemporary take even if it’s in period. The way it’s written is very different. It really brings Agatha Christie to a new audience and [presents the material] in a new way.”

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Tele München Group (TMG) also has two big events it will be offering the international market. The first is The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music.

“This year marks the 50th anniversary of The Sound of Music,” explains Herbert L. Kloiber, TMG’s managing director. “In Germany, Austria and Switzerland we are going to release The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music theatrically on November 12. Lionsgate is our partner in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. They are currently developing their own release strategy. In each market it’s probably going to be a little different.”

The other big upcoming production is Richard Lionheart, which will also satisfy broadcasters’ needs for big events. It will be available next year either as six 1-hour episodes or as a 3x90-minute miniseries.

Big, loud, bold programming that can be promoted as an event and doesn’t demand a huge time commitment from the audience—this is the recipe for limited series, TV movies and miniseries that are satisfying broadcasters and platforms’ needs and viewers’ tastes.

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ONE-ON-ONE

CHRIS ALBRECHT

STARZ

hen Chris Albrecht joined Starz as CEO in 2010, he made original series the focal point of the company’s growth strategy. He jumpstarted the channel’s production of original series such as Power, Outlander, Black Sails and The White Queen. Starz quickly built a reputation for

high-quality productions and has attracted top talent for its new series: Moira Walley-Beckett (Breaking Bad) created Flesh and Bone; Sam Raimi (Spartacus) developed Ash vs Evil Dead based on his horror franchise Evil Dead; Steven Soderbergh (Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Erin Brockovich) is executive producer of The Girlfriend Experience; and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman) is behind The One Percent. Albrecht talks to World Screen about working with high-caliber talent and expanding the premium pay channel’s business.

WS: The first time we spoke, you had just started producing originals. Has your strategy evolved since then?

ALBRECHT: It certainly has evolved. We determined that there are audiences that we consider underserved in the premium space that are also active, avid users of social media. That allows us to target a specific audience and engage them as not just the fan base for the show, but also a recommendation engine for the show. It’s always been hard to know what a particular show’s value is to a premium channel because we are not selling ad time, and there is not a direct revenue correlation between any particular show and the amount of money the company makes.

So targeting women, or African Americans, or fan boys with Ash vs Evil Dead, or young women with Flesh and Bone and The Girlfriend Experience, is pretty powerful because the audiences for these shows seem to be growing, in part due to the word of mouth that’s being spread by the fans, which is more powerful than a paid ad or a blogger’s review.

WS: You are attracting tremendous talent, including Steven Soderbergh and Alejandro González Iñárritu. Are you happy with Starz’s reputation in the creative community?

ALBRECHT: Yes, I am, and we have Sam Raimi for Ash vs Evil Dead, too. You are only as good as the people who come to work with you. I do think, and have thought for a long time now, that the premium platforms offer a unique creative opportunity: the episodes are longer and the budgets tend to be bigger. There are no ads, so you don’t have to write around commercial breaks. It’s very different storytelling that can be done on premium, and I think that attracts certain people. I’ve been fortunate to work with enough talented people that I think we have good creative dialogues.

Steven Soderbergh came [with The Girlfriend Experience] and said, I have this series for you, but here is how we have to do it: I’m going to pick the two filmmakers, we’re going to go off and write all the scripts, we’re going to shoot this like a movie and I’m going to give you all the episodes at once, but you have to leave me alone because this has to feel like an independent film. I said OK, because it’s Steven Soderbergh. There are not a lot of people I

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would have agreed to do that with, but it’s Steven. With Alejandro and The One Percent, we have his whole Birdman team and they have never done television before, so that’s been a really interesting experience.

Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for him, his film The Revenant got delayed, so that has given us a little more writing time for The One Percent. But now we’re talking about, OK, how do we do this on a yearly basis?

We’ve had an extraordinary amount of time for the first season, so how do we get through seasons two through five or six?

WS: There is a lot of scripted product available to viewers.

How do you make sure that your shows get sampled?

ALBRECHT: Because we are only in 24 million homes, we’ll take some of our shows and put them on platforms like Facebook or our affiliates’ own platforms, and we’ll let non-Starz subscribers sample the first episode. That’s a tool to get things noticed. We do big consumer campaigns, but that’s really more to drive an audience to a premiere of a show; it’s pretty hard to sustain that for 10 episodes or certainly for 52 weeks a year. It goes back in part to this audience that becomes a vocal advocate for the show. The people who start to find the shows are people who have heard about it through colleagues or peers or friends, and they probably take that recommendation more seriously than they are going to take an ad.

WS: It used to be that international sales and DVD were the two downstream markets for premium product. Are OTT services in the U.S. offering more opportunities for your shows?

ALBRECHT: These OTT services are a double-edged sword, and I think a lot of the basic-tier channels and some of the broadcast networks are seeing this as well. They are selling their shows soon after the season ends on their own channels, and people are starting to get used to the fact that they don’t have to watch [on the linear channel], they can wait.

Starz On Demand and HBO On Demand are the original SVOD products; we didn’t just put all the episodes up at once—we waited until after the season aired. Our policy is to wait until the show is off the air and then sell it [to OTTs], but we still maintain it on our air, on our on-demand platform and on the STARZ Play platform, so it will always be part of the Starz subscription. We’ve only had a few shows that we’ve done that with: Magic City, The White Queen and Spartacus. There are so many things that are changing, new potential ways of getting premium channels to new customers through other distribution methods. We’ve seen HBO try to do it with Apple; we don’t know how successful it is. Showtime has done it with Hulu, and there are other [services that] might become portals through which we can access new subscribers. In the OTT world you also need to rethink how you are generating your revenue and how you are protecting your brand and building your brand identity.

WS: Is the international market still important in terms of how you finance your shows?

ALBRECHT: It’s more important than ever, and SVOD services, particularly in the U.K., are becoming viable international distribution partners and can pony up the kind of money that big networks can pony up.

WS: And they are taking first windows.

ALBRECHT: And they are taking first windows, too. In that world we have a lot less conflict. We are trying to monetize our shows as well as possible and also create worldwide buzz. We are also seeing more and more shows that are having global premieres, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It helps [fight] piracy. If we can use global premieres to build the buzz of a show, it’s probably a win-win.

WS: Starz’s subscriber growth has been substantial.

ALBRECHT: We had some really good quarters. Starz certainly is a much more well-known brand. We’ve got a lot more subscribers than we had a few years ago. We are investing much more in our product than ever before.

The original series are clearly driving the way people utilize the service. More than two-thirds of the top 100 telecasts in 2015 will be originals—some 10 percent of the schedule. That’s a pretty big statement about what people are really tuning in for and why people might buy.

WS: I’ve heard over and over how well you relate to and understand creators and actors. Where did that come from?

ALBRECHT: I started out as an actor, unsuccessfully, and as a comedian, unsuccessfully! Then I managed a nightclub where young talent was evolving and people were creating almost a new art form, the modern stand-up act. I then managed some people and became an agent. You just learn the dialogue and start to understand how they think. Then at HBO I was fortunate because we didn’t do a lot of stuff when I first got there, so I had time to make mistakes. Believe me, you could probably find people—I won’t point to any of them!—that would say, he was a real prick when it came to how he thought things should end!

The vision has to come from the artist, and if I am busy interfering then I am muddying the waters. Even if something isn’t successful in the end, in my opinion it will feel more satisfying if the vision that you, as an executive, were attracted to and bought is the one that you allowed to be realized. More often than not the stuff will be good; that doesn’t mean that it will be successful, but then at least you walk away saying to yourself, OK, we gave that one a shot. The shows that I have been most frustrated with are the most troubled because for

11/15 World Screen 41

Power, which is the mostwatched original series on Starz, has a third season coming in 2016.

WS_1115_ALBRECHT_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 10/20/15 2:51 PM Page 3

Breaking Bad’s Moira Walley-Beckett is behind Starz’s new original limitedrun series Flesh and Bone.

whatever reason the execution didn’t match the vision. I know that if I’m giving a lot of notes, or if my team is giving a lot of notes, there is a problem. I’ve tried to instill this in my team: less is more.

I try to limit myself to making an impact only if there is something that I think is really an important point. When I read the script from Alejandro and his team, I thought, I’ve got to get this show. I knew other people were going to want it, and Birdman was already being talked about as a potential Oscar nominee, and I had to go into that room and tell him what I saw in his show. I did that, and I think it made him feel that Starz was going to be the best place, not the only place, but the best place, because the guy running the company is saying, Look at all the amazing stuff that I see in your show. And that just comes from years of experience working with really talented people.

It’s fun working with talent. To see Riley Keough’s performance in The Girlfriend Experience, she is astonishing. She is in almost every frame of every scene. It is one of the most brilliant, brave performances I have ever seen by an actor. That was part of Steven’s vision, to take someone who is on the verge [of superstardom] and push her over the top, and I think this will do that for her. I blew through all 13 episodes when Steven sent us the cuts and I came away so excited because I felt, Wow, I’m really glad to be involved with this. This is pretty cool. That stuff gets to be fun. Working on Power is fun. I recently saw Steve Mosko from Sony, and he’s going up to the Outlander set, which is amazing. Or you go down to South Africa and see what a great job these guys are doing on Black Sails, which is a massive show that is done so exquisitely from a technical point of view, on top of all the talent that is on the screen. You just have to appreciate the enormous amount of talent that is working in the television medium now.

WS: Is there anything you can say about AMC Networks looking at possibly acquiring Starz?

ALBRECHT: There is nothing to say. I know the people running media companies and we talk to each other all the time. It would be very unusual if I wasn’t talking to Jon Feltheimer [CEO of Lionsgate] or to Josh Sapan [CEO and president of AMC Networks]—we don’t talk on a daily basis, but we see each other all the time. We are in the same businesses and we certainly have lunch, and Josh has given me some pretty good advice over the years!

On the issue of consolidation and companies merging, there is consolidation on the distribution side, so there is certainly an argument to be made that if you put two good

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companies together on the content side, you’re going to get some scale: scale in being able to attract more talent, scale in being able to monetize, scale in different kinds of distribution and synergies, which usually means consolidating staffs and things like that. I think a lot of the traditional media companies have spent a lot of time buying back their own stock over these last few years and not investing a lot in innovating. When you put companies together, that’s what tends to start happening as you look to do things a little differently. Even though Starz is a $5 billion company and not a $50 billion company, and AMC is worth a little bit more, and Lionsgate is worth a bit more, putting these companies together is hard. There has to be a willingness and a strategy behind it. You end up needing real conviction that this is a good idea, and then you’ve still got to make a deal. And most companies have controlling shareholders, so when you put two companies together—a controlling shareholder by definition is one person or a family—someone is not going to have control or as much control in a merger. There are a lot of challenges around it.

We go to work every day thinking that we are going to be a stand-alone. I like Starz’s chances with all the things happening in the business, both domestically and internationally. There are obstacles, but there are definitely opportunities, and I think there are more opportunities than there are obstacles. We have a fiduciary responsibility to continue to think about how to grow value for the shareholders, and if that can be done in an acquisition, merger, joint venture or whatever, then we will look at that. I think eventually—and I’m not saying with Starz—but eventually we will see some movement in the consolidation space.

Who it will be and when, I can’t predict. I read some things [about Starz in the newspapers] and say, I didn’t know that!

And if I didn’t know it, it’s probably not a good rumor!

Riley Keough is starring in the anthology series The Girlfriend Experience.

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JOHN MORAYNISS

FOCUS ON

ENTERTAINMENT ONE TELEVISION The Entertainment One (eOne) Television catalogue is home to more than 4,500 hours of TV programming, including such highprofile dramas as The Walking Dead and its companion series Fear the Walking Dead and world-class factual content like David Attenborough’s Great Barrier Reef. And the company’s slate just keeps getting bigger, with plans to continue ramping up development and lining up more distribution partnerships. John Morayniss, the CEO of eOne Television, has led the company’s TV arm since its inception in 2008. He talks to World Screen about what’s next for the global indie.

WS: What has been driving the growth of eOne Television?

MORAYNISS: eOne has grown substantially over the last several years. A big part of that has to do with our focus on four key English-language hubs: the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia. In all of those territories, we’re really focusing on connecting with talent, working with the best producers in those territories, and of course, forging strong relationships with the broadcast community. When you add that to our deep infrastructure in international distribution and sales, it allows us to really monetize in the best possible way all of the content that we’re developing and producing, as well as the content that we’re acquiring. In addition to that, we’re spending a lot of time developing relationships and investing in producers and production companies. That includes investing in the Mark Gordon Company; it includes acquiring the strongest factual companies in Canada, Paperny and Force Four; it includes investing in the digital-media company Secret Location; and securing a number of first-look deals with strong producers and writers, not just in the U.S. and Canada but also now in the U.K., in Australia and around the world.

WS: What has been the strategy for ramping up eOne’s television business in the U.S.?

MORAYNISS: We’re spending a lot more than we ever have on development. We’re taking bigger risks; we’re taking bigger shots. We’re working with top talent. We’re going after big book properties, underlying rights, life-story rights.

We recognize that we really need to be in the big-event, bigstatement production business and also in the niche, small, but very targeted business—always [working on projects of] high quality, but really staying away from the middle. As a result, we’re also looking at more overall deals, more firstlook deals. We really want to surround ourselves with the best talent and the best producers, and we want to be that independent umbrella studio where we can nurture talent, support the creative process and bring shows that are developed by eOne to a worldwide audience.

WS: How are you approaching co-production opportunities in Europe and other international markets?

MORAYNISS: eOne is focused on partnerships. And in this day and age, that is really what co-productions are all about—it doesn’t mean what it used to, when you’d put together a Euro-pudding treaty co-production. eOne is focusing on our local markets, particularly in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia. We’re trying to leverage our bases there and our relationships with the best

talent to put together global properties, global productions that appeal to a worldwide marketplace. We are focusing on partnerships with broadcasters in multiple territories, we’re focusing on partnerships with producers in multiple territories, and certainly the talent is coming from all over the world. So when you look at co-productions today, and particularly at what eOne is doing, you’re looking at how we’re leveraging our bases across the world to put together the best creative packages and sell those shows around the world.

WS: What are the key areas of the TV business that you are focusing on for the year ahead?

MORAYNISS: We’re going to continue to expand our first-look deals and overhead deals with producers and writers in order to feed our development pipeline. In addition to that, we expect great things out of our AMC and SundanceTV output deal. We’re also focusing on other potential output-deal partners, whether they’re broadcasters or production companies, around the world.

We’re excited about Fear the Walking Dead, the companion series to The Walking Dead. We’re excited about Into the Badlands. We’re excited about Great Barrier Reef.

There’s so much great content coming out of eOne, through the development pipeline, through our outputdeal partnerships and also through our acquisitions.

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By Kristin Brzoznowski

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MARKET TRENDS

ALON SHTRUZMAN

KESHET INTERNATIONAL This has been a landmark year for Keshet International’s (KI) transformation from an Israeli distributor to a global content creation and distribution outfit. The company that came to prominence off the success of Prisoners of War, which became the Showtime hit Homeland, has set up a scripted studio in the U.S. and a non-scripted development operation in the U.K., and is working on drama projects out of Europe.

This is all in addition to its business of licensing formats and finished shows from Israel and beyond to the global market.

At the helm of Keshet International as CEO is Alon Shtruzman, who recently met with World Screen to talk about the company’s expansion.

WS: Tell me about your U.S. strategy, and the opening of a scripted studio there this year.

SHTRUZMAN: The U.S. is a key market. A U.S. success not only translates to revenue but also to global sales. Lots of buyers tend to buy shows that work there. And it’s a market we’ve been in for a long time—Keshet has been selling into the U.S. for ten years. Before Homeland we had shows like The Ex List on CBS and The Vault and Traffic Light with FOX. Now that we have Keshet Studios we don’t just sell into the U.S.—we produce in the U.S., and more than that, we develop in the U.S. It gives us some extra clout and better access to broadcasters and local creators, and the ability to be more hands-on creatively with the shows we produce.

WS: How is your European drama initiative progressing?

SHTRUZMAN: We have a few projects in development.

Europe is getting close to America in terms of exporting shows, particularly finished product. More and more broadcasters in Europe are producing in English in order to make their product more attractive for the global market. Being a big producer and having the pipeline we have, it makes sense for us to be in Europe. We announced the initiative less than six months ago and have had lots of interest from producers. Sebastian Burkhardt, our new head of development [and acquisitions], is leading it. We’re now in the process of getting ideas, getting scripts, collecting them and starting to structure co-productions. Europe is a great source of creativity and IP—there is so much great talent in Europe. I have no doubt that in the next year or two we will see more global productions coming from Europe.

WS: You’ve also stepped up non-scripted development out of the U.K. SHTRUZMAN: We’ve launched our first in-house production, When Do You Get Off? It’s a homegrown show that was born in the U.K. by British creators for the U.K. We love that. I’m a big believer in local sensibilities. Even though Israel is always the engine from the head office, we’re pushing more and more for the KI outposts to be independent and to develop their own shows. When Do You Get Off? was the first independent project from the U.K. It was amazing how quickly the show was developed, sold and produced for ITVBe. We’re looking forward to launching more shows like that.

WS: Tell us about the global deal with FOX International Channels (FIC) for the Israeli drama False Flag.

SHTRUZMAN: We love FIC! FIC spotted False Flag very early. Two years ago, they licensed the format for production. Sharon Tal [Yguado], the EVP of scripted, took False Flag before it was even produced in Israel. When she saw the Israeli version, she picked it up immediately for FIC. It’s a great show, very unique. It won awards at festivals like Berlinale and Séries Mania in France. The FIC deal really demonstrates the acceptance for foreignlanguage finished product. Ten years ago, you could only sell English finished product. Now shows in Danish, French, German and even Hebrew are getting more and more exposure in the global marketplace. It gives new hope and new models for creators. We are very proud that we’ve sold False Flag to the global market.

WS: Looking ahead to 2016, what are some of your other key growth priorities for Keshet International?

SHTRUZMAN: China and the Southeast are important for Keshet. We’ve had some big successes in China in the last year. Shows like Master Class and Rising Star are in China. We’re getting into scripted in Asia—we did Gordin Cell in Korea, and now Traffic Light and Loaded will be made in China by Huace Group/Croton Media.

For us, Asia is a very big deal.

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By Mansha Daswani

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2015 Content T

By Mansha Daswani

TG’s Jakob Mejlhede, FOX International Channels’s Jason Simms, Channel 5’s Katie Keenan and SVT’s Christian Wikander spoke about trends in drama, the battle for exclusive rights, the impact of OTT platforms and day-and-date premieres in a conversation with World Screen’s group editorial director, Anna Carugati, at MIPCOM. The four programmers took part in the Acquisition Superpanel: What Do Buyers Want? session in the Grand Auditorium at MIPCOM. After the panel discussion, they each received a World Screen Content Trendsetter Award, in association with Reed MIDEM, for their contributions to the international programming business.

Simms, senior VP of global acquisitions at FOX International Channels (FIC), buys content to be deployed in more than 120 countries. Mejlhede, the executive VP of programming and content development at Modern Times Group (MTG), acquires for a portfolio that spans Scandinavia, Central and Eastern Europe and Africa, covering more than 50 countries. Keenan, head of acquisitions at Channel 5 and Viacom International Media Networks U.K., now buys for the free-to-air Channel 5, 5USA, 5*, MTV, Comedy Central and Spike. Wikander, the head of drama at SVT, looks for ideas locally and globally that can be co-produced or adapted in Sweden.

M

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Carugati began by asking the panelists what their most surprising acquisition or co-production has been. For Keenan, it’s been Wentworth, a reboot of Prisoner: Cell Block H from Australia. “We saw the first three episodes and found some really compelling female characters. An Australian prison drama in the heart of the Channel 5 schedule was quite a risk, but I said we should go for this. The show has delivered for three seasons, and [it] draws a young female audience.”

Mejlhede mentioned FOX’s Empire. “It was a show that our linear channels shied away from. We premiered it on SVOD, and it absolutely shot through the roof.”

For Simms, The Walking Dead was a surprise hit. “We all felt really strongly about the story and the characters, but we couldn’t have anticipated the mega-success.”

Wikander spoke about the Swedish-Danish co-pro Bron/Broen as well as Jordskott, both of which have done well domestically and internationally.

Carugati then moved the conversation to the issue of rights, with all panelists noting the importance of being able to deploy shows on their linear and digital platforms. “Our linear live ratings have reduced dramatically because of the way people are watching content,” Keenan said. “It’s very important for us to make up the difference between the live viewing and the consolidated viewing. We’re working very hard with

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Trendsetters From left, SVT’s Christian Wikander, Channel 5’s Katie Keenan, MTG’s Jakob Mejlhede, FOX International Channels’s Jason Simms, World Screen’s Anna Carugati and Reed MIDEM’s Laurine Garaude.

our suppliers to reach agreements around those rights.

Otherwise it’s going to be a challenge to maintain the types of license fees we’ve been paying over the last few years.”

MTG’s Mejlhede added, “We are seeing significant linear decrease across our markets,” making SVOD and catch-up rights especially important. “We’re not interested” in just doing linear deals, he said.

Holdbacks and exclusivities have always been part of the conversation, Simms said, but they may be “more pronounced now” given the shifts in the market.

Catch-up rights are “well established,” Keenan said. The issue today is more about “how viewers are using the catch-up services on devices in and out of the home. That’s one of the biggest challenges for us at the moment, the ability to give our viewers access when and where they want it. It’s been very centered within the home.”

Mejlhede said catch-up is important, “but it’s also in our interest to have an SVOD service.” A show can live on a catchup service for a few weeks before going behind a subscription wall, he explained.

“Stacking and catch-up have always been important to us,” Simms said, adding that technology, and new devices, have made the business of licensing rights much more complicated today.

Carugati asked the panelists about how OTT platforms are impacting the territories they operate in, especially now that some streaming services are in the business of first-run rights.

“We’re trying to get first windows, and usage online is absolutely necessary,” Mejlhede said. “It’s a very heated competitive situation in Scandinavia with Netflix, ourselves, HBO Nordic and other local initiatives.”

Carugati asked the panel to address a common refrain she has heard from other buyers that there is too much edgy, dark, serialized content on the market. “The need for procedurals is still there on our flagship channels,” Mejlhede said.

“I don’t think there’s too much” edgier, serialized storytelling, Simms said. “There is a lot, but there’s a lot of TV in general. If people are enjoying that kind of stuff, then great. If they don’t like it, the show will get canceled.”

“You do want a mix [of serialized and procedurals] across the channels,” Keenan said. High license fees mean that there’s a need for broadcasters to be able to amortize costs over a greater number of views, and procedurals are easier to repeat.

Wikander said there’s a need to combine “the Nordic crime with some lighter fare. On one hand you have crime merged with drama, where you deepen the characters, and on the other hand you need more love, more hope. We need good rom-coms. The challenge is finding that. Crime is easier to cofinance for drama. Other things, like comedies and dramedies, are seen as more local” and therefore harder to co-produce.

Day-and-date premieres with the U.S. were also discussed.

“It works when [it’s from] a cable channel that airs all 13 episodes back to back,” Keenan said. “The challenge is when they take hiatuses. That’s the challenge for everyone who buys a network show. You want to go as close to a U.S. air date as possible, but you don’t want people to drop off if you take a two- or three-week break. We’ve taken a different approach, depending on what type of series it is. With The Mentalist we played the show in two blocks. With a more serialized show, like Once Upon a Time, we played it 22 weeks in a row.”

At FIC, day-and-date premieres for its high-profile shows like The Walking Dead are key. “It helps to reduce piracy,” Simms said. “It also helps to coordinate social-media buzz around a show.” Dubbing, however, makes day-and-date in some markets a challenge.

Mejlhede said that 30 to 35 percent of Swedish households admit to using streaming sites with pirated content. “We all lose money if we don’t premiere a show as soon as possible” after the U.S. launch.

Carugati then asked the programmers about what they’re looking for. Channel 5 wants “big, bold, noisy drama that is highly marketable.” 5USA buys crime procedurals, and Keenan is looking to replicate the success of The Mysteries of Laura. 5* needs “noisy, 16-to-34, younger-skewing dramas.”

Mejlhede said he’s looking “for everything. We acquire such vast amounts. Two things we need specifically: strong procedurals for the flagship channels, and Nordic co-productions.”

Simms has his eye out for dramas, comedies and more original productions for FIC that could be any model: coproductions, prebuys or deficit financed. “We’re hunting all the time. There’s no shortage of options. It’s just about making the right choices. If you could point me to a guaranteed hit for the right price, that would be nice!”

Wikander would like to see a co-pro opportunity for a “feelgood” scripted show. “Suspense/horror could really work, especially for online and in very short formats.”

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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 get a look at Helen Mirren’s “pleasure pillows”?

Every day, papers, magazines and websites 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.

Helen Mirren

Tom Hanks

Ashley Benson

Christina Hendricks

RUPERT MURDOCH

PRIYANKA CHOPRA

backlash after posting a tweet seemingly implying that Barack Obama is not a “real black president.” The comment, which references U.S. Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson and his wife’s appearance on Fox News, reads: “Ben and Candy Carson terrific.

What about a real black president who can properly address the racial divide?” Murdoch later apologizes for his poor choice of words.

Horoscope: “You could easily say something thoughtless today.... Think before you speak—or don’t speak at all.” (nypost.com)

new role in the ABC crime drama Quantico, Nightline (also on ABC) accidentally uses footage of Indian actress Yukta Mookhey being crowned Miss World in 1999, instead of Chopra, who received the honor in 2000. A Twitter storm erupts, and Nightline tweets an apology to Chopra, with a link to the correct footage. The actress graciously accepts the apology via Twitter.

Horoscope: “You must clear away misunderstandings by engaging in honest communication, even if it makes you feel more vulnerable than you’d like.” (netreadings.com)

Global distinction: Media mogul.

Sign: Pisces (b. March 11, 1931) Significant date: October 7, 2015 Noteworthy activity: The 84-year-old exec stirs up

Global distinction: Bollywood star.

Sign: Cancer (b. July 18, 1982) Significant date: September 29, 2015 Noteworthy activity: In a special segment on Chopra’s

ASHLEY BENSON

HELEN MIRREN

Global distinction: British actress.

Sign: Leo (b. July 26, 1945) Significant date: September 21, 2015 Noteworthy activity: In an interview for CBS’s Remember That Time, the 70-year-old says she doesn’t plan to go nude on screen anymore, after appearing in the buff in films such as Caligula (1979) and Calendar Girls (2003). Of taking her top off, Mirren says, “I never wanted to do that. But you know, I thought, ‘Does it really matter?’” Now, she’s keeping her shirt on and her “pleasure pillows” covered.

Horoscope: “Feel free to be yourself and others will tend to accept you more easily, as you are now.” (astrologyclub.org)

TOM HANKS

Global distinction: Oscar winner.

Sign: Cancer (b. July 9, 1956) Significant date: September 19, 2015 Noteworthy activity: Hanks gets ordained to preside over the wedding of actress Allison Williams and CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen. While promoting his latest film, Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, the actor quips to E! News, “I studied the divinity. I studied as a minister for nearly $35. Out of that I have a certificate that makes me available for weddings.”

Horoscope: “You will look for options to gain more knowledge by studying new subjects.... It is an ideal time to respond to your learning needs.” (askmyoracle.com) 50 World Screen 11/15

Global distinction: Pretty Little Liars co-star.

Sign: Sagittarius (b. December 18, 1989) Significant date: October 6, 2015 Noteworthy activity: The ABC Family actress finds herself in hot water after an image of her in a lion costume—with a caption saying that it was specifically Cecil the lion, the African feline who was killed by an American poacher, sparking global outrage—is posted to Instagram. The 25year-old later apologizes for the offense and claims that the original caption was actually a mistake.

Horoscope: “Think about the consequences of your actions before doing something impulsive that will need fixing later.” (m.dailyhoroscope.com)

CHRISTINA HENDRICKS

Global distinction: Mad Men alum.

Sign: Taurus (b. May 3, 1975) Significant date: October 6, 2015 Noteworthy activity: The actress’s hair-dye commercial for Clairol’s Nice ’n Easy brand gets banned in the U.K. after hair-coloring experts complain to the Advertising Standards Authority that Hendricks’s transition from being redheaded to blonde could not have been achieved by only using that product. Parent company Procter & Gamble later admits that the commercial was filmed in reverse, but claims that the red-to-blonde color change is indeed possible with Nice ’n Easy.

Horoscope: “You’re entering into a new period of selfexpression.... Don’t forget that honesty is the best policy.” (sasstrology.com)

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