The trend in demand for “mainstream” TV series and the growth of Fremantle's film business, thanks to the likes of Luca Guadagnino Queerwith Daniel Craig, Yorgos Lanthimos and Pablo Larraín Mary with Angelina Jolie were among the key topics of the debate as managers of the Madrid production giant on Wednesday on the second day of the fourth edition of Iberseries & Platino Industria.
Seb Shorr, CCOO, global drama at Fremantle UK, Olivia Sleiter, head of production, global drama at Fremantle Italy, and Manuel Martí, head of script development at Fremantle Latin America spoke during a featured panel session.
“We have a good number of them, I think it's 17 now,” Sleiter said of Fremantle's growing film business. “It's a movie for the cinema and also a movie for TV.” Among others, he mentioned that Element Pictures, in which the company owns a majority stake, has worked with Yorgos Lanthimos “and is now shooting his next film.”
Shorr told the audience, “Even though we've always made a little bit of films, actually in the last few years, we really want them to become a really important part of our portfolio… and a big part of our business.”
It also addressed the current difficulties of the sector. “The market has been challenged and is being challenged, and we've had, almost in every territory, kind of a perfect storm where production costs continue to rise, broadcasters are struggling and not investing what they would have invested,” he explained. “It has become more difficult to raise financing for the series. What we are seeing is a kind of structural financial challenge. At the same time, a lot of buyers are moving towards what we would call mainstream, or a push towards mainstream, mainstream, mainstream, moving away a little bit from some of the prestige genres that, particularly streamers, have been chasing in the market. recent years.”
Martí stressed, however, that producers and networks can strive for mainstream content without having to trivialize things across the board, but instead “add layers” to productions.
Shorr also shared what this means for Fremantle and other companies. “Our challenge, and the challenge for all producers, is to sit down and find the right way to respond to that market need, but also respond to the challenging financial scenarios to put together the shows that can work” for broadcasters, while “ they can also make money.” He concluded: “Broadcasters are all trying to cut their budgets, almost all broadcasters in every territory want to spend less. This again opens up the opportunity for co-production in a way that hasn't existed as much in recent years. And I think this will continue to be the big trend.”
Martin Freeman series The Responder it's “a fantastic show that we're very proud of,” but also an interesting case, Shorr said. “It worked based on good sales in the U.S. that we had.” However, things would probably look different if the show were produced now. “If we were doing The Responder again, we would probably look for a lower cost, because we don't see the same market internationally, just because of the direction the market has gone in,” he explained. “We gave the green light ourselves as soon as we came out of the BBC and then we waited to sell in the United States. I don't think we would do it now due to the challenges in the market.”
The Fremantle team also mentioned the Italian series Coastal about a half-Italian ex-marine who returns to the land of his childhood and begins solving problems in one of the most luxurious hotels in the world. “This is the show we made for Amazon in Italy,” which was “I think it was the first time Amazon in Italy did a co-production model,” Shorr said. “They only took Italy, France and Spain. And we kept the rest of the rights” and then throughout the world.
But Amazon ended up liking it so much that it ended up taking over more territories. “It's a very mainstream show,” Shorr said. “It sold very well. And interestingly, we sold Amazon a lot of the territories that they didn't initially take because Amazon was so excited about the show.
What are Fremantle executives looking for in the future? “I'm excited that the market will improve in a year or two,” Shorr said.
And Sleiter shared this about Fremantle's reaction to the rise of artificial intelligence. “On artificial intelligence we have now created some specific working groups because we don't want to be subjected to artificial intelligence. We want to take advantage of what you can offer,” he explained. “Obviously, [we will be] always taking into consideration what our talents want. We must protect them too. But obviously it's something we're really looking at. We will do focus groups, and we will try as much as possible to share all the experiments that we will start to do, and we will share [insights] with all the departments and all our labels.”
After all, “AI is not just for experts,” he concluded. “It's something we can all benefit from. And this is something we need to navigate properly.”