In a move that promises to create a new indie production powerhouse in Belgium, Caviar, the company behind The Sound Of Metal, War Pony and The Rider, has taken 45% of the shares of leading Belgian outfit Versus Production and its two sister companies Inver Invest and O’Brother Distribution.
The remaining 55% of the shares will stay in the hands of Versus founder Jacques-Henri Bronckart. Together, the aim is to develop larger-scale, international-facing projects across film and television.
Founded in 1999, Versus is one of Belgium’s most respected production outfits, known for its work with directors like Bouli Lanners and Joachim Lafosse and for coproducing such titles as Lukas Dhont’s Close and Dominik Moll’s The Night Of The 12th.
The outfit won the Silver Lion grand jury prize at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month with Vermiglio by Maura Delpero, an Italian co-production with Belgium and France.
“I’ve always wanted to grow because the more you can spread out your portfolio and the more talent you can represent, the more stability you create,” said Caviar co-founder and managing director Bert Hamelinck.
“These days, buyers are changing their minds so quickly. If you don’t have enough in your portfolio, you always might lose the job. Taste changes every six months in terms of what buyers want. You need a bigger base.”
Hamelinck acknowledged that one option would have been for Caviar to join with one of the acquisition-minded media giants such as Newen, Fremantle or Banijay.
“But what Caviar and Versus do is not typically what these big groups focus on. They will do our projects once in a while, when the economic times are good… but somebody still needs to make risky and ballsy shows,” Hamelinck said.
“There are great production companies in Europe that are not willing to join one of the gigantic groups,” he added.
The Caviar boss cited Dead End, a new dark comedy series from Malin-Sarah Gozin (Clan), as a project he wasn’t able to attract interest in from the larger media groups. By uniting with Versus, the intention is to put the company in a position to greenlight such projects on its own.
“It is hard to combine more ballsy ideas with volume and that is what we are trying to do,” he said. “In Belgium, we have a lot of talent. It’s a great place to produce but it’s a small country… This is a strong sign for the market in Belgium and abroad – we can do great things together.”
The day-to-day management of Versus will remain in the hands of Bronckart, and Caviar and Versus both have several new projects in the pipeline.
As well as Dead End which is due to come out next year, Caviar is in production on Frank Van Passel’s Second World War feature Foley Man and in post on high-end thriller series Moresnet, a collaboration with ZDF and Newen created by Jef Hoogmartens, director Van Passel and Jonas Van Geel.
It also has three feature projects about to go in the US, for which details are yet to be announced.
Versus has just been at TIFF with the world premiere of Guillaume Senez’s drama A Missing Part (sold by Be For Films), and is in post-production on La Femme La Plus Riche Du Monde, starring Isabelle Huppert as French heiress and L’Oreal businesswoman Liliane Bettencourt.
Versus is also currently casting Anne Paulicevich’s A Man Of The World, a real-life tale about an anti-fascist professor of archaeology and art history who ended up as a tour guide for Hitler and Mussolini when they visited Rome and Florence.
Caviar is based in Brussels, London, Paris and Los Angeles. Its credits include Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah’s Rebel, Cannes’ Camera d’Or winner War Pony, Clan and its international remake Bad Sisters.
Versus will remain part of indie alliance The Creatives alongside Haut et Court (France), Good Chaos (UK), Lemming Film (Netherlands), Maipo Film (Norway), Masha (US), Razor Film (Germany), Komplizen Film (Germany), Spiro (Israel) and Unité (France).
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