There are few better places than Series Mania’s industry Forum to gauge the mood of the scripted TV industry. For three concentrated days this week, execs from the international TV business gathered in Lille to talk business, scout for shows and to swap ideas.
Screen distills the key conversation points from the 2024 edition.
Survive till 2025
The weather was bright this year in Lille, but the conversations were often darker. For many, 2023 was tough because of US strikes, economic uncertainty and a commissioning slowdown. If anything, 2024 is tougher still. The mood among the UK contingent was particularly bleak. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the UK market this depressed,” one veteran drama exec told Screen.
Many also spoke of the challenges facing markets such as Scandinavia, Poland and Germany, where streamers have pulled back and ad-funded broadcasters have been hit hard. In a keynote address, Banijay Rights CEO Cathy Payne said “There is no doubt it is tough out there. We have passed the peak. People were talking about a correction, and that has happened.” Many execs said they simply wanted to weather 2024 in the hope that 2025 would see a hoped-for turnaround in business. Phrases like “Survive till ’25”, or the more positive, ‘Thrive in 25’, were on the lips of many delegates.
Staying upbeat
It is often said you have to be an optimist to succeed in an industry as uncertain as TV. This was very apparent at Series Mania. For all the doom and gloom, one of the most striking things about the festival was the extent to which execs were leaning into challenges. Based on Warner Bros. Discovery’s share price (down 40% in the past year), one might have thought president of global streaming JB Perrette’s keynote might be a reflective, sombre affair. Not at all. He sought to put the company’s challenges into perspective. Acknowledging that linear TV is in secular decline, he said that streaming “is barely a teenager” and that it is still in the “early stages of growth” before announcing the launch of Max in 25 European markets this summer.
Banijay’s Payne stressed the importance of “just finding a way of working through” the current challenges: “You’ve kind of just got to be scrappy.’ You’ve just got to think, ‘How am I going to get these programmes financed?’” Banijay content partnerships executive Steve Matthews, told Screen: “We all know the market needed a correction. But I actually think that there’s positivity about the future. I really do. And I feel it around this place.”
Co-production returns
With less money to go round, but platforms and broadcasters still wanting high quality series, the growing importance – and necessity – of co-production was a big topic. As streamers cut back from fully funding shows, producers are turning back to the more piecemeal approach of co-production. “Maybe sometimes you don’t approach the streamers first anymore,” said Matthews. “Maybe you first get a couple of broadcasters, a film fund, a distribution advance and a tax break together, and approach a streamer as a final step and offer a window for a specific territory, which you couldn’t do 18 months ago.”
European co-pro networks such as the Alliance (between France Télévisions, Germany’s ZDF and Italy’s RAI) and the New 8 (between ZDF, Netherland’s NPO, Belgium’s VRT, Sweden’s SVT, Denmark’s DR Finland’s YLE, Iceland’s RÚV and Norway’s NRK) were talked up by many execs. (However, some questioned whether their shows really travelled well between territories). Simone Emmelius, SVP international fiction – co-production and acquisition, at top German broadcaster ZDF spelt out the attractive economics of co-production: “You spend €200,000 on an episode that may cost €1.5m. At the end of it, you get a production value of €1.5m.”
Quality over quantity
In years gone by, streamers and broadcasters would come to an event like Series Mania to make big slate announcements. Not so this year; the slate announcements were very modest. Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery announced two new dramas, while Disney+ revealed three new scripted titles. This in itself highlighted how the era of peak-TV is very much over. That said, most of the series announced were high-end prestige shows featuring top talent. Many of the streamer execs speaking at the festival emphasised they were focused on ‘quality over quantity.’ “We’re not in the volume game in the way some of the others are,” said Liam Keelan, SVP original content, Europe and Africa at Disney+. Added Warner Bros. Discovery’s JB Perrette: “More does not mean better. Quality is the most important thing when attracting customers.”
Artificial intelligence
Series Mania had a whole strand dedicated to AI, exploring its threats and opportunities to the TV business. Many of the AI sessions were packed out. Analytics firm Omdia gave a keynote predicting AI spend in media will exceed $13bn by 2028; much of its presentation centred on the recent beta launch of Chat GPT developer OpenAI text to video AI platform Sora. The role AI can play in production areas such as storyboarding, script analysis, previsualisation, dubbing and visual effects were discussed through the day. Concerns were raised about the impact of AI.
“The human element of creation is in some jeopardy,” said Chris Marcich, president of the European Film Agencies Directors association (EFAD), who also flagged its possible impact on European content diversity. Many of the speakers, though, were cautiously optimistic about AI. Lisa Perrin, managing director of international production at ITV Studios, said AI was fundamentally exciting and that fresh creativity could come from it. “The genie is out of the bottle and we have to embrace it and have careful guidelines around it,” said Perrin.
Literary IP to the fore
It’s nothing new that literary IP is a popular source material for TV, but this year’s Series Mania was replete with adaptations. The festival opened with Netflix’s sci-fi drama The Three Body Problem, the adaptation of the best-selling book series by Cixin Liu. The main competition had several, including Peacock’s Apples Never Fall, adapted from the book by Liane Moriarty, the author of Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers. Elsewhere, Mediawan showcased The Count Of Monte-Cristo, from director Billie August, starring Sam Claflin and Jeremy Irons.
Heather Brewster, Keshet Studios’ Los Angeles-based senior VP of scripted, told Screen: “In the challenging market we’re in right now, any project that can mitigate risk for a buyer is much more appealing.” Some noted, however, demand for well-known literary IP was pushing up prices for optioning titles. ”If suddenly the demand is for books, guess what happens to the price? It is not quite as cheap as it was before,” said one exec.
Rebecca Leffler contributed to this report
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