Exclusive Interview: STUDIOCANAL’s Didier Lupfer

PREMIUM: STUDIOCANAL’s chairman and CEO, Didier Lupfer, talks to World Screen about growing the group’s existing businesses.

STUDIOCANAL grew out of Canal+ Productions, set up in 1986 as a subsidiary of the French pay-TV company Canal+. Through the years, STUDIOCANAL established itself as a leading producer, co-producer, acquirer and distributor of feature films and quickly expanded beyond its domestic borders. Today, led by Lupfer, it has operations in the U.K., Germany, Australia and New Zealand. It releases some 50 films a year and has a library of more than 6,500 titles. It has also invested in television production companies: TANDEM Communications, RED Production Company, SAM Productions, SunnyMarch TV, Urban Myth Films and Bambu.

WS: What has been the strategy behind STUDIOCANAL’s investments in TV production companies?
LUPFER: STUDIOCANAL set its intention to become a major player in the global TV industry in 2012 and has since gone on to become one of the market-leading businesses in the industry with an unmatched portfolio of quality content. We continue to throw our full weight behind our television business and do everything we can strategically to stay a step ahead of our competitors, share our premium content widely and increase revenues. We aim to optimize our relationships to maximize the efficiency, profitability and success of our drama in the global market.

WS: What does each of these companies contribute to STUDIOCANAL?
LUPFER: Each company makes an original and powerful creative contribution to the group. We have the benefit of working with some of the most talented leadership teams in Europe, their expertise and cultural DNA are great assets to us.

WS: How do these companies benefit from being part of STUDIOCANAL?
LUPFER: Francoise Guyonnet, the executive managing director of STUDIOCANAL, works closely with our production companies, ensuring they benefit from the synergy and scale of the group, which in turn attracts bigger partners for them to work with. Our incredibly smart and hard-working distribution division, headed by Anna Marsh, exploits the potential of all our productions on a global scale.

Building strong partnerships with new and existing broadcasters and platforms is vital to expanding the reach of our content globally, as well as developing new co-production collaborations as opportunities for premium internationally relevant drama open up. Our overarching strategy is to ensure that each and every production finds its best possible home in the global market—from the development stages, ensuring that productions hold true international appeal with engaging storylines and characters, through to working with broadcasters to make sure our content reaches its maximum potential in their specific territories.

WS: Do you plan on investing in more companies? Are you looking to extend STUDIOCANAL’s businesses into countries beyond the five in which it is already present?
LUPFER: No, our focus, for now, is to grow existing businesses organically in the countries where we already have a presence.

WS: Do you see strong demand for non-English-language TV product?
LUPFER: Yes, there is more and more appetite for non-English-language programming. Spain’s Telefónica has just acquired the first two seasons of two of our brand-new and exceptional dramas from Scandinavia, Below the Surface and Ride Upon the Storm, for Telefónica’s premium series channels Movistar Series and Movistar Series Xtra. Below the Surface has sold to more than 70 territories worldwide and was recently secured by BBC Four in the U.K.

We were also very pleased to recently confirm a significant deal with Hulu, in which the U.S. streaming service has exclusive U.S. SVOD rights to 20 hours of our premium non-English drama, including Below The Surface and Midnight Sun, as well as the U.K. hit Trust Me.

WS: What opportunities do you see in the U.S. market? Do you have plans to make investments there?
LUPFER: We aren’t currently planning to make any major changes in the U.S. market. Rola Bauer, the managing director of STUDIOCANAL TV, has offices in both Hollywood and Munich and one of her main roles is to help producers get an anchor network in the U.S. Once this is achieved, she helps get the rest of the financing together so our projects can get greenlit. She then creates the plan to take the show out domestically in the U.S. and then globally outside of the U.S.

We are already developing some incredible new projects with U.S. partners, several of which are already in production, such as Take Two, a witty detective series from the creators and executive producers of the hit ABC series Castle, Terri Edda Miller and Andrew W. Marlowe. Take Two is co-produced by TANDEM Productions—which is a STUDIOCANAL company—and ABC Studios. The series will air on ABC in the U.S., RTL/VOX in Germany and France Televisions in France. Terri Edda Miller and Andrew W. Marlowe are executive producing Take Two under their Milmar Pictures banner.

WS: In which of STUDIOCANAL’s territories is the film production business the strongest?
LUPFER: STUDIOCANAL films are performing exceptionally well in their local markets. In France, STUDIOCANAL excelled on its 2017 projections with more than 15 million admissions to become the number one theatrical distributor of the year.

WS: In the U.S., attendance in movie theaters has been declining. How is movie attendance in France, the U.K. and Germany? Which films are performing the best?
LUPFER: The French market is quite stable, which is demonstrated in our 2017 admissions. In particular, comedies are very popular and people are still making a trip to the cinema to watch them—3.5 million people in the case of one of our most recent successes, Alibi.com.

The U.K. and German markets have also shown promising signs, with an increase in box-office figures of 3.6 percent and 5.3 percent, respectively, from 2016 to 2017. These increases are not black and white, there is still work to do to maintain admissions, but these figures—when home entertainment is so incredibly competitive—indicate that the decline is not as steep or dramatic as some might suggest.

WS: STUDIOCANAL has had a long history of co-productions and partnerships in film production and distribution. Do partnerships remain important today? Are they also important in the television business?
LUPFER: Yes, STUDIOCANAL has a long history of partnering with the best of European film and TV talent. We are known for working with “The Greats”: David Heyman, Andrew Rona, Eric Fellner, Tim Bevan, Benedict Cumberbatch, Idris Elba, Peter Lord and Harlan Coben. We intend to maintain this standard of collaborations, which are vital to the quality of content expected from the prestigious STUDIOCANAL brand.

WS: What opportunities do streaming services like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu present STUDIOCANAL?
LUPFER: As one of Europe’s biggest content providers, the advent of popular streaming services in Europe have presented some real opportunities for us. These services have not only expanded our distribution channels, but also our production options as these services are looking for original and defining programming to raise their platform above the rest of the competition.

WS: How does STUDIOCANAL continue to support Canal+?
LUPFER: STUDIOCANAL continues to work very closely with Canal+, principally in a two-way exchange: STUDIOCANAL makes Canal+’s original TV series available in every corner of the world and thereby extends the reach and awareness of the Canal+ globally. It also develops content for the channel, collaborating within the group, to produce shows like Safe starring Michael C. Hall (Dexter).

WS: Canal+ has been experiencing some challenges, what is the health of the pay-TV business today?
LUPFER: The group’s pay-TV business is improving in the face of ever-tougher competition. The overall subscriber base is growing and our profits, excluding restructuring, are expected to be up by more than 30 percent in 2017.