Series Mania’s Herszberg: “We Want to Be Totally About Content”

Series Mania Forum kicked off yesterday offering pitching sessions, panel discussions, one-on-one conversations with industry leaders and, of course, the event’s signature feature, ample opportunities for producers, writers and executives to meet and discuss projects in development.

“We want to be totally about content; that is why our logo is ‘where series begin,’” says Laurence Herszberg, founder and general director of Series Mania.

“We have 500 scriptwriters attending, we have workshops for writers and we have the co-production forum,” she continues. “Then, of course, the buyers and broadcasters come because, due to the increased competition for content, all the people who used to get involved at the end of the development process now have to be there at the beginning.”

This year is the seventh edition of Series Mania Forum, but only its second year in Lille, where it moved last year after five years in Paris. Series Mania Forum is a three-day event for industry members and is part of the larger Series Mania Festival.

Faced with the prospect of transferring the event to Lille, Herszberg was not only concerned about moving all the activities and screenings to a new city, but also whether or not the industry would follow.

The industry has followed. The multi-level Grand Palais in Lille is teeming with people; some 2,700 is the unofficial estimate. Writers, producers, commissioners, buyers, even distributors, who, in response to the increased demand for scripted fare, all want to get involved at the very beginning of a project.

Of the 16 projects selected and pitched on the first day of Series Mania Forum, the industry arm of the Series Mania Festival, the jury team selected the French drama Purple as the winner of the Series Mania Forum Best Project Award. The story centers on five young women in late 1990s Paris who decide to pull together and open a lesbian nightclub.

The content industry has become more global. So beyond helping projects get off the ground, Series Mania also wants to build bridges between the American and European production communities. Tomorrow will be dedicated to the Transatlantic Dialogues, whose speakers include Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, Group M6’s Nicolas de Tavernost, TF1’s Giles Pélisson, the MPAA’s Charles Rivkin, Endeavor Content’s Lorenzo De Maio, Amazon Studios’ Georgia Brown and France Télévisions’ Delphine Ernotte-Cunci.

As Herszberg explains, European content creators want to work with streaming services, such as Netflix and Amazon, but production models are different. For example, in the U.S. the figure of the showrunner dominates, while in Europe, the tradition has been for a writer to work alongside a producer. As the Series Mania Forum is completely dedicated to content creation, Herszberg is keen to foster understanding between diverse roles and responsibilities.