Endemol Shine’s Lars Blomgren

Lars Blomgren first captured international attention as executive producer of the critically acclaimed Nordic noir series Bron/Broen (The Bridge), which sold to some 180 territories and was the genesis for five local adaptations. Blomgren was also previously managing director of the Swedish production company Filmlance International, which is part of the Endemol Shine Group. Last June, Blomgren was appointed Endemol Shine’s head of scripted for EMEA, as the group is looking to boost its production of non-English-language content. Blomgren shares with World Screen what kinds of concepts he is looking for.

WS: What are your responsibilities as head of scripted for EMEA?
BLOMGREN: My focus is on the non-English-language side. Of our 70 projects going on across the globe, 50 are non-English—and [that number is] growing. Understanding the different cultures, how they work and what makes them tick is so important, so that’s really my focus, and we have identified the most important markets. Now a lot of the focus is on India, for instance, and the Hispanic side, with Pilar’s [Blasco, CEO of Endemol Shine Iberia] business in Spain. Italy is important for us and, of course, the Netherlands and the Nordics because [our companies] are market leaders there. The other thing is to go down to the project level to see what we have in development, which is anything that we believe is more than just a good local show, something we can supercharge and make it work for the international market as well.

WS: When you spot a domestic project in one market, what do you look for that makes you think it could travel to other markets?
BLOMGREN: That’s the million-dollar question, of course! I’ve been a producer all my life, and [you look for] something extra in a pitch, something that raises your eyebrows or something happens. It could be a unique take or perspective, or character or story that’s not generic, not just another crime story or whatever. But what’s interesting is happening in parallel; I can see that broadcasters are opening up to new kinds of commissions and so are the OTTs. Especially Netflix, until recently they’ve been so much about driving new subscriptions, that they’ve been commissioning very much for a young audience, especially on the non-English-language programming side. They are looking for shows with international appeal, but the cost has to work everywhere. I can see that they want to be more sophisticated now. They’re very much looking for the same things that I’m looking for—the unique projects.

WS: Is there a difference between what broadcasters and OTTs are looking for?
BLOMGREN: What I believe everyone wants, including Netflix and Amazon, is something truly local, but the story needs to be on a scale that is interesting for other people. A good example is the Ibis trilogy that we’re doing in India. That’s an Indian story, but it’s something relevant for us all because it’s part of our history. Everyone is trying to stay away from the Europudding. A project needs to be unique.

WS: And is there is also a need to get involved in a project much earlier now? Do you want to be involved from the development phase?
BLOMGREN: There are two models: the U.S. and European with the rest of the world. There’s a challenge for us with the U.S. model, where they take something to the market and then the process is really quick and they want to get it up on the air as soon as possible. Even the Americans nowadays say that the way we Europeans work, with a long development process together with the broadcaster, is something they want to be involved in as well. So, yes, the broadcasters want to be involved early on. And we’re used to it.

WS: Are you seeing a big discrepancy in the quality of writing and production values in different countries, or has the quality risen in many places?
BLOMGREN: I think that quality is defined in different ways in different territories. But if you look at the output over the last few years, the quality in Europe in some respects has gone up, but it has also gone down. If you’ve been writing and creating shows for many years in one tradition, it’s challenging to work another way. We’re not used to writing [while a show is in production] in the U.K., and in the Nordic countries, [the writing process is similar]. We did Bron/Broen (The Bridge), for instance, and it’s the same as Broadchurch: you write for a year, you shoot for a year, you write for a year, etc. The writing does not happen in parallel with the shooting. You have to do one step at a time.

WS: In the U.S., the showrunner is both a creative and an executive. In Europe, do the writer and the producer work side by side?
BLOMGREN: Yes, in the U.S., the system and the creative process are all based on delivering the episodes on time. So for a showrunner, one of the most important talents is to be able to keep pushing and delivering on time. That takes a certain type of personality. I think that in a way, the European creative person can be more vulnerable and more delicate because they have another kind of support. They have the non-writing producer next to them doing all of that work. So, it’s different. I think the key, for all of us, is to work with people who are as creative—and crazy—as possible! And the U.S. network system, with its pilots, is pushing away a lot of creative people who can’t work in that system.

WS: What upcoming projects would you like to mention?
BLOMGREN: Well, Ibis, of course. And that’s because it’s such a good example of what we want to do in the group. We have a big business in India doing a lot of non-scripted shows, but scripted in growing. So, we say, OK, we want to grow it further. I spoke to the team, [led by] Abhishek [Rege, CEO of Endemol Shine India] and Gaurav [Gokhale, COO]. They mentioned the Amitav Ghosh trilogy of books, something that they really wanted to produce. I read it, Sophie [Turner Laing, CEO of Endemol Shine Group] read it, and Peter [Salmon, chief creative officer of Endemol Shine Group] read it. We just loved it and said, Let’s go for it. Then, when we started looking at the rights; it turned out that the rights were with Jeremy Gawade and Justin Thompson, who is a business lawyer and entertainment lawyer, and their company called DoveTale [Media]. So we approached them and made a deal. I knew Shekhar Kapur—he’s Hollywood and he’s India. He’s both, so he was the perfect person. He fell in love with the project as well, so now we’re developing it together as a big, international [production]. I really believe in building a business with projects. Also, from a content point of view, Ibisis a story that needs to be told and it immediately became a passion project for us all. We really want to tell the story.

WS: Now I want to read the books!
BLOMGREN: It’s a fantastic story. It’s about the opium war in the early 1820s. The English banned opium in the U.K., but they needed to sell it somewhere, so they were selling it into China. They forced all the farmers in India to stop growing crops. [Instead] they had to grow a sea of poppies so they could sell opium to the English and buy food from the English. Then at one point, China was completely falling apart because opium affected society completely; they had so many addicts. So the Chinese emperor decided to ban opium and then—here’s the irony—the East India Company started arguing that they were not selling to the U.K., they were arguing in the name of free trade. They said, You have to let us sell into China. And because of this, they started a war against China. That’s the backdrop of this fantastic story. You start with the farmers, upriver in Calcutta, and then you follow the amazing characters. The first book goes down the river and it ends up on a boat called the Ibis that is on its way to Seychelles with workers. It’s just a brilliant book with brilliant characters—absolutely worth telling.