Exclusive Interview: Fremantle’s Jens Richter

PREMIUM: Jens Richter, the CEO of International at Fremantle, tells World Screen how he and his teams have been focusing on unique stories featuring A-list talent in front of and behind the camera, relying on presales and co-productions to bring these shows to the screen.

WS: What factors have driven up the cost of quality drama?
RICHTER: Financing drama has become more expensive, and one of the reasons for this is that we have to go for the right talent. When we produce drama, our ambition is to aim high and that means creating a piece of storytelling that hasn’t been told before but also a package that’s hard to resist. That includes IP. We work very closely with partners such as our sister com­pany Penguin Random House. We love book IP. We work with top creators and writers like Paolo Sorrentino, who did The Young Pope and The New Pope. We go for specific directors. We go for a great cast like Natalie Dormer in Picnic at Hanging Rock or Eva Green for The Luminaries. We [want] to increase the quality and value of the package. In the ideal world, you put together a package that comes with built-in marketing. So when The New Pope launches, [audiences see] John Malkovich and Jude Law on the poster and it becomes irresistible viewing. Setting is important so you produce shows like Baghdad Central on location in Morocco, or The Luminaries in New Zealand or Beecham House in India. All these aspects of production drive up the value. We end up with higher budgets because we don’t want to make just another drama, we want to make a very special kind of drama.

WS: Would you give some examples of how you are financing high-end productions?
RICHTER: We finance through presales and co-productions.  One example is American Gods, which, in terms of budget, is one of our most ambitious shows. Very early in the process, we placed it with Amazon for the first global window and now we have second-window clients, too. Picnic at Hanging Rock came out of Australia.  We took more time [to make it] so it looked more authentic and we got top talent involved when we brought Natalie Dormer on board; all of that, of course, affected the budget. For Picnic at Hanging Rock, it was important to bring partners in early. Very early, we had conversations with Amazon and the BBC, and that helped in two ways: you offset some financial risk, but you also bring partners on board early that share our ambition for the show and will help bring it to market by building the promotion and buzz.

What Amazon has done around American Gods is very impressive. For season one, the main markets outside America were the U.K. and Germany on Amazon Prime. Not only did they support it heavily on their site and in the online space, but they also bought bill­boards and implemented a huge outdoor campaign. If you have a partner on board early, they identify with the show and get behind it.

Another example of financing is on The Luminaries, we brought in third-party financing from Silver Reel. They had done some financing in the theatrical space and wanted to test out the TV space. We got to know each other and we embarked on The Luminaries.

WS: You have also had success selling non-English-language drama.
RICHTER: Deutschland 83 was originally commissioned by RTL in Germany. UFA produced this unique drama that told history in an entertaining way and showed a world you hadn’t seen before. Out of the gate, that show sold around the world and was the first German drama that got placed on an American cable network, SundanceTV, followed by Hulu as a second window. We had to change the commissioning model for the second season because although the first season did work for RTL,  their hopes had been higher. For the second season, Amazon became the commissioner and co-production partner for Germany. The original broadcaster clients around the world stayed on board as the first window for season two, [including] SundanceTV, Hulu and Canal+, and Amazon got a second SVOD window. Why did they do it? Because they wanted a big hit show for the German market, but they were also interested in that second window outside of Germany. We saw with Netflix and La casa de papel that we are not limited by language anymore, nor by where we produce. The limitation is, do you have the ambition to produce something outstanding, yes or no? And the answer is very clear. If you have that high ambition, a series should travel.

Fremantle produces drama in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, across Scandinavia, Australia, the U.S. and Israel. We wanted to do more in Latin America; that was a blind spot.  We spoke to several producers, and found  Fabula, whose team is outstanding on the creative side and in production. They are based in Chile and have an office in L.A. Last year, they won the Oscar for best foreign-language film with A Fantastic Woman and one of its stars, Daniela Vega, was the first transgender [presenter] at the awards and gave a hugely admired and emotional speech. We spoke to them; they came up with the idea for La Jauría. It’s set in Chile and takes two stories that happened in Latin America and Spain as inspiration and creates a new narrative. In the past, in Latin America, crimes against women weren’t properly followed up by the police. Now there are all-female teams that [investigate] these crimes and the series follows one of the units involved in the crimes against women in which Daniela Vega is an officer.

WS: Some people think there is too much drama on the market, and it’s going to hurt the industry.
RICHTER: Not over the next few years. It may come to the point that the bubble bursts, but I don’t personally think it will come to that level. For sure we’ll see at some point growth slowing down. But when you look at the market at the moment, you have Netflix and Amazon spreading around the globe. You have new OTTs entering the market. You have local broadcasters turning into platforms, and in order to build their USP or market position against the global OTTs, they are focusing very much on local and turning acquisition slots into local commissioning slots. This means that when you want a local drama produced in France, Germany, or Spain at the moment, you have to queue, and it’s not only to get that writer or that lead cast. I’ve heard of situations where they had to postpone productions because they couldn’t get the right lighting or sound crew because the number of productions means that the crews are all booked and at full capacity.

How long will that last? I don’t think anybody can tell you, but for the next couple of years, we are going to see a very high level of competition among the platforms. And ambition will rise across genres. It won’t only be in drama. When you look at what we do in the entertainment space, we produce huge shows like Idols, The X Factor and The Greatest Dancer, everybody in that space is also aiming for the highest possible quality show to win audiences.

At Fremantle, we’re also embarking on high-end factual. At our upfront in London, Fremantle Presents, in February, we introduced Expedition with Steve Backshall, a fantastic new documentary series, and Enslaved, which will tell the history of slavery, with Samuel L. Jackson as one of the producers and the face of the show. He traced his DNA back to Gabon, so in the show, we will take him back to where his forefathers came from and retrace the traumatic voyage that was endured by millions of Africans over hundreds of years as they were transported from their home to the New World for a life of slavery. Together with Simcha Jacobovici, who is an Emmy-Award-winning factual producer, we found a very smart way to make this journey, telling what happened over 400 years [through underwater archaeology] and making it must-see viewing.

WS: With higher budgets and the premium on talent, will smaller companies have a problem surviving in this new world of megacompanies?
RICHTER: I’m pretty optimistic for the “little guys” if they are specialized in a certain genre, are connected to certain talent, have a certain creative background or a certain audience profile in mind, or focus on a specific market. You will always see smaller companies that are able to create tremendous success if they find their unique DNA and focus on that.

One of our strengths is global connectivity. We are producing in 30 markets. We have a good sense of the DNA of the local markets. We have pretty good access to local talent. And when it comes to finding partners, we are on the ground in all these countries, so we can have conversations really early on. One example is My Brilliant Friend. It will be in China on one of the dominant VOD platforms. In China, there is censorship, plus quotas and piracy issues. The only way to get good positioning for your drama is if you talk to the platforms early, provide them with materials early. That allows them to get your show through censorship in time for the launch. When that show goes out in the U.K. and the U.S., it has to go out day and date in China; otherwise, piracy evaporates a significant portion of the value. You have to know how to run that piece of the business. Then you can position your show, find your audience and monetize in a huge market like China. We did it with My Brilliant Friend, with American Gods and we are now doing it with Beecham House as well.

Our advantage is we act globally, and we can take our time to say, we have a clear plan for this show, we believe in it, we are not in a hurry to lay off the risk immediately. We are not going for that quick deal. We’re going for the best homes for our shows. Where does our audience sit? Who can be most successful with our shows? Because at the end of the day, that success will be repaid. Then these people want to do business with us again. They will want our next show, and we build relationships.