ITV Worldwide Triples Development, Acquisition Fund

LONDON, June 26: In order
to ramp up its slate of product from independent producers, ITV Worldwide
announced today that it has tripled its development and acquisition fund.

Peter Iacono, the
president and managing director of ITV Worldwide, made the announcement at a
reception this evening attended by a number of people from the British indie
production community.

“It’s all about programs,”
said Iacono, who joined the British company earlier this year after a number of
years with Sony in the U.S. “We all work for the programs and we are looking to
enhance our existing relationships and expand into new relationships. Our
philosophy is to enable creative people to be creative—to make compelling
entertainment for ITV Worldwide to distribute. Essentially the message to
producers around the world is: ‘You do what you do best and we do what we do
best!’ We have seriously increased funds to co-finance and gap-finance
productions.”

As part of its efforts to
boost its new offerings for the global market, ITV Worldwide recently acquired
a 25-percent stake in the producer Mammoth Screen, and has inked first-look
deals with Zig Zag and Quickfire Media, among others. It has also scored
distribution deals with producers in the U.K., Canada and Australia for drama,
reality and TV movies, among other genres.

“We’re very excited to be
able to build on the success of our partnerships with independent producers,”
commented Emmanuelle Namiech, the director of acquisitions and co-productions.
“In extensively increasing our acquisitions budget we will have even more
opportunities to be involved with highly original and compelling programming
brands with global appeal.”

—By Mansha Daswani