John Reynolds

TV Kids
Weekly, April 1, 2008

Managing
Director

Millimages
U.K.

John Reynolds
left his native Ireland for the U.S. with the intention of landing a job in
advertising. However, as luck would have it, he “fell into television” instead,
in the marketing department at Sunbow Entertainment, a producer and distributor
of children’s television programming.

After spending
four years at Sunbow Entertainment, Reynolds left to take up the position as
director of sales for Cinar. In 2001, he was approached by Millimages to set up
its distribution unit in the U.K. Since joining Millimages, he has been working
on establishing the company as the “leading European high-end animation house,”
by stocking its catalogue with properties like 64 Zoo Lane, which was produced nearly eight years
ago, but continues to be a strong performer. “This [show] was, outside of our
new properties, one of our biggest sellers last year to relicensees and further
commitments,” notes Reynolds. Millimages was recently commissioned by the BBC
and France 5 to make new episodes of the series. Meanwhile, Louie, an animated series for 2- to
5-year-olds, has sold into 67 countries, and has been placed on broadcasters
like the BBC, France 5, Super RTL in Germany and ABC Australia. The company
recently entered production on a third season, with Louie set to return to MIPTV this year.

“We’re not one
of these mass distributors,” Reynolds says. “We concentrate, the majority of
the time, on our own projects.” However, this does not mean that Reynolds will
rule out third-party product completely. “We do look out for the very few
third-party [titles] that will complement our library. But at the end of the
day, we don’t want to cannibalize our shows with someone else’s shows.”

While Reynolds
still believes in the viability of traditional broadcast sales, he has realized
the importance of developing the merchandising-and-licensing side of the
business as well. Initially, ancillary activities will focus on Louie, which Reynolds says has become a “very
big publishing property” in France, but will be extended to other properties in
Millimages’ portfolio. “One thing is, we never make shows really for that aim
[merchandising and licensing]. We make shows that are firmly on the screen.
That’s always been our priority. The benefit, though, is if one of those shows
happens to cross over, it’s fantastic.”

—By
Irene Lew