Leading the Charge

November 15, 2010 World Screen

 

This article originally appeared in the MIPCOM 2010 issue of World Screen.
 
From high-budget events to less expensive thrillers and family fare, mini-series and TV movies continue to be solid business.         
 
In an increasingly crowded media landscape in which viewers have a sea of programming choices, broadcast and cable networks often need beacons—glossy, event mini-series and TV movies—that can make a big splash and draw a substantial audience.
 
But no expensive high-quality show is an island; each requires financing pulled together from various sources, and today’s event mini-series and TV movies have to be the right topic, the right length and the right budget.
 
Like so many TV genres, event mini-series and TV movies had their birth in the U.S. decades ago, when all three networks had regular slots for made-for-television movies. ABC, CBS and NBC were able to clear their schedules for powerhouses like Roots, The Thorn Birds or V.
 
“When you look back at those years, that was a terrific creative heyday for television,” notes David Zucker, the president of television at Scott Free Productions, which has co-produced a number of mini-series, including The Gathering Storm for HBO, The Andromeda Strain for A&E and more recently Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth for Starz.
 
“But that was a time when there were three networks that really controlled the great percentage of the market, and they were able to not only put significant dollars into producing those projects, but they were also able to put the marketing dollars in,” Zucker adds.
 
Today the market has fragmented and there are few networks that can afford the kind of investment required to produce and promote long-form mini-series. Most often, the longer versions, ranging from six to even ten or more hours, find a home on pay services, but there are some broadcast networks willing to take a chance, if the project is right.
 
PUTTING IT TOGETHER
“There is a demand internationally for certain types of bigger budget epic movies and mini-series, but the appetite in the U.S. is not where it used to be,” says John Morayniss, the CEO of Entertainment One (eOne) Television. “In the past, we saw a substantial number of those big mini-series being driven by the U.S. market. Now it’s just the opposite, the U.S. is the last piece, in some cases it’s really an after-market sale.”
 
Morayniss calls for a reinvention of the big-budget mini-series. “I don’t think any of the main key buyers or even some of the buyers of the smaller digital channels or pay services are closing the door on long form, but you have to figure out a new way of putting those projects together.”
 
Tandem Communications found an innovative way of funding the $40 million eight-hour The Pillars of the Earth, which it co-produced with Muse Entertainment in Canada and Scott Free.
 
Rola Bauer, a partner and managing director of Tandem, explains that Pillars was produced as a German-Canadian co-production, along with international pre-sales as well as bank loans and Tandem’s own risk money, “So this actually hits a risk level that not a lot of studios or independent production companies are willing to take.”
 
As Bauer points out, Pillars was not financed purely from sales to international broadcasters. “Does the international marketplace actually have the means to produce $40 million on its own? No, it doesn’t. However, if one believed in the project and took a calculated risk to go back into the U.S. market and sell it, or if one had a partner in the U.S. who was willing to work with the international voice, then, yes, that’s an opportunity. So there are ways of financing these projects that don’t make one network carry the full freight of the production.”
 
Tandem and Scott Free are developing two more long-running mini-series, the sequel to Pillars, World Without End, another eight-hour event mini-series for Starz; and Pompeii, a four-hour event, based on the book by Robert Harris, which also has Peace Out Productions and Sony Pictures Television as partners.
 
ATTENTION GRABBERS
The big markets, like Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the U.K. still have an appetite for certain historical epic movies.
 
Tele München Group (TMG) in Germany has been producing them for some time quite successfully, including the 2×90-minute Sea Wolf, based on Jack London’s classic, and more recently, Moby Dick, a TV event adaptation of Herman Melville’s celebrated novel produced for a hefty $25 million.
 
“RTL was the principal German broadcaster on Moby Dick along with ORF, RHI Films and Power, and it has been sold to a great number of other territories,” says Herbert Kloiber, the chairman and majority shareholder of TMG. “Not unlike Sea Wolf, Moby Dick was shot to a large degree in Canada with all of the off-shore exteriors around Malta. There was a big ship that was converted to be the whaler Pequod, which is in the period of about 1860. It was quite ambitious and it’s got William Hurt and Ethan Hawke as the two protagonists.”
 
Kloiber and his team are also developing an event movie based on the von Trapp family, of The Sound of Music fame. This is not a musical, rather a look at what happened to the family before and after they moved to America. TMG is also working with Televisa, jointly developing a script about the life of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico.
 
TMG is careful to keep its mini-series to two parts because longer prime-time minis can be quite challenging for commercial broadcasters to schedule.
 
While pay-TV channels can handle six or more hours, broadcast networks are leery of having to clear their schedules for several nights dedicated to the same program. First of all because so many networks now schedule their prime time evenings by theme, say, Monday crime series, Tuesday big reality shows, Wednesday football, Thursday comedy and Friday blockbuster movies.
 
Secondly, given the high license fees and promotion costs involved, long-form minis have to score audience shares that are close to double the network’s average audience. Say, for example, a network’s average share is about 11 percent. In order to recoup license fees and promotion costs from advertising, a long-running mini-series has to garner audience shares of at least 20 percent. And if the first run doesn’t rate well, then re-runs might even do worse and, in today’s economic environment, no broadcaster allocates 100 percent of the program value on the first run. If a broadcaster acquires or produces a very expensive mini-series, it needs at least three runs and in some territories it might even need five runs to recoup its investment.
 
Nevetheless, an appealing project that creates an event a broadcaster can use to help differentiate itself from the competition will always find a home.
 
The right subject matter is key to any mini-series. “We’ve been looking at mini-series for a long time and always knew that we needed to have a hook,” says Fernando Szew, the CEO of MarVista Entertainment. “Broadcasters need to spend money, energy and resources toward marketing so that the audience stays tuned in not just for one night, but also for a second night.” What MarVista found was The Witches of Oz, a two-part prime-time fantasy adventure with a creative modern twist on the classic tale, starring Christopher Lloyd and Sean Astin.
 
MOVIE MAGIC
While multi-part mini-series may be more challenging to schedule, glossy big-budget event TV movies are definitely finding buyers in several territories.
 
“We have a very healthy amount of movies, and we see a clear trend in the market toward one-part movies,” says Jens Richter, the managing director of SevenOne International, whose new titles at MIPCOM include: Blackout, a 90-minute thriller in which a giant power failure plunges the city of Berlin into a deadly turmoil; The Whore, a 2-hour movie set in the Middle Ages; and The Sleeper’s Wife; a 110-minute thriller about a woman whose world is turned upside down when she finds out that her husband is a terrorist sleeper.
 
SevenOne also produces slates of movies. “We have a lineup of about 15 other TV movies in the genres of romantic comedies, comedies and thrillers, but all very much on the entertaining side,” says Richter. “We don’t deal with heavy social issues. The audience wants to be entertained. That has been a key trend over the last two years. Four or five years ago we would have certainly had a couple of movies dealing with heavy issues like eating disorders, rape or divorce. There is not a single story like this in our entire current lineup. It wouldn’t sell; the audience has no appetite for it.”
 
These TV movies are produced mainly in Germany and co-financed and co-produced with France, Italy, Spain or Austria. “Their primary market is Continental Europe, but we also sell to Asia and Latin America, and we have sold to Univision in the Hispanic market in the U.S.,” says Richter.
 
Another supplier of German TV movies is ZDF Enterprises [ZDFE]. “We are often able to have more than a dozen every six months,” says Alexander Coridass, ZDFE’s president and CEO. These movies, either detective stories or romantic comedies, provide locations, settings and situations that European viewers can relate to. For MIPCOM, ZDFE is focusing on romantic TV movies based on books by well-known novelists such as Katie Fforde, Emilie Richards, Barbara Wood, Inga Lindström and Rosamunde Pilcher “We hear from our clients in Spain, France, Italy, in the Nordic countries, in Benelux and Central Europe that they like stories that relate to their own lives,” adds Coridass.
 
But he points out that buyers do not prefer European-made movies over the ones produced North America—they want both. In fact, TV movies are so popular in countries like Italy, France and Spain that a number of North American distributors are finding good business opportunities.
 
 “A lot of European networks are looking for good movies in their late afternoon and post prime-time slots and that’s causing a lot of demand in the marketplace—the key territories where demand is really strong continue to be France, Italy and Spain, says Gene George, the executive VP of worldwide distribution at Starz Media.
 
So important are these three markets that they generally make up 50 percent to 60 percent of the international revenues generated by a TV movie.
 
THE TRIUMVIRATE
This “triumvirate” as Ken DuBow, the president of Opus Distribution, refers to Italy, France and Spain, is key to his business, and broadcasters in these three countries, like TF1, M6, Mediaset and Antena 3 TV, pay high license fees and are especially keen on thrillers featuring women in jeopardy. “It’s one of the genres that I focus on, it’s certainly a bread-and-butter business for my company,” says DuBow.
 
In fact, Next Stop Murder, which will premiere on Lifetime Movie Network, is reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, and DuBow has sold it to M6 in France and to the distributors Dall’Angelo Pictures for Italy and Drim Tim for Spain. Those same two distributors, along with TF1 for France, also acquired the thriller Locked Away, which premieres on Lifetime.
 
Incendo is also producing female thrillers for Lifetime and is finding an equally receptive international market. “We produce five films a year,” says Gavin Reardon, in charge of international sales and co-productions at Incendo. “Most of our clients are eager for that product and the main countries are Italy, Spain, France, Eastern Europe and a lot of other territories, for instance the Middle East and South Africa and Australia are interested in the product.”
 
Among the titles Incendo will be offering buyers at MIPCOM are the thrillers Wandering Eye, about a woman who finds herself in danger after meeting a man through a networking website; Dead Lines, about a fashion designer who realizes she must act quickly to save her career and the life of her daughter; and Exposed, about a teacher who is the target of a kidnapper.
 
Starz Media has had success not only with thrillers but also with holiday-themed movies. “We’re offering about eight to ten TV movies a year and we’re focused on the ones that can fit primarily in the late afternoon and post prime-time slots, such as action disaster films where there are families in jeopardy,” says George. “We also do a lot of Christmas movies. That’s one of our areas of expertise. A lot of broadcasters are looking to us as one of their key suppliers of holiday movies.”
 
One such title that Starz is bringing to MIPCOM is The Dog Who Saved Christmas Vacation, a sequel to last year’s The Dog Who Saved Christmas. On the slate of new movies is also the thriller Perfect Student about a well-respected criminology professor who defends her star student from charges that she brutally murdered her roommate.
 
FAMILY FARE
The TV-movie business continues to be a good one for distributors with subject matter that has international appeal. MarVista has had success with family movies, and now with 16 Wishes, produced for Disney Channel, the company is finding great potential in tween and teen movies. 
 
“We will be licensing the free-TV rights to 16 Wishes and other windows,” says Szew. “We believe the tween demographic is completely in a growth stage.”
 
In fact, there are new players in the business, and the movies they are commissioning are finding a second life in the international market.
 
“New networks are now entering the TV-movie market,” says eOne’s Morayniss. “We have recently done Made [about a 16-year-old who wants to become a cheerleader] for MTV. CMT [Country Music Television] is entering that market and Syfy is still doing a lot of creature-feature type movies. I don’t think there are necessarily big license fees attached to them, but buyers do exist for those movies.
 
“At the end of the day,” continues Morayniss, “We are in the business of building assets. The bigger-budget, better-cast movies tend to have longer-term and bigger asset value, but it’s also a portfolio approach. Smaller-budget movies are still very commercial, maybe each individual movie isn’t as profitable as a big-budget movie, but if you look at it as a portfolio and say, we’re going to do half a dozen movies a year that are on the lower budget side and are driven from the U.S., that is an interesting business.”        

 

 

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