MIPCOM Producers’ Forum: Co-Production Master Class

MIPCOM’s Producers’ Forum, presented in association with World Screen, will be featuring the Co-Production Master Class on The Pillars of the Earth, on Monday, October 4. This event will offer attendees a major case study on the innovative development model behind the epic eight-part TV mini-series produced by Tandem Communications and Muse Entertainment, in association with Scott Free Films.

Rola Bauer, a partner and managing director of Tandem Communications, and David Zucker, the president of Scott Free Television, will offer a look at the creative financing model and production strategies used to put together this ambitious project.

“Ken Follett’s masterpiece The Pillars of the Earth became an instant worldwide bestseller,” says Bauer. “It became our challenge to do our job equally well and make the adaptation live up to everyone’s expectations. We did this in the worst worldwide economic crisis since 1929. Raising a $40 million budget and making sure that it gets on screen, was not an easy task, but that’s what Tandem’s core business model has always been about. It’s not just understanding the most efficient way to put quality on screen, it’s about earning the trust of the key networks worldwide and listening to their voice and finding the common ground that everyone can benefit from. This one was especially challenging, but so well worth it.”

Scott Free had begun development of The Pillars of the Earth project years ago at FX in the U.S., but a change in management at the channel stalled the project. Scott Free and Tandem, who had already partnered on the six-hour mini-series The Company, were brought together again to re-initiate development on Pillars. The same writer, John Pielmeier, who had written a first episode and bible for FX, was back on board and Sergio Mimica-Gezzan was chosen as director.

“And that was the biggest decision and in some ways the most challenging part of the process in that there aren’t many directors who have taken on an epic period project like this that would cover more than 100 days of production and a couple of years of his or her life,” explains Zucker. “So that search was quite a painstaking one. And when we got Sergio, we had the great fortune of someone who had worked for Steven Spielberg and not only had experience as a first assistant director on some of the [best] feature projects that had ever been done, but could also bring an efficiency and attention to detail [to a project] that was being done on such a tight production schedule.”

Adapting a nearly 1,000-page book to an eight-hour mini-series was not the only challenge Pillars presented the producers. This high-end project also came with a substantial production budget of $40 million.

“We financed Pillars without a U.S. sale,” says Bauer. “We had investors who backed us, gap financiers, banks; we had deferred our fees and [the people at] Scott Free had deferred their fees. We had put our own money as well, and we took this next step and made it.”

The U.S. pay service Starz acquired the rights to Pillars in March and aired it in July, and Channel 4 in the U.K. will air it later this year.

The Co-Production Master Class featuring The Pillars of the Earth will be held on Monday, October 4, from 3:15 p.m. to 3:50 p.m. in the Esterel auditorium in the Palais des Festivals.