Movie Magic

November 1, 2010 World Screen

This feature originally appeared in the AFM 2010 issue of World Screen.

Lately, the hot news coming out of U.S. cable networks has been all about original series—mostly scripted dramas but also reality shows, sitcoms and late-night comedy and talk shows.

One might assume that there wasn’t much room left for that long-time programming staple, the made-for-TV movie. That would be a mistaken assumption.
 
The history of the made-for-TV movie is a long one, starting in the days when television was dominated by broadcast networks and titles like Brian’s Song on ABC in 1971, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman on CBS in 1974 and The Burning Bed on NBC in 1984.
They started gravitating to cable as more of the country got wired, with titles like The Burning Season and Against the Wall, both on HBO in 1994, and Andersonville and George Wallace on TNT in 1996 and 1997, respectively, all four of which had multi-million-dollar budgets and helped revive John Frankenheimer’s directing career.
 
Today, original series are popping up all over the cable universe, but on channels like Lifetime, ABC Family, Hallmark and Syfy, TV movies are a staple, and they even appear occasionally on channels like MTV and ESPN.
 
“TV movies were our entrée into original programming,” says Barbara Fisher, the senior VP of original programming for Hallmark Channels. “It’s still a very popular genre that was slowly slipping away on the broadcast networks. Our sense was there was still an audience for them. We serve an audience that enjoys more family-oriented programming, something they’re seeing less and less on cable and broadcast [television]. TV movies fit well into that because we can tell very emotional stories, we can be heartfelt, we can be optimistic, so we decided to target that genre. People tell us all the time, ‘Please, more and more movies.’ ”
 
Hallmark will commission 24 movies this year and increase that to 26 next year, Fisher says. “Two of those 24 this year will air on the Hallmark Movie Channel. In 2011, four will air on the movie channel. I suspect by 2012 we’ll keep increasing.’”
 
She works closely with the producers, including Larry Levinson Productions and RHI Entertainment, but the movies aren’t co-productions—Hallmark pays a license fee and the producers retain ownership. In addition, the network acquires several completed movies each year.
The ABC Family network is doing nine original movies this year, says Tom Zappala, the executive VP of program acquisitions and scheduling for ABC Cable Networks Group. “Movies are still a big part of what we do,” he says. “We’ve stayed pretty consistent in recent years in terms of the number of original movies we offer annually, generally 8 to 12.”
 
At markets and festivals, Zappala says, he occasionally finds a finished movie, but just as often the takeaways are conversations with producers about movies they are developing or would like to do. “We’re hitting people at different points in the development process,” he says. “We’ve worked with everybody from small independent producers to the major studios like Universal, Warner Bros. and Disney. It’s an open-door policy.”
 
Lifetime, the highest-rated women’s network in the U.S., which was acquired by A&E Tele­vision Networks last year, became a leading destination for female viewers thanks to its steady offering of TV movies. It later reduced the volume of TV movies it airs and put more emphasis on big names and higher-profile titles. This year it commissioned or acquired 13 new titles for itself and the Lifetime Movie Network.
 
LIFETIME STORIES
“Lifetime’s leading role in developing and producing original movies is unparalleled,” says Nancy Dubuc, the president and general manager of HISTORY and Lifetime. She and her team are in the process of fine-tuning the channel’s program offering, but TV movies will remain a mainstay of the lineup. They will range from crime thrillers and dramas to true stories inspired by the news—scandals, courtroom dramas and real events featuring women in the spotlight.
 
The emphasis in Lifetime’s TV movies has been on big-name actresses like Stockard Channing, Shirley MacLaine, Cybill Shepherd, Sigourney Weaver, Andie MacDowell and Faye Dunaway. This trend will continue in a new batch of movies, including Tangled (its working title) starring Hayden Panettiere, and He Loves Me with Heather Locklear.
What ABC Family, Hallmark and Lifetime have in common is that they emphasize programming for the family and skew toward a female audience.
 
Not so with Syfy. Known as the Sci-Fi Channel until last year, the channel started with off-net series and theatricals from the vaults of its then-owners, Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios. Today, Thomas P. Vitale, the executive VP of programming and original movies, says the network co-produces 24 original TV movies a year and acquires dozens of others.
 
“Most of the movies are done through independents,” Vitale says, “the kinds of companies that make the kind of gritty independent movie that you just can’t find anywhere else. There’s no place for these movies anymore, except on television. We work with these little companies; we make very gritty genre movies.”
 
He points out, too, that the genres of movies that Syfy commissions and acquires cover a wide range. “Everyone thinks we’re just traditional science fiction—space and aliens,” Vitale says. “But science fiction also has alternative history; it has time travel, future speculative fiction, there’s so much. Horror and supernatural are part of Syfy. High fantasy is part of Syfy. We even do investigative documentaries. We went to Roswell [New Mexico], for example, where, purportedly, the most famous spaceship crash ever happened.”
Syfy co-produces so many movies because of what Vitale terms a “scarcity in terms of quality” in the genres it prefers. “There just weren’t enough really good movies out there,” he says. “We do find some gems in the independent marketplace. It’s more a matter of making sure we have enough volume. That’s what our originals do. We want those two original high-profile movies a month. There’s a lot of room on the network for movies.”
 
The executives say that movies play an important strategic role alongside original scripted and reality series.
“By having a variety of programming, we’re bringing in more and more different viewers, more women, more younger viewers,” Vitale says. “Reality shows are younger skewing and more female than scripted shows. Even these movies—disaster movies and creature features—they attract a good female audience. On average, they’re about 46 percent female and 54 percent male, almost even. The network has a good array of viewers of all ages. We do well with younger viewers and adults 25 to 54.”
 
ABC Family’s Zappala doesn’t consider a movie to be a pilot for a series, but he does say they work together. “We have Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence who are in a very successful movie for us, My Fake Fiancé, and before that we had Melissa in Holiday in Handcuffs, so she’s done two of our highest-rated original movies and now she’s doing a series for us. [Melissa & Joey, also with Lawrence, from Walt Disney Television]. There are definitely tonal similarities between the movies and the series. We feel it’s an opportunity to open up a new audience, where we might have people who watch the series and who may try the original movie, and then we have people watching the movie who might get turned on to a series by the talent that’s in the movie. They do work together.”
 
Further, Zappala says the ad-sales group puts a high priority on movies, which they are able to sell at a premium.
Hallmark surrounds its movies with off-net series and, in the daytime, The Martha Stewart Show and other talk and cooking shows, but Fisher thinks original scripted series are a natural progression from its movies.
 
“Eventually we’d like to be in both areas,” she says. “We feel there is an audience out there. The same way they respond to the movies, logic would tell you that they would respond to those kinds of stories in series, too. We want to continue with the movies, though. We want to grow as a network, which is why we’re in the daytime business now. For us it’s continuing a tradition that works. But I think scripted series would also work really well on our network. They’re probably in the future for us.”
 
The channels all pull together their movie slates in a variety of ways—fielding pitches from producers, acquiring finished product, and coming up with fresh ideas internally and taking them to independent producers.
 
Much depends on scheduling and promotion of theme blocks around holidays and seasonal events.
For its “25 Days of Christmas” strand in December and “Campus Crush” in August, ABC Family commissions one or more new original TV movies and uses them to anchor the event.
 
“For the upcoming ‘25 Days of Christmas’, we have a movie called Ex-Mas Carol that stars Christina Milian and Chad Michael Murray,” Zappala says. “It’s the cornerstone of our original-event strategy. It’s the focal point of the event. We have movies that we initiate every year. Because we’ve been doing the event over ten years now, we’ve been able to build up a nice arsenal of original movies that get repeated every year. Every year we do at least one original movie, sometimes two or three. The cumulative effect of commissioning these movies is reflected in our schedule. You’ll see movies from years past, like Santa Baby and Holiday in Handcuffs, appear alongside the new movies.”
 
PUTTING IT TOGETHER
Zappala says that there is no single formula for developing a TV movie. “Sometimes we have material brought to us. Other times we have a group here that develops internally. We may take a script and produce it ourselves or we may take it to someone else to produce it for us. Or somebody will bring us a script that we like that they intend to produce, and we’ll get involved early in the process. Other times we are brought completed movies that we brand as originals. We’re pretty open in the ways we look at movies.”
 
Budgets vary widely, Zappala says. “On the lower end we’re in the hundred thousands and in the high end the millions. It goes back to the production model; it can be a finished movie or a co-production. And then there is the odd movie that was intended to go theatrical.”
The number of plays a movie receives depends on audience reaction. “For Holiday in Handcuffs, we can’t get enough plays in,” Zappala says. “It’s been a tremendous success. Other movies get from four to 15 plays. Generally they’re multi-year agreements.”
 
The movies that Hallmark commissions are mostly the result of pitches from writers and producers, although the network comes up with many of its own film ideas, Fisher says.
 
HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Fisher looks for subject matter that conforms to the network’s strategy of scheduling movies around seasons and holidays. “We look at every month and we try to reflect each month, either with a holiday, something seasonal or a special occasion,” Fisher says. “As soon as November hits we do a Thanksgiving movie. In October we did a movie called Growing the Big One, which is a romance with Shannen Doherty. It’s set in a town that has a pumpkin-growing contest. In May we’re going to do a Mothers’ Day movie, in June a Fathers’ Day movie. In the summer we might do a wedding. In the summer of 2011 we have A Kiss at Pine Lake, which is a romance set at a summer camp. In February we always do romances for Valentine’s Day.”
 
Hallmark Channel used to be known for its westerns and mysteries, but when it shifted over to the holiday and seasonal approach, those titles were moved to its Hallmark Movie Channel. “We’re doing very different programming on the movie channel,” Fisher says. “The Hallmark Channel movies tend to be lighter, celebratory, where we can do more dramas, period westerns and suspense mysteries on the movie channel. Because it’s about movies, you should have a variety of genres on it. We had a drama called After the Fall in October. We did a movie called The Wild Girl before that, which was a western. Next year we have a great Luke Perry western that we’ve just completed called Goodnight for Justice.”
 
Budgets for the Hallmark original movie are generally in the $2 million to $2.5 million range, Fisher says.
 
Vitale says Syfy “dreams up” most of its original movies internally at brainstorming sessions of 20 or so people, fueled by popcorn and other inspirational treats. “At one of those sessions,” Vitale recalls, “a woman named Nicole Sands in Syfy’s marketing department threw out the word ‘sharktopus’ and everybody laughed, and we had such a good time with the word, we thought, ‘Well, Nicole, we’re going to make a movie called Sharktopus.’ Once we had it as an idea, we went to Roger Corman. We worked with Roger on choosing a writer and director and talked about what the movie should be about.”
 
The movie, starring Eric Roberts, aired in September. “From the moment we have an idea for a movie to the movie hitting the air is probably about 14 months or so,” Vitale says. “Some movies are ripped from the headlines. We did a movie about the West Nile Virus called Mansquito. Sometimes the movies come from the producers pitching us an idea. We can go through those ideas very quickly. We know on a gut level pretty quickly what will get a rating and what won’t. We’d rather have log lines than fully formed scripts, concepts that we can put Syfy’s unique stamp on as we develop. Sometimes they’re more campy, like Sharktopus, and sometimes they’re more serious, like House of Bones [starring Corin Nemec], a very scary movie that aired earlier this year.”
 
The movies are usually budgeted at around $2 million, with Syfy and its co-production partner splitting the cost. Syfy gets U.S. television rights and the production company gets international and DVD rights.