Q&A with Sky Vision’s Jane Millichip

NEW YORK: Jane Millichip, the managing director of Sky Vision, tells World Screen about the expanding opportunities she sees for the company in the international market.

WS: What's been your overall approach to building Sky Vision’s drama slate?
MILLICHIP: Drama is increasingly important to us, big drama, with quality and scale. That matches the ambitions of our Sky entertainment channels—Sky Atlantic, Sky 1 and Sky Living—as well. One of the big advantages we’ve found working with our channels is that not only is the ambition there, but there is [also] a desire to commission returnable, long-running series, often in the U.S. [model] of 10 to 13 parts. Outside of the U.S., few broadcasters around the world are investing in drama to the level that Sky is in quality and volume. That’s hugely exciting for Sky Vision—being part of a broadcaster with big ambitions gives us an advantage in the marketplace. It requires a considerable amount of deficit funding, co-pro and presale activity, but in terms of what the market wants, thinking bigger and better is certainly what we want to do in drama.

WS: I imagine Fortitude reflects that bigger and better strategy. How did the show come about?
MILLICHIP: Fortitude was commissioned by Sky Atlantic and produced by Fifty Fathoms, which sits under the umbrella of Tiger Aspect and Endemol. Sky Vision has secured a co-production with Pivot [in the U.S.], which [provided] a significant percentage of the deficit. We did a soft launch at MIPTV this year to presell the series to key buyers internationally, which has gone very well. We’ve already secured presales to cover the Sky Vision advance against that rest-of-world deficit. We will launch the show with full episodes at MIPCOM. It was commissioned to 12 episodes straight off the bat, which is fantastic. It’s a high-concept series, set in the Arctic, [and naturally has a] fairly international ensemble cast, which is good for international [distribution]. The setting is not only beautiful, it has that sense of wonderful isolation that works well for thrillers and mystery. In terms of the tone and style, it’s pacey drama with a fantastic ensemble cast—Stanley Tucci, Michael Gambon, Sofie Grabol—and very saleable internationally. While Sky Atlantic is a premium pay channel, where the emphasis is on working with the best writers and producers to have the best storytelling, Fortitude has a natural appeal to terrestrial broadcasters as well. So we’ve got the advantages of playing quite broad as well as adhering to the quality control you’d expect in a premium pay environment.

WS: What are some of the strategies that help ensure a successful partnership, so all parties get the show they signed up for?
MILLICHIP: It sounds a bit strange in the cynical world of distribution, but honesty always works well! Over the years, both producers and broadcasters have learned a multitude of lessons in co-production. Gone are the days when the third policeman from the left needed to be German and the fourth needed to be an Italian. We know better than that now. If significant international deficit funding is required, I think it’s really important to engage the distribution partner early. You should have a clear creative lead in the commissioning broadcaster, but in order to secure the right partners internationally, it’s important to bring the distribution partner on board early. Not only is it important to secure high-value sales, a high-value license fee for that co-pro or presale, you also need to bring in a creatively sympathetic partner. The more you know from the beginning and have a sense of the creative taste and tone of the piece, the easier that’s going to be. I don't think there’s a magic wand you can wave at a co-production; it requires a great deal of diplomacy as well as passion and early engagement and clarity of communication. The important thing is not to bury, or gloss over, any concerns. Those need to be aired early and quickly so you’re both aware of the direction of the piece. And actually to stand behind the creative lead and not compromise their vision at every turn.

WS: The U.K. historically has not done a lot of 10- to 13-episode seasons. Has there been a learning curve for British producers, adjusting to telling their stories over a greater number of episodes?
MILLICHIP: I think there is a learning curve to a certain extent. The U.K., for all sorts of historical and cultural reasons, has a habit of broadcasters commissioning quite short form, three-part, four-part series. Six is considered a volume commission in the U.K. The team-writing approach is something that certainly we’re very interested in working on more at Sky. I don’t think it’s natural for a lot of producers. There are British producers who’ve worked extensively already in the U.S. Left Bank, for instance, [which produces a number of shows for Sky], is already a regular supplier to U.S. cable. Patrick Spence at Fifty Fathoms, producer of Fortitude, has done a great job in producing a series of quality and volume and scale. But it’s not always second nature to British producers and there is a learning curve there.

WS: What are you hearing from buyers as they adjust to getting fewer of the 22-episode series from the U.S. studios and more shorter-run series?
MILLICHIP: While moving to a 13-part system has maybe given schedulers some discomfort, it has actually provided more variety of content for buyers, so I think it’s more exciting for them in many ways. Those series are coming from different sources, it’s not just the studios. There’s a great deal of independently financed, co-produced cable drama between the U.S. and U.K., so it’s provided more variety. It may have caused a bit of a challenge for the schedulers, but they were stuck in the studio system before and now there are more options. Certainly in the U.K., no other broadcaster is commissioning the volume of returnable series in the way that Sky is, so we’re quite unique in that respect.

WS: What are the trends you’re seeing in drama today?
MILLICHIP: We’ve seen a desire to have more high-concept genre pieces. We’re now able to have quite high-concept series set in either fictional or unusual settings that aren’t culturally and territorially bound. For instance, the setting of Fortitude in the Arctic. It’s home to no one and therefore can be home to all of us in terms of our consumption of that story. So for international, the high-concept genre trend has been good because it makes those shows less culturally bound. They’re not set in a specific precinct: it’s not a French cop station or a German hospital or a British firehouse. That also means we can do period or contemporary—both have done well as a result of moving to a more high-concept approach. The ensemble cast, something we’ve learned from the U.S. system, returnable concepts, all of that is good for international.

WS: What are some of your priorities for Sky Vision’s overall distribution business?
MILLICHIP: Drama is really spearheading our move into bigger-budget, high quality programming. We are in a position to invest extensively into those bigger-ticket items, whether that’s big specialist factual, drama or entertainment. In the last year, we have moved to being a general-entertainment distribution company and our genre mix reflects that: drama, factual entertainment, comedy and documentary. We’re in the key prime-time genres. Third-party programming is still vital to our lifeblood; 80 percent of our programming is non-Sky. We still work extensively with the independent sector, mostly with the U.K. and U.S. That will continue to be the case. We will take on more and more of the Sky-commissioned programming, but we will also maintain the level of our investment in third-party product. We need that to build the scale of catalogue we need.