Starz Media

September 23, 2009 World Screen
Gene George
Executive VP, Worldwide Distribution

What are some of your top properties for MIPCOM?
Certainly our top priority at the market will be Spartacus: Blood and Sand, an amazing one-hour action drama series produced by our production group at Starz Media. The series is set to premiere on our Starz premium channel in the U.S. in January 2010. Spartacus: Blood and Sand is like nothing you’ve seen on TV and will bring a whole new look and energy to a classic story immersed with stunning action sequences and vibrant and compelling characters.
Bollywood Hero, an event mini-series perfectly timed to the world’s fascination with Bollywood musicals—a funny, touching romantic story featuring exciting dance sequences within a very original program.
The Dog Who Saved Christmas, a charming holiday film aimed at the whole family. We have already received tremendous response from the international market and feel this is one of the strongest telefilms on the Starz slate.
Megafault, an action/disaster telefilm for the SyFy Channel starring Brittany Murphy, Eriq LaSalle and Bruce Davison.
Party Down, a critically acclaimed original comedy series from Starz Media from a team of producers that includes Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars). We are currently casting a top TV name to join the already stellar cast for season two, which is already in preproduction.
 
Why will these programs appeal to buyers?
Because of all our sister companies—from Overture Films to Anchor Bay to Film Roman to Starz Animation to our own original content for our Starz channels—we have a great variety of content within our slate. From series to features to animation to documentaries, the key reason we bring value to the buyers is that we concentrate on a marketable focus within these categories. For example, in our TV movie business, we specifically target action/disaster, thrillers and family films (with a special emphasis on holiday films), which are categories that are highly demanded by the broadcasters due to their playability. In our documentary slate, we target film-related programs that hold strong value for movie platforms, especially in the pay space. On the series side, we look to event programs, such as Spartacus: Blood and Sand and Bollywood Hero, which are extremely high profile and accessible to a broad audience.
 
What are some of the trends you’re currently seeing in this market?
The international marketplace has been faced with many challenges due to the global economic crisis. Ad revenue has dropped and acquisition budgets are being reeled in to adapt to that. Broadcasters are being less aggressive on the standard fare and looking to churn their current library to the fullest. We do see an increased appetite for event programs and prime time drama series, especially ones that can help a channel define its strategic initiatives, what I call “game changers”—and for those programs we see a true competitive environment. We feel that Spartacus: Blood and Sand is an example of such a series.
 
 

What are your goals and expectations for MIPCOM?

 

We will be having a large presence at MIPCOM. We have great expectations on the licensing of our slate at the market and predict it will be one of the best in the history of the company. We will be holding a highly anticipated, exclusive “buyers only” world premiere of Spartacus: Blood and Sand during MIPCOM at the Palais. The creative team on this series—led by accomplished TV and feature veterans Rob Tapert, Sam Raimi, Joshua Donen and Steven S. DeKnight along with an accomplished cast that includes John Hannah, Lucy Lawless and Andy Whitfield as Spartacus—has brought the Spartacus story to life where violence and sexuality can be explored with great creative freedom. We are confident the buyers will respond to that.
Our goal is to place this series in the key territories during MIPCOM to allow our broadcast partners to capitalize on the tremendous multi-million dollar marketing campaign Starz will have in the U.S. leading up to the January premiere. We actually expect to have 3 major territories finalized prior to MIPCOM just off the trailer and the rest of the key countries to fall into place during the market.
We are also continuing to align ourselves with key broadcast partners on our other segments of programming including our TV movie slate, animation and documentaries. We now have over half a dozen output partners and looking to expand this strategy in the future.
 
 

Is there any other information you would like to share regarding your plans for MIPCOM?

Starz Media will be a co-sponsor of the Opening Night cocktail reception, and our Spartacus: Blood and Sand presence will be strongly felt during this event. We will also be unveiling new footage from the series during this reception, and generally making sure that the whole market gets a chance to share in the excitement of what we believe is one of the most exciting new series that will be introduced at MIPCOM 2009.