Red Arrow Studios International’s Carlo Dusi

Carlo Dusi, the executive VP of commercial strategy for scripted at Red Arrow Studios International, talks to TV Drama about how the company has responded to the challenges posed by COVID-19 and weighs in on how the global pandemic may impact the scripted space in the months to come.

With production on drama series paused in several markets amid COVID-19, interest in TV movies surged, according to Dusi. With a slate of 500-plus TV-movie titles, the company has been responding to that demand, while also gearing up for its series to head back into production and proceeding with its development slate.

TV DRAMA: How has COVID impacted your strategy for developing new titles, and how are you coping with the pauses in production on returning product?
DUSI: During lockdown, we spent a lot of time making sure we could get the series we had scheduled back into production safely and quickly. As the new safety protocols came out for each of the relevant countries, we had to cost them out and address the impact on production costs, which has been significant across the board. We’ve had to raise additional funding to absorb the additional compliance costs, as well as covering those extra costs arising from the suspension of activities back in March.

Luckily, we’ve been pretty successful at getting ourselves back on track. Preproduction on the second season of Vienna Blood had to be suspended back in March, and we were not able to carry out the shoot according to our original timeline. However, production is rescheduled to start at the end of August in Austria, and other projects will follow closely behind.

The second area we focused on during lockdown was development. We used the time constructively to get a number of projects market-ready. It turned out to be a very productive time because our writing talent was available, and they were all keen to be kept busy and to use the time productively. It was also easier to have conversations with acting and directing talent for packaging purposes. We’ve done a lot of that work over the past few months, and have readied four new projects that we will start taking out into the market after the summer break.

TV DRAMA: It does feel like European drama distributors are in better shape than their American counterparts, given that production can move forward in many places outside of the U.S.
DUSI: I do believe the fact that we are pretty territory-agnostic in our project choices is a great advantage. We always have content in development across several territories, and there are projects on our slate that can be shot pretty much all over the world across both scripted and non-scripted, so when lockdown hit we were able to focus our attention on the territories that moved back into production first, and reorganize our priorities accordingly. Canada and Austria, for instance, were able to gear up more quickly, and we’ve now seen activity picking up in the U.K. as well, helped by the recent announcement that the government is underwriting insurance coverage for production.

TV DRAMA: What will be some of your primary content highlights for fall/winter?
DUSI: One focus for our fall/winter lineup will be our TV-movie content, which is sourced from leading North American and European broadcasters and producers, and covers a mix of holiday movies, romantic comedies, crime and thrillers. We already have a library of 500-plus titles, which we sell to clients around the world—particularly in Europe—and we are currently adding to this with over 20 new titles for fall/winter.

During the COVID crisis, we’ve seen the demand for TV movies go up significantly, particularly from the traditional broadcasting platforms. It’s content that is easy to schedule; suitable for a broad family demographic; and tends to focus on feel-good, uplifting stories that chime with audiences and offer a bit of escapism from the state of the world at the moment.

Also available on the scripted front will be second seasons of two comedy-dramas: Check Check, produced by Florida Film for ProSieben and Joyn, and Ms. Jordan, produced by Wiedemann & Berg Television and SevenPictures Film for ProSieben and Joyn.

TV DRAMA: How will the rising production costs due to COVID impact financing strategies going forward?
DUSI: We’ll see the full impact of the COVID-19 crisis on our activities over the course of the next 6 to 12 months but, in the traditional scripted space, we’re already noticing a greater focus on finding international partners, either in the form of presales or co-producers, to share some of the additional costs and risks that producing drama is inevitably going to carry in the coming months.

And there’s an increasingly sophisticated approach to accessing soft money, akin to the financing models applied by the independent film industry, which historically has been very good at weaving multiple sources of commercial funding and public support together. We’re all having to become a lot more switched on in this respect, in order to ensure the content we want to produce remains viable.

I also think that state assistance, such as the guarantee fund recently introduced in the U.K. and the similar fund we will benefit from in Austria for Vienna Blood season two, will dictate the financing structure of many shows. If, as a producer, you can spend money in territories that provide a greater level of protection against the risk of further COVID-19 waves, this offers a greater incentive for financiers to stick their necks out and support your show going back into production.

Another trend I expect to see develop over the coming months is a greater level of involvement from post-production and CGI facilities in the making of TV drama, with creative post-production work likely to be factored in much earlier in the planning of projects. Going forward, we will all have to think laterally about how we render certain types of content on-screen to comply with COVID restrictions. As a result, there will be a shift from in-camera work to post-production work whenever possible, particularly with respect to crowds and complex action scenes. Increasingly, scenes involving multiple cast members may be shot in different locations and then merged in post, particularly in circumstances where one or more of the actors belong to a high-risk category.

I imagine that before too long, post-production facilities may start to take more of a co-production or co-financing stake in TV drama—particularly in sci-fi or fantasy shows—in the way that they have long been known to do in film.

With all the new VOD players entering the market, there will also be a greater level of competition between the streaming giants. As a result, we are already seeing more willingness from streamers to discuss hybrid structures for content they want and are bidding for against competitors. The two worlds of traditional broadcasting and global streaming will continue to find more points of contact, as everyone battles for new ways to secure the content they really want.
It will also be interesting to see how the studios’ recent move toward creating a new Premium Video on Demand (PVOD) window for theatrical features and streamers acquiring first-run rights to features will impact the television space. Will they put less focus on prestige TV drama series going forward because they can make as much noise and acquire more subscriptions by launching features originally intended as theatrical titles? Conversely, there could be an opportunity for those truly premium drama titles to be made available in a premium SVOD-protected window first, at a premium cost to subscribers, with the creation of a quasi-theatrical digital launch for them. Perhaps the next Game of Thrones or The Crown will be premiered in the same fashion as Mulan; from our end, it’s something we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on.

TV DRAMA: Do you see more non-exclusive deals happening in scripted on SVOD? Are you finding more opportunities to do lots of different deals on a single title?
DUSI: Absolutely. And I hope this will continue to be the case. We already feel there are propositions we can put to the global streamers now that we would not have felt able to put forward a couple of years ago because at the time, we knew that there was a set model from which they would not deviate. There’s greater flexibility now. Our job is to ensure that we model the terms and the windowing on each deal as cleverly as possible to achieve the best creative and commercial results for the show.

TV DRAMA: You mentioned the comfort of TV movies. Are there other genres in demand right now?
DUSI: In general, content that is completed and ready to deliver and play is proving popular because there’s such demand for content to replace projects that have not managed to progress into production. This is particularly true for content that is easy to schedule and can fill multiple slots.

It’s also true to say that buyers right now are largely looking for uplifting and escapist content because that’s what audiences appear to be demanding at the moment, though I think it’s a relatively short-term response to the current crisis. Going forward, I imagine we’ll return to a position where some people will want to escape the depressing reality around us, and others will want to understand it and relive it or find meaning and resonance in shows with darker themes. As a result, here at Red Arrow, we are trying to keep as broad an approach as possible in the way we develop content to make sure we have a little bit of everything on offer and can be as flexible as possible in meeting demand as it evolves.

TV DRAMA: As media companies start actively embracing diversity, does that inform your approach to development and finding new voices?
DUSI: We’ve always been keen to find new voices and to embrace diversity and inclusion across our projects. We’re now pushing in this direction that little bit harder to make sure that, collectively with our producing and talent partner, we don’t ever just take the easy route of going through the talent pool that everyone knows and is familiar with. Buyers have also become more alert to diversity and inclusion as important factors to be identified in new projects and, increasingly, we find that they want to license content that genuinely reflects our diverse world.