Windlight Pictures’ Moritz Polter

Moritz Polter, former Bavaria Fiction and Tandem Productions executive, founded Windlight Pictures with the backing of ITV Studios in 2021, with the aim of developing high-end German series that could go on to have a global audience. At the end of 2023, the company delivered its first production, Night in Paradise (Nachts im Paradies), and has a slew of other projects in the pipeline, including The Grimrose Girls and Hundertdreizehn. Polter tells TV Drama about setting up the company, ITV Studios’ backing, its upcoming projects and the current state of the market.

TV DRAMA: You opened up Windlight Pictures about three years ago now. What was the drive in setting up the company, and what types of scripted stories have you sought to bring to screens?
POLTER: First off, let me say that I had a wonderful time at Bavaria Fiction. I was able to do a lot of wonderful projects, but I was looking for more responsibility. I also wanted to work on a broader playing field, with more flexibility and greater speed in the decision-making process and basically build a boutique home where creatives [could] come to develop and produce ambitious projects for a broad audience. That boutique-ness is why [I set up] Windlight—to focus on the storytellers and on the creatives behind the projects and not on running a big machine.

In regard to the second part of the question, the stories need to touch us. Here at Windlight, we need to fall in love with them because they become our children. You spend so much time with them, and if they feel like a job, then that’s wrong in many ways. You can’t fight for them in the same way if you just do it for the money. That having been said, we develop a broad range of genres and sizes because we want to be prepared for whatever the market is looking for next. That means that [when] we look at projects, [if] we see something in them, we obviously analyze whether there is a market for them, but even if there isn’t a market for them currently, if we [feel] really strongly for the characters or the uniqueness of the project or the creatives, we will go and develop them because by the time they are ready to be pitched, the market might have changed and is looking for exactly what we’ve just developed. So, we want to create projects that we believe in and hope that the market recognizes that at the time when they are ready. Then, the other thing is that they all need to really work in Germany, but they should also work internationally.

TV DRAMA: What has ITV Studios’ backing meant for the company?
POLTER: This is the perfect match for the kind of projects that we aspire to do. I was a fan and knew a lot of the people that work in ITV Studios’ companies, whether that’s Apple Tree Productions, Cattleya or World Productions. These powerhouses of the television industry are creating content that I’m very happy to be associated with. I talked to some of them before getting in bed with ITV Studios. It was all praise, which is why we managed to set up Windlight together. Having ITV as a backing means that we can acquire IP. We can develop projects to a greater extent than we could probably otherwise do without having the backing of a network, so that when we go to market, [the projects] are further along and more likely to be picked up. Overall, we feel a great stability, and with stability comes strength. We can focus on the things we need to focus on in order to be successful.

TV DRAMA: The industry has undergone a lot of change in the last few years. How has the drama market shifted since Windlight’s launch in 2021?
POLTER: It’s not news to say that financing has gotten harder and the overall number of hours has declined. But that having been said, I think the streamers now have a better grasp of what they are looking for and what works for them than they did only two to three years ago because they are maturing. They have more data. They know their audience better. That is resulting in more stability and hopefully more second seasons, which obviously is something that is very important to us producers.

Co-productions and co-financing [have] gotten more important. But those two things are within my DNA in any case because ever since I worked at Tandem, co-financing has been something that was needed. Yes, there were the heydays when the streamers were just ordering expensive television and paying for it, but that was a very short period of time. And before that time, we were [still] able to do great shows. So, we just have to remember how we financed the shows prior to that heyday and use our connections that we [have] made over the past and continue to utilize them to finance shows.

The other thing is that the sharing of rights has come back full swing, which means that monetization has gotten easier or at least more likely, which will hopefully result in more second seasons. I’m banging on about that because it’s so hard to get a show off the ground that for all of us, it’s really important that we get back to a more healthy environment where, [when] you get a show commissioned, the likelihood of you getting a second season is high rather than low, so that you can monetize and get stability into your company. In the growth years of the streaming industry, new was best and second seasons [were] an afterthought. If we are maturing that market, hopefully there is also retention of audiences, which means giving them something they loved over and over again rather than, Here’s the next new thing, which is catering more to acquiring new audiences rather than retaining them.

TV DRAMA: There have been a lot of limited, one-season series over the past handful of years. As a viewer, I want something I can stick with.
POLTER: Yeah, you start to love your characters. You want to go the distance with them, and that is not done that much anymore. I think it makes it more difficult because you have all the investment in the first season and then not the return on investment in seasons two and three for the producers. So, both for the audience and for the production industry as a whole, it [would be] good if we get back to longer-running series.

TV DRAMA: Late last year, you delivered your first production, Nachts im Paradies/Night in Paradise. What made that project the right fit for Windlight Pictures?
POLTER: We loved the underlying material. We thought it was great, loud, ambitious, thought-provoking and would most likely attract award-winning talent in front and behind the camera. And all of that was true. So, that was one reason we got into it. The second was that we were able to get an American player [Starzplay, now Lionsgate+] to invest into the show, which for us was really important because it showed that we could attract non-German entities to invest in German-language series and also that the show was most likely going to travel well because that’s why they took the rights for all of their footprint. So, that was good for us. We did get a lot of positive press out of it, so it was the right choice at the time. And I had worked with the people over [at] Starz [before] because they were also the home of Das Boot in a couple of territories. Over the course of the three seasons of that, I got to know them quite well. That’s part of what I was saying earlier: Co-financing and finding partners and companies outside of Germany to come on board a series that we produce is something that is within the DNA of the company. I think that’s why we are well-equipped to weather this slightly slower period in the production or commissioning cycle.

TV DRAMA: Nachts im Paradies/Night in Paradise was based on a graphic novel, and you also have an adaptation of The Grimrose Girls in the pipeline. What do you look for in a book to determine if it would be ideal for the screen?
POLTER: First and foremost, it’s the characters that you want to fall in love with. If you do, then you look at whether that’s transferable from book to screen, whether the plot works. If everything is [an] internal monologue in the book—and that is great for the imagination—you can’t do that because voiceover is not really the greatest tool in television. You look at those hurdles, and if they aren’t there, if it is transferable, then obviously IP is a great door opener in this current time when cautious network executives want to see proof of concept as early as possible. If something has already been published, the proof of concept is there. If it then has a following, that’s even better. That’s what we go on when we look at IP. And you know your audience [already] because you know the audience of the graphic novel or book, and then you think, can you expand on that audience? Does that audience actually watch television? Where would they watch television? Who would be the right partner for that kind of IP? And then you develop it toward that partner and having your audience in mind in a slightly different way than if you develop from scratch.

TV DRAMA: It was recently announced that filming has begun on Hundertdreizehn, which is described as an event series. What can you share about this project? And what will make it a globally appealing drama?
POLTER: The name is based on a statistical number of the people that are touched by a victim of a traffic accident, be that the first-aid person, the neighbor of the victim, the loved ones, the people that are also involved in the crash, people at the hospital and so on and so forth. It’s a statistical number of how many people [are] touched by a victim of a traffic accident. That’s what 113 is.

The plot itself revolves around a bus crash, the investigation into the cause of the crash and the personal lives of a number of victims as well as the relatives of the bus driver. The series itself is told in an anthology way. Each episode, we focus on a different character and their connection to the bus crash. So, were they a victim, a witness, a fireman? All those characters basically get their own storyline in one of the episodes. The underlying storylines that we have are the ones of the family of the bus driver and the investigation. That’s the glue that holds all of these storylines together. The reason why it’s universally appealing is because of the themes that we touch upon, like infidelity, family feuds and guilt, while also shining a light on the ability of people to overcome and forgive, giving it a positive outlook on life. So, while the bus crash is obviously central and a lot of sad things happen, we try to also see the other side, of overcoming hurdles in life. I think that’s also where we are right now within our world. We’ve had Covid, we are having political issues everywhere, but we have to also look at what we can overcome and how we can overcome it and be strong together. Those are the themes that are being touched upon in the series.

It is a premium series for WDR. They do two of these a year in terms of the scope, so it will be one of the biggest public broadcast series of the year. And we have a co-producer in ORF, so that helped us obviously accumulate more funding. Degeto is also part of the funding partners. Then, we have incentives from Germany and Austria and backing from ITV Studios’ global partnerships. I think Arndt Stüwe, who wrote the scripts, and especially Rick Ostermann, who is our director, will be able to translate those scripts in great fashion and make them to a standard that we’ve gotten used to on high-end series.

TV DRAMA: Now, there are plenty of challenges in the industry, but with change and challenge comes opportunity. So, what opportunities do you see in the market right now, and what opportunities do you foresee over the next year or two?
POLTER: I would say consolidation is happening right now, which is always a starting point for rejuvenation. We just have to get through it, and on the other side, we will have a more balanced playing field, where we think growth is possible again. Complex financing structures, as well as co-productions and co-financing and the need for quality local content play into our strengths. It’s something that I’ve always [done]—financing through multiple sources rather than one. The need for that plays to our strengths and is something that we know how to do, which is very helpful. Then, in Germany, we will have an enhanced tax credit model as of next year. Hopefully, we’ll also have the investment obligations for the streamers, which will stimulate the German market and help us. Everyone needs quality English-language series, and creating and producing them out of mainland Europe at a better price point is appealing. Those are the opportunities that I would look to in relation to saying, Yeah, it’s difficult, but we can get through this, and actually, we can use it to our advantage.

TV DRAMA: Is there anything else you’d like to add about what Windlight Pictures is up to right now?
POLTER: We are currently developing a series that is called Death of a Horse. It’s set in the Icelandic horse community, among Icelandic horses. We are doing that with Act4 out of Iceland, with RÚV, the Icelandic broadcaster, already attached. We are close to signing another deal on that show in order to close the gap on the financing. We’ve written the first script and are currently writing the second one. So, we are well underway and hope to shoot that next year. That, again, is what I was talking about earlier—the co-financing, co-producing model where you need pan-European or even global producers that know how to do this work together and create succinct series. There are a number of us out there, and we know each other, and we like to work together. Act4 and us are one of those examples.