Exclusive Interview: Beta Film’s Jan Mojto

PREMIUM: Under the stewardship of CEO Jan Mojto, Beta Film has not only become a major player in financing and co-financing films, TV series, miniseries and TV movies, it has also significantly increased its production of original content.

WS: How have you seen European drama evolve?
MOJTO: Everything that is being produced in the world is trying to get international attention. This is a very important new element and is even true for a drama produced in a small country. How do we define what will get international attention? It’s the quality of the storytelling, quality of the production and last but not least, marketing. Although one has to say: the best marketing doesn’t help if the product is not what you are promising.

WS: Has the quality of drama been increasing in Europe and which factors have contributed to this?
MOJTO: Yes, the quality has been increasing everywhere. As far as Germany is concerned, it had been a self-sufficient market for years. The only important element for drama was national success on the national broadcasters. In the global world we all live, think and act in today, international exposure is an element in which German TV executives are starting to be interested. This is new. International exposure brings prestige and acceptance. Success [in your domestic market] lasts a very short time, one week or two weeks, or, if you have a series, it’s 12 weeks—and then something new is scheduled. If you have a series or product that is successful domestically and also internationally, it increases the product’s life cycle.

WS: Period dramas continue to be popular, why?
MOJTO: Period drama has had an advantage for quite a long time. It used to be an easier sale with TV executives because the pitch was easier. If you said: “I’m doing The Three Musketeers,” everyone knew what you were talking about. If you said: “I’m doing a drama which takes place on the Czech-German border, where a young woman disappeared, etc.,” it was harder to picture. But today we can’t say that period travels better than contemporary drama. I would say the contrary is the case. We see that contemporary drama is more successful, also internationally.

WS: How have you seen co-financing models change over the years?
MOJTO: Given the fragmentation of the market, financing has to come not only from the commissioning broadcasters but also from other sources, which may be other platforms, such as SVODs, or the international market. That’s the new situation. What you need to do is to guarantee the quality of the production in order to enable international success. If your product is good and visible enough and if it’s distributed and marketed properly, chances are good of recouping your financial investment from the international market. This is one of Beta’s biggest achievements. We want our clients to understand that we make a conscious decision of having the international market in mind and are aiming for quality.

In this fragmented world of consumers with a little channel here, an SVOD platform there and telecoms and big international entities, an organization that is an aggregator and has a sense of quality, like Beta, is a very interesting partner for the new players.

WS: In jointly produced projects, is it getting easier to ensure that all the partners share the same vision for the product?
MOJTO: It’s impossible that all the partners share the same vision. I think the number of partners in an efficient joint effort is limited. It is essential though that someone is guaranteeing the creative integrity of the product. It’s not about pleasing everyone; it’s much more about guaranteeing that what is being produced achieves the highest level of quality in storytelling and production. Trying to get all the partners to agree on everything is impossible. Our model is that we trust the showrunner or writer/producer and we try to be a complementary partner and push those who are producing to do it the best way they can.

Babylon Berlin, a 16-hour German series, takes place in Berlin in the 1920s. It’s the highest budget for a series in the history of German television. There was a high deficit and we decided to invest in the production to guarantee its authenticity. That also means shooting it in German. With all due respect, how could someone from New Zealand, for instance, know how to tell a story that takes place in Berlin in the ’20s?

WS: There is a lot of European drama, whether shot in English or not, traveling to English-language territories.
MOJTO: I think the driving force is technology [and so is the fact that] there are hardly any limitations, neither in the number of potential clients nor in the content. You have smaller channels and they are all looking for product that has the potential to differentiate them from their competitors. The conviction that foreign-language drama can’t work in the English-speaking world has been practically abolished by the fact that it has indeed been successful. Obviously, subtitled drama is more difficult to consume than something that is shot in English. But still, it’s all about quality. If the story is good, original and different from what one has seen, there is a potential for it in English-speaking territories. Look at the Italian series Gomorrah or the German Generation War, which was the first non-English-speaking drama in ten years on BBC Two that made it into prime time—and the ratings were as good as those for English-language productions.

WS: What are some of the new titles Beta Film will be bringing to MIPTV?
MOJTO: We will offer 1993, the second season of Sky Italia’s political drama around the “mani pulite” bribery affair; Sacher, a drama miniseries about the renowned Grand Hotel in Vienna; and the crime series Professor T., originally a Belgium format, which has been adapted for ZDF in Germany and TF1 in France. Last but not least, we will present extensive material of our high-end series Babylon Berlin.

WS: Beta Film is now also offering nonfiction product.
MOJTO: In recent years, we made an important decision to move heavily into production. We have invested in several production companies because we are convinced that a sophisticated combination of distribution and production is necessary in order to have better product to offer and also to produce better programs. So Beta today consists of two main elements—distribution and content creation, including unscripted formats.

WS: Many linear broadcasters are struggling to get young viewers. What is Beta Film offering for young viewers?
MOJTO: In this field, formats can be very interesting. We brought the Spanish success format Polseres Vermelles, The Red Band Society, to Germany. It got a 19-percent audience share on Vox, one of the RTL Group’s channels. That was two-and-a-half times Vox’s average share of all young audiences. Among our formats, we also have Shame, the Norwegian show for 16-year-old teens, which breaks all viewer records and whose remake option was picked up by Simon Fuller for the U.S.