MIPCOM: The Week in Formats

TV Formats Weekly takes a look at the format highlights to come out of this year’s MIPCOM.

Partnerships and cross-border collaborations were the big stories in the format space last week in Cannes, as companies look to work together to see if they can collectively come up with that ever-elusive “next big thing.”

Red Arrow Entertainment and Japan’s Nippon TV entered into a co-development partnership, planning to work together on new entertainment and reality formats. The formats to come from the partnership between the global production and distribution group and the Japanese commercial broadcaster will be targeted to the international market.

ITV Studios Global Entertainment (ITVS GE) and South Korea’s CJ E&M signed a landmark format-collaboration pact at MIPCOM. Through the agreement, ITVS GE will be taking two of CJ E&M’s Korean formats to U.K. broadcasters, while CJ E&M will look at two of ITVS GE’s formats for its channel bouquet. The two will also work together to develop the formats for interested broadcasters.

Through a new two-way deal, Huace Group/Croton Media is developing local versions of Keshet International’s scripted formats Traffic Light and Loaded for Chinese audiences, while Keshet Studios has optioned Dating Hunter from the Chinese producer for the U.S. market. “This deal is not only a ‘win-win’ for content, but also an innovative move in distributing Chinese TV drama to the international market,” said Liu Zhi, the VP at Huace Group/Croton Media, in announcing the pact.

Keshet International previously struck up a partnership with Argentina’s Telefe to co-produce entertainment formats for global distribution. At MIPCOM, the companies revealed that the two have aligned for the creation of an international production hub for the game-show format BOOM! The same studio used for the Argentine treatment is now available to licensors, along with a full production crew, so that international productions will only need to supply a cast and showrunner.

There were several notable scripted-format deals, including ABC in the U.S. commissioning a pilot script adaptation of the Austrian crime series Janus, distributed by ORF-Enterprise. In the way of unscripted, NBCUniversal International made some noise at the market with QuizUp, a new studio-based entertainment format. The show was launched with a campaign that gave MIPCOM attendees the chance to win a Tesla Model S. ITV greenlit a pilot of the format, which is based on an app of the same name.

TV Formats will be keeping a close eye on all the latest format launches to see which may spark the next global entertainment phenomenon.

Catch up on these stories and more on TVFormats.ws.