Team Spirit

PREMIUM: David Wood hears from leading producers and distributors about managing co-production partnerships.

The co-production partnership, a familiar feature of the kids’ TV production landscape for decades, is showing few signs of going out of fashion. That is not surprising. As broadcasters increasingly face squeezes on their program budgets, co-pros remain a crucial way to raise production finance.

“Broadcaster contributions are under pressure,” reports Jo Daris, the chief content officer at Studio 100 Media & m4e. “They ask for more rights and pay less than a few years ago. That puts a lot of pressure on other financing mechanisms, like soft money or tax incentives. The access to those incentives is often linked to having an official co-pro, in line with bilateral treaties, creating additional obligations to all partners involved and making outsourcing work to Asia much more difficult.”

One unintended consequence is that the logistics of co-production seem to be getting more complicated, Daris adds.

“There seem to be more pieces to the puzzle now and [the financing] takes longer to finish. This results in co-productions often being repeats of previously tested models: ‘If it worked last time, let’s not go through the hassle of finding partners somewhere else, let’s copy and paste what we did before.’”

Jean-Philippe Randisi, the CEO of Zodiak Kids, points out that one major change that has served to make co-pros more complicated is the scarcity of master-toy-license advances.

Ten or fifteen years ago, you could have launched a new series on the back of a licensing-and-merchandising advance and a couple of main broadcasters in major territories. Nowadays, because the market is so dominated by Disney, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, the space for a new entrant is very limited. “Big players in the toy business—Disney, Hasbro, Mattel—are now producers themselves and retailers won’t give space to new IP unless they think it can compete with those companies,” says Randisi. “Any L&M money is now likely to come later—when you are in production or in season two or three—when you can see if a show is a big success.”

One trend that has helped compensate for decreased L&M activity in kids’ co-pros is the growing impact of Asian players.

As Christine Brendle, the CEO of Hong Kong-based FUN Union, declares, “We see a growing pool of talent and production studios in the Asia-Pacific region and we can expect to see more characters and stories coming from South Korea, China and Japan, which are giants and involved in many co-pros. Interestingly, much more is now going on in India, Malaysia, Singapore Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and other Asian countries. This region is becoming a huge epicenter for co-pros.”

NEW PLAYERS
It’s a trend that Jillianne Reinseth, the VP of creative affairs at Entertainment One (eOne) Family & Brands—which co-produces the preschool superhero series PJ Masks with Disney Junior and France 5—also picks up on.

“We’re seeing more original series coming from countries that were previously better known for animating purely on a service level. Original series from these regions were mainly broadcast locally but didn’t travel well. Now there’s more of an East meets West and North meets South approach to kids’ co-productions, with characters and plots having more universal themes to appeal to a global market.”

At the same time, Zodiak’s Randisi detects another contrary trend towards more localized co-production, certainly in Europe. “There’s a definite upside and a downside to [European] co-production with Asian studios. There are certainly cost savings, but the significant downsides are that communication is more complicated, it’s more difficult to keep track of what is happening on the ground and editorial ideas sometimes get lost in translation.”

Those hiccups, combined with the strengthening of support for kids’ production in key European territories and quotas for European-produced content, have led to a revival in co-producing with EU partners. “It might work out to be a bit more expensive, but it’s easier to manage,” says Randisi.

The benefits of co-production are clear to most producers and broadcasters. OTT services, however, are not as active in such alliances yet.

Streaming global players wield large program budgets and are typically looking to bankroll the entire budget for a show in exchange for rights in all territories. That has meant that as OTT players concentrate on building their kids’ content libraries, many shows that might otherwise have been co-produced across different territories are instead born out of much simpler commissioner-producer relationships.

Take 9 Story Media Group’s deal with Netflix to reboot The Magic School Bus. “The Magic School Bus was one show that, if we hadn’t done a deal with Netflix, we would have had to co-produce to make it work,” says Vince Commisso, co-founding partner, president and CEO of 9 Story. “Territory splits don’t really work for Netflix as they are global players.”

Commisso adds that the OTT platforms’ minimal interest in kids’ co-production may not always be the case. “As their subscriber bases grow strongly, it makes sense to fully finance—and tempt subscribers with original kids’ content. But as growth ultimately tails off, we might see OTTs get into co-pro themselves,” he predicts. “They will put less money into content and producers will seek to diversify some of the risks.”

OTTs aside, if the overall trend is for more complicated co-productions, it’s increasingly essential for partners to be able to manage projects successfully.

The keys to making co-productions work haven’t really changed, explains Commisso. “They need financing from more than one territory because program budgets are usually too big for finance from one,” he notes. “You need partners who know each other well, who have developed some kind of understanding. Communication is critical with co-pros, so you need a group of people on both sides who are all in sync professionally and get along well personally.”

Reinseth at eOne also emphasizes the importance of dialogue between partners. “Frequent and open communication is the best way to stay on top of the production and ensure we’re all moving in the same direction. At eOne, broadcaster notes are shared with all production partners to take into consideration all of our stakeholders’ requirements. Weekly calls, especially by Skype so we can communicate face to face, are great for relationship-building during the development process.”

CAN WE TALK?
FUN Union’s Brendle adds, “Sometimes it’s a matter of finding the right medium for communication as well. When we first started working with China’s CCTV Animation [on Krash and Hehe], we were debating over details and direction and it appeared our views were diverging until we started working with visual examples and realized we had both been talking about the same thing all along.”

Another golden rule is a clear division of services, Commisso notes. “Say a 26-episode series has 12 important processes,” such as character design, storyboarding, production, post-production, marketing or distribution. “One partner does six of the processes across the whole series and the other the rest. That way you develop expertise by specializing and exploiting economies of scale, as does your partner. Dividing up the episodes is a terrible idea. The risk is that you end up not making the same show because you will be using different directors and writers. And you lose the opportunity of both teams becoming really good at different disciplines.”

Nicolas Atlan, the president of animation at Gaumont, likens a co-production to marriage. “If you’ve chosen the right partner and genuinely like the project and you have some chemistry with the people involved, then you can solve any problems that crop up.”

Gaumont’s latest co-pro is Jack Zero, a preschool series created by Alexander Bar and co-produced with his company, Milk Cow Media. It joins Trulli Tales, with PVP in Canada and Fandango and Congedo in Italy; and Belle and Sebastian, also with PVP Canada, on the French studio’s slate.

“Co-pros can become complicated—in an ideal world it would be just my team and me,” quips Atlan. “But let’s be realistic: co-productions are often the best way to get a show financed. But you have to think of more than just the money that a partner might be bringing to the table,” he insists.

“Ask yourself what strengths potential partners have in their own territories,” Atlan continues. “PVP is a great co-producer for us in Canada and DreamWorks is great on Noddy Toyland Detective. They are both strong and well connected. We look for a mix of finance, artistic potential and a strong relationship with their host broadcasters.”

Marc du Pontavice, the chairman and CEO of Xilam Animation, has historically avoided co-production to protect the studio’s IP, but with his facilities at full capacity, he is having to look at co-producing afresh. “I think it’s a luxury to say, ‘I don’t want to co-produce and deal with multiple partners.’But I am skeptical when it comes to multiple co-production territories. That’s because it makes it more difficult to get everyone to share one vision—especially when multiple broadcast partners each have their own agenda. This can weaken the vision and everything can get more complicated and expensive.”

VISION PROTECTION
Du Pontavice stresses there should be one creative lead. “Although the views of other co-pro partners have to be taken into account, there has to be one vision. I am also a strong believer that there should be one company in charge of commercial activities—when it comes to distribution, a division of territories usually results in a weakening of the marketing strategy. Ideally, the distribution partner should have an equity position in the property so that it is incentivized and has a bigger interest beyond the commission.”

Daris at Studio 100 & m4e adds, “The first prerogative for successful collaboration is a clear understanding and alignment at the creative level. Even when investors are involved that are only putting in cash, there has to be a unified vision of where the production is going.”

Reinseth of eOne notes, “Financing is important of course, but it isn’t the primary driver of our collaborations. The creative collaboration is at the heart of each of our series and we believe that’s the key to its success. From the very beginning of development, we work to align ourselves with our co-production partners to ensure that the tone and creative vision are coming through. Finding a production partner who believes in your series as much as you do is critical to producing a successful show.”

OFF THE RAILS
It’s probably safe to assume that in co-productions—as in any form of production—things can go wrong. “Misunderstandings or different interpretations based on vague deal terms and democratic principles—‘both parties need to agree’—happen in almost every production,” Daris says. “So discuss everything in detail in advance of signing an agreement, and make the agreement as detailed and complete as possible,” he recommends. “But there’s always something you forgot to discuss in advance because it seemed self-evident.”

Zodiak Kids’ Randisi agrees. “We try to remove problematic ambiguities before committing to projects, but there can still be differences of perception behind the same words from different partners,” he warns, adding that projects involving multiple broadcaster partners need special attention.

“One broadcaster will tend to take the lead on editorial and the others will follow that lead once everyone is comfortable with the basic characters, design and positioning,” Randisi continues. “But while everyone might agree at the beginning, parties may have different views of elements that come later in the process—during the writing typically—regarding what is age-appropriate, what is gender-appropriate or whether the script contains the right educational elements. Some may want it to be educational; others might think that’s boring and don’t want any of it. You need to make sure that there is enough overlap between what the different broadcasters want at the outset.”

Daris concludes that differences of opinion can be resolved if there’s a structure in place to deal with them. “There has to be one leader who has the power to overrule for the benefit of the production, the schedule and the budget. A successful co-pro is not managed like a democracy, but at its base it’s a deep, open and democratic discussion about every parameter and stage.”