{"id":23184,"date":"2025-06-19T11:56:58","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T15:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/indie-success-story-the-view-from-muck-media\/"},"modified":"2025-06-19T15:28:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T19:28:13","slug":"indie-success-story-the-view-from-muck-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/indie-success-story-the-view-from-muck-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Indie Success Story: The View from Muck Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mariana van Zeller and Cristina Costantini spoke at the TV Real Festival today, offering insights into how Muck Media, founded by five friends, has assembled a portfolio of some of the buzziest factual shows on linear and streaming, including Trafficked<\/em> on National Geographic, Karol G: Tomorrow Was Beautiful<\/em> on Netflix and Sally<\/em> on Hulu.<\/p>\n

You can watch my conversation with van Zeller and Costantini, two of Muck\u2019s five co-founders, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all worked together in different capacities at other companies before and instantly became best friends, realized we liked working together and wanted to think of a way that we could keep working together,” said van Zeller on Muck Media\u2019s origin story.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to treat people well, treat each other well, and we want the drama to be on screen,\u201d Costantini said of the company\u2019s overall ethos. \u201cThe production company exists so that we can make good stories. We understood that controlling the money oftentimes means controlling the quality of what you\u2019re able to make and the editorial of what you\u2019re able to make. The production company exists so that the five of us can make stories that we think are good and important. Oftentimes, they have some kind of civic underpinning, some issue or injustice that we\u2019re trying to address. Some of our stories are very, very dark, and some are very light.\u201d<\/p>\n

The production company operates as a \u201cfilmmakers\u2019 collaborative,\u201d van Zeller noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all rowing in the same direction and rooting for each other,\u201d Costantini added. \u201cThis industry is hard, but we act as a support system for one another and we work on all of one another\u2019s stuff. We all have different talents and skill sets.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, fellow co-founder Jeff Plunkett is the showrunner of Trafficked<\/em>, the acclaimed series van Zeller hosts on National Geographic, which is up for a slew of News and Documentary Emmys next week. Over five seasons, van Zeller and her team have used the show to investigate black markets across the globe.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery single black market\u2014scams, guns, drugs, assassins, crypto scams. We thought that as time went by, it would get easier, but it\u2019s always hard. We\u2019re trying to convince people who are hiding to get them to speak on camera. These black and gray markets occupy a third of the world economy. It has an enormous impact on our lives. We\u2019re giving people an opportunity to peek behind a curtain and see what happens, why they exist, who the operators are and what we can do to stay safer and create a better world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to the diversity of the Muck Media slate, one of Costantini\u2019s most recent projects was Netflix\u2019s Karol G: Tomorrow Was Beautiful<\/em>, following the pop star on tour. \u201cMy background is in investigative journalism, so the idea of following a pop star around seemed like a piece of cake. It was not! A tour doc is a hard thing to make. It\u2019s a real marathon. And it was a great privilege to get to be with her when she broke every record for Latinas ever in her stadium tour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Costantini\u2019s latest, meanwhile, Sally<\/em>, explores the life of Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo women who could not be more different, but both of them navigating what it means to be a famous woman in power, and all the complications that come with that as a real person,\u201d Costantini said.<\/p>\n

On how they are responding and adjusting to the needs of the market, van Zeller noted, \u201cIt\u2019s impossible not to be paying attention, but at the end of the day, we try to stay true to ourselves and the stories that we\u2019re ultimately interested in doing. We didn\u2019t come into this business to chase money. We are privileged to do the work that we do, and we hope that the work we\u2019re doing has some sort of impact on the world. You can be really good at being a filmmaker, but if you don\u2019t also know how to read a contract or sell the pitch or figure out creative ways of finding financing…there\u2019s so much more that as a filmmaker you have to be good at or at least you have to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Costantini added: \u201cWe always have one eye on what the market is saying they want. But if you\u2019re chasing the market, oftentimes by the time you put your pitch together and get it out in front of somebody, they\u2019re chasing the next thing that they\u2019ve been told they need to be chasing. To a certain extent, we are guided by our inherent sense of what a good story or a meaningful story is. And what we want to make. We try to find the overlap of those things constantly. And we don\u2019t just do something because that\u2019s what people say they\u2019re buying. We do something because it\u2019s meaningful, because we would do it anyway, and it happens to be, hopefully, in the list of five bullet points that this week, the network says they want to buy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Muck Media, like many production companies, is also finding ways to embrace YouTube, launching its first channel with a new podcast from van Zeller. \u201cIn a market like ours right now, where it\u2019s so hard to get your stuff commissioned, I\u2019m excited about this new opportunity. I have this Rolodex of people that I\u2019ve interviewed in these black markets\u2014criminals, former criminals, law enforcement experts\u2014and I want to be able to interview them at length and share some of my own stories. We\u2019re hoping that from that comes a lot of IP. We have these incredible stories. We\u2019re not only exploring YouTube, we\u2019re also going into the scripted world as part of the IP that we\u2019ve created with all our reporting. There\u2019s a lot to be scared about at the moment, but also a lot to be excited about for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople will always want good stories,\u201d Costantini added. \u201cWe\u2019re going to try to find ways to do it in the way that we\u2019re proud of in these different mediums. So, YouTube, TikTok, all of it, I think it\u2019s exciting if you\u2019re down to play in the sandbox.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daswani asked van Zeller and Costantini for some closing words of advice for other indie creatives navigating the business today. Embrace all the platforms out there, they said, and make sure you have an abundance of skill sets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt used to be that if you just knew how to pick up a camera and tell a story and edit, that would be enough,\u201d van Zeller said. \u201cNo longer. You really have to figure out how to read a contract, how to sell, how to find financing and how to play in the sandbox of all these new mediums. At the end of the day, our biggest advice is determination and keeping at it because you\u2019re going to get millions of no\u2019s. We are used to getting rejected constantly. So, persistence but also optimism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Costantini added: \u201cFind community\u2014collaborators who will stick with it with you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mariana van Zeller and Cristina Costantini spoke at the TV Real Festival today, offering insights into how Muck Media, founded by five friends, has assembled a portfolio of some of the buzziest factual shows on linear and streaming, including Trafficked on National Geographic, Karol G: Tomorrow Was Beautiful on Netflix and Sally on Hulu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":23193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[8363,5244,8367,11095],"class_list":["post-23184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-top-stories","tag-cristina-costantini","tag-mariana-van-zeller","tag-trafficked-with-mariana-van-zeller","tag-tv-real-festival-2025","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nIndie Success Story: The View from Muck Media - TVREAL<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/indie-success-story-the-view-from-muck-media\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Indie Success Story: The View from Muck Media - TVREAL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mariana van Zeller and Cristina Costantini spoke at the TV Real Festival today, offering insights into how Muck Media, founded by five friends, has assembled a portfolio of some of the buzziest factual shows on linear and streaming, including Trafficked on National Geographic, Karol G: Tomorrow Was Beautiful on Netflix and Sally on Hulu.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/indie-success-story-the-view-from-muck-media\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVREAL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-06-19T15:56:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-06-19T19:28:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2025\/06\/2025-06-19-3-MuckMedia.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"394\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/indie-success-story-the-view-from-muck-media\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/indie-success-story-the-view-from-muck-media\/\",\"name\":\"Indie Success Story: The View from Muck Media - TVREAL\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2025-06-19T15:56:58+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-06-19T19:28:13+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/indie-success-story-the-view-from-muck-media\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/indie-success-story-the-view-from-muck-media\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/indie-success-story-the-view-from-muck-media\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Indie Success Story: The View from Muck Media\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/\",\"name\":\"TVREAL\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\",\"name\":\"Mansha Daswani\",\"description\":\"Mansha Daswani is the editor-in-chief and associate publisher of World Screen. 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