Fernando Szew Spotlights Ten Years of MarVista

NEW YORK: Fernando Szew, the CEO of MarVista Entertainment, shares with World Screen the company’s accomplishments over the last decade and his vision for the future.

WS: MarVista is celebrating its tenth anniversary. What were your goals when you launched the company?
SZEW: We launched MarVista in September of 2003 with a vision to become a worldwide distribution company with vast territorial reach and a primary focus on the children’s and family space. We started the company with Whamo Entertainment’s program catalogue, which was my father’s company, and consisted of some 40 animated specials that we were selling well in home entertainment and we were exploring the demand for them in broadcast. The goal was to understand the broadcast partners that we had access to and be able to source programming that could better serve their audiences across different time slots.

I had joined my father at Whamo in late 1999, so I had about three years under my belt scoping the landscape, and we became very focused on adding new quality programs, forming strategic alliances with different producers and talking to networks in an effort to bring fresh content to the market. We wanted to get involved in the development process of programming earlier so we could influence what we were setting up in the distribution pipeline. From a business perspective, we wanted to establish an asset base, a growing library that we could monetize down the line so we could be able to better capitalize ourselves.

WS: Fast-forward to today, have you reached those goals or exceeded them?
SZEW: Yes, I’d say we exceeded our goals. We had to learn, grow and adapt. We raced off the starting line—four guys [Szew, his father Joseph, George Port and Michael Jacobs] who got together with an entrepreneurial spirit—but we quickly began to see huge market changes, and everything we thought we knew was not necessarily true! So ten years later, I can say we’ve lived through, survived and thrived through economic crises in various parts of the globe—and the last crisis, in 2009, hit nearly every established market. Clearly, there have been, and continue to be, unforeseen changes in technology and in audience and consumer habits, but we are still forging strategic relationships and acquiring and distributing programming. We’ve positioned ourselves very well in the world of television movies and our relationship with Saban Brands has placed us very uniquely in the kids’ space. Having said all that, I firmly believe that we still have plenty of room to further expand.  

WS: Have there been times in the past decade that you had to take a big risk, but it paid off?
SZEW: As an entrepreneurial company, we take risks all the time. Top of mind as a defining risky move that gave us lots of credibility once it paid off was with our first series, Beyond the Break. The series was conceived and developed by one of our founding partners, Michael Jacobs, and our partners on that project, Sean McNamara and David Brookwell. We had sold the series to MTV Networks in the U.S. as a co-production and we needed to come up with our part of the financing, which was in the millions of dollars. There was a moment in time when things were getting to the end line and everything was aligning perfectly with creative, budgets, network, etc. but we didn’t yet have our part of the financing. We could’ve called it quits but we knew that we really had to take the risk. We had to get the financing and we did. Everything worked out very nicely. Creatively, the story had to be set in a tropical location, and Hawaii was the place everybody wanted. Hawaii also offered the right tax credit incentive program that helped us to finance our piece. We were able to work with good partners to raise the funding. MarVista did well with Beyond the Break internationally, first pre-selling some key territories and demonstrating a track record and then selling the show to major players around the world.

WS: You have always stayed close to your buyers and responded to the feedback they give you.
SZEW: We developed an early knack for pitching on the spot and following up with relevant material. We often conceive of ideas when we sit with buyers, and we’ve been fortunate enough to develop those types of relationships. I’ve always trained our sales teams that, it’s not just about selling, it’s about understanding buyers’ needs. This is part of our culture and it’s something we have ingrained in the sales team and now also in our growing development and production teams: listen, understand what the buyers want, pick up on trends, what are the key words being used, what are the demographics of the channel, and from there make things happen. Easier said than done, obviously, but it is part of our culture now. And the trick is, having the persistence and perseverance to keep pushing projects along and to have the wherewithal to make quality programming. We’ve been able to do that. We’ve delivered hundreds of hours to a “who’s who” of broadcasters and digital partners around the world. Ten years ago, when we started selling animated specials, I would have only dreamt of being able to license to some of these broadcasters!

WS: What is MarVista’s reputation in the creative community, with writers, talent and with producers?
SZEW: In the last few years we’ve really grown our in-house development and production staff lead by Robyn Snyder and Sharon Bordas, and we really have a very good team. Within the creative community, we have always been very equitable. We’re conscious of being very clear in our communication and giving creative voices a chance to shine. Within our system of production, we know what it is that we are doing, and we have developed a spirit of partnership with creative forces we bring on. A testament to our reputation is the repeat and growing business that we have, not just with certain production entities, but also with writers, directors and talent. I believe that speaks for itself. With the producers that we represent we have a very strong reputation for being a dependable distribution partner. We are very clear about telling people upfront what our expectations are. We don’t promise more than we think we can achieve. We just work very, very hard and demonstrate particular care for each property we represent.

WS: How have you complemented the movies you produce with acquired product?
SZEW: We try to think of how broadcasters program our movies and shows. From the early days, we have talked not just to the broadcast buyers, but also to the programming and the scheduling teams of the top networks that we work with. We think in terms of slots and we try to complement what we have with the product that we acquire. We try to make the job of that buyer and that programmer easier and for them to know that we understand their challenges and that they can rely on us. It really has worked out very nicely.

WS: Looking at children’s and family programming, what has given MarVista an edge in this very competitive business?
SZEW: It’s extremely competitive, but children’s and family programming is in our roots—this is our passion. Four of us came together in 2003: my father and I had been in the kids’ animated specials business; George Port, who had launched Thomas the Tank Engine in the U.S.—one of the most successful properties ever—and Michael Jacobs who was at PorchLight, which was very well known as a family and kids’ company at the time making great strides with Jay Jay. It’s how we formed MarVista, but we understood how competitive the landscape is, and we’ve seen a lot of companies come and go. We understood that in order to create successful properties, we needed to [make an] impact via a 360-degree property. For that, we needed to be extremely well capitalized, and we weren’t. So, we were very selective in the programming that we got involved with. We know what buyers are looking for, and more importantly, we try to know what they don’t want, and we really respect those guidelines that we hear.

Ultimately today we are very well positioned because we are working with the best: Haim Saban and his team can certainly drive the 360-degree approach to the children’s business. When the opportunity came up to work with Haim and Elie [Dekel, the president of Saban Brands] to handle the international TV distribution rights to their brands, we jumped at it and it’s proven to be beneficial for both parties. We have been very successful with Power Rangers Samurai and Super Samurai, and now, in the midst of celebrating the 20^th anniversary of the Power Rangers brand, we are launching Power Rangers Megaforce. We were also proud to have been appointed the international distributor for Saban’s preschool series, Julius Jr. from the iconic Paul Frank brand—which took the number one spot at last year’s MIP Junior screening requests—as well as now handling the distribution to the reinvigorated Digimon franchise along with the Digimon classics.

WS: In what areas do you see growth one or two years from now?
SZEW: Content will drive the market, and that’s where we will see our growth. We started as a distribution company and that is still core to our competitiveness, but we have created quite a vast development and production department. We are already seeing, in what we’ll be launching in 2013 and what we are planning for 2014, great growth in our core business of television movies. We’re taking an introspective look at making some new hires and moving with a real focus on series, in particular in the tween, teen and young adult genre, because it’s an area that we know very well. We have a lot of experience and relationships due to the many TV movies we are involved in [for] that target audience, so it is a natural progression for us, both from a creative and a business perspective.