not sniff at it. The exciting part is all about making deals and financing things in different ways. We have a feature doc funded by a Chinese broadcaster, UK terrestrial and distribution finance, and another completely different through international acquisitions, which is now on its second series with Smithsonian.
IS CO-PRODUCTION ON THE INCREASE?
WD Yes, co-production has a key role to play in a fast-moving global marketplace enabling risk and reward to be shared and this requires organisations to work out where to collaborate and where to compete.
Ian Wright: Home Truths
SC It’s been a game-changer for us in the last couple of years, with the rise of certain UK buyers who can co-produce. Whilst often being able to put co-pro finance together on feature docs, the harder thing to do is finding co-producable premium series. We’ve had success with Sky Docs. We’ve had success with Amazon, where they’ve got an appetite in certain categories, such as true crime and sport, for healthy licence deals. Curse of the Chippendales is a true crime, amazing story around a fairly iconic brand; we were able to co-pro that between Discovery+ in the US and Amazon in the UK. And another
series is a co-pro between Sky and Showtime.
EH For some projects, the broadcasters and streamers now seem much happier to co-produce. International co-pros will always be a mainstay, especially when it comes to feature docs, but they can be time consuming and complex to put together.
TM It definitely feels like there’s more opportunity to bring together the UK terrestrials and the global streamers through co-production,
more readily than even two years ago. And the traditional multiple co- productions model continues to work, despite predictions to the contrary.
FS It’s really important for us to partner up with people. If we’ve got a huge, innovative series and Channel 4 is open to co-pro, we’ve got great contacts…and they are so much more open to doing that now. And we don’t just want to team up with the big companies,
CAN PARTNER UP WITH THEM AND DEVELOP IDEAS WITH THEM AND BRING PRODUCTION KNOWLEDGE, THAT
TICKS ALL THE BOXES IN TERMS OF PIPELINES
there’s a generation of new, diverse companies emerging in the UK, if we can partner up with them and develop ideas with them and bring production knowledge, that ticks all the boxes in terms of pipelines.
IS THERE ROOM FOR NEW INDIES, WHAT ARE THE OBSTACLES?
Gold Rush
DD There’s always room for new indies, if you’ve got a new take and
COMPANIES EMERGING IN THE UK. IF WE
THERE’S A GENERATION OF NEW, DIVERSE
you can reach the public. There’s lots of hurdles and challenges. The first one is having enough money to get though those first couple of years, to raise enough capital without giving away your business before you’ve really started. The first couple of years is about picking up experience, that’s where you find out who you are and where you sit….The first couple of years is a lot of failure and that costs money.
WD Although the cost of setting up an indie in the UK is relatively small, the challenge is funding the level of programme development needed to win a first commission with a broadcaster or streamer, who have hundreds of new ideas pitched to them every week. At True to Nature, we are big enough to produce premium blue-chip documentaries, but remain agile enough to deliver in the increasingly short timescales demanded by the streamers. A good example is Shark with Steve
See the Televisual Factual Films at
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