‘Drive To Survive’ Producer Box To Box Races Into New Genres Following Sports Success, Eyes Scripted Push & Investment
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Box to Box, the production company behind Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive To Survive, has cornered the sports docuseries market with its breakout docuseries and similar projects in the world of golf, tennis, cycling and rugby.
The company, founded by Amy and Senna producer James Gay-Rees and Paul Martin, who produced HBO’s Maradona, has also made a number of music documentaries including Apple’s 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything.
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But it has also been dabbling in new areas including corporate true-crime series with Apple’s Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn and is looking at other weird and wonderful stories for its documentary slate as well as a new push into scripted and a potential investment drive.
“We looked at sport as an area, particularly in the premium space, that felt underserved,” Martin told Deadline. “You had ESPN, which did 30 for 30 and HBO doing Hard Knocks once a year. But we felt there was a ton of opportunity for really well done, premium storytelling in the sports space. I don’t think we expected Drive to Survive to suddenly become this thing that was bigger than just a just a TV show. But we definitely sensed that there was an opportunity in that space. Then Drive To Survive became the right show at the right time and probably fast tracked where we are.”
Gay-Rees added that after the success of Drive to Survive, many other sports leagues “wanted that uplift”. “It’s not hard for us because we’re both big, big sports fans. We’re not dealing in sort of lifestyle programming, although there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s just a sweet spot for us and we’ve had enormous fun making more of them,” he said.
DRIVE TO SURVIVE
Formula 1: Drive to Survive is heading into its sixth season. The show, which was made in collaboration with the Bernie Ecclestone-found racing organization, premiered in 2019 and covered the battle between Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel during the 2018 World Championship during its first season.
The series has been given credit for massively growing the sports fan base in the U.S. In the past, one of the concerns for sports leagues was the distraction that a film crew would bring to elite sport. However, with the advent of social media, many of the stars were already starting to pull back the curtain.
“Most sports stars are used to being filmed pretty much all the time. It’s just about getting them to not just basically repeat those cliched PR answers,” Gay-Rees said. “With Formula 1, you’ve got 20 daring young, attractive men risking their lives every weekend and we just need to shine a light on that.”
He added that the sport is a perfect precinct for a docuseries because it’s contained every week and everyone knows where everybody’s going to be standing. “They’ve all worked for each other. They’ve all fired each other. You can tell all the backstory and the gossip so it’s a genuine soap opera.”
Martin said one of the challenges is getting the balance right between keeping the hardcore fans happy and inviting new audiences in. “It’s got all the ingredients of a returning sitcom or drama series. Even though the races are in different countries… we joke sometimes that it’s like Seinfeld’s apartment or Del Boy’s flat in Only Fools and Horses, there’s a certain comfort level for the audience,” he added.
When they scored the greenlight, the pair joked that it would either run for one season or many.
How long could it run? Gay-Rees said that viewing figures haven’t dropped. “I think it’s probably hopefully going to carry around a bit longer. We’ll keep on trying to make it feel fresh every year. I think if we suddenly ended tomorrow, there’d be a lot of quite of disgruntled fans,” he added. “Who knows; we’d have to have a crystal ball, but I think it’s got an extra little bit longer.”
Box to Box followed up Drive to Survive with moves into tennis with Break Point and golf with Full Swing. Both have been renewed for second seasons.
Break Point went behind-the-scenes at the ATP Tour and WTA Tour and followed the likes of Nick Kyrgios, Taylor Fritz and his Instagram girlfriend Morgan Riddle, as well as Ons Jabeur. Full Swing went behind the PGA Tour and featured the likes of Dustin Johnson and Rory McIlroy.
The company followed these up by scoring greenlights for series about the Tour De France and 6 Nations Rugby.
“It’s always a slightly different, organic conversation. I’d been in discussions with Wimbledon for years and it got very close to doing a specific thing on them that didn’t land and then it came through a different avenue. Golf came to us through conversations with Netflix and [co-producer] Vox, who’ve been working on access for quite a long time,” said Gay-Rees. “You tend to develop these relationships, and then you miss a few times, and then you land it. They’re all slightly different and some are more straightforward than others. It would be fair to say, most of them are pretty complicated journeys to screen as they should be.”
There have been some that have got away; The Athletic reported that Box to Box had been in talks to do something similar with the English Premier League, but that didn’t work out.
Outside of Netflix, Box to Box Films also has a number of projects with Apple. It is working with the tech giant on a Major League Soccer project – a league that has been buoyed by the arrival of Lionel Messi and has a standalone film about Lewis Hamilton in the works with former HBO chief Richard Plepler.
Last month, Apple also premiered Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn, a docuseries about the infamous businessman, which marked Box to Box’s first major non-sports or music project.
It told the story of how the Lebanese, Brazilian and French businessman, who was CEO of Michelin North America, chairman and CEO of Renault and others, escaped from Japan to Lebanon while being hidden in a musical instrument box.
“It’s sort of billionaire business madness, true crime, it’s an unusual category. You don’t really get an insight into that heavyweight corporate level of activity. He was a particularly fascinating character with an amazing backstory and it’s a classic Icarus flew too close the sun [story],” said Gay-Rees.
There was also a Formula 1 link as Martin said that he’d seen the Renault chief at races and called him “incredibly striking”. “Obviously, I didn’t think anything of it,” he said. “Then it all went down and someone approached us and said they might be able to get access to him. It’s bizarre.”
The company now has other, similarly unusual projects in the works including a series for Netflix about the French scandal involving L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt that saw a slew of high-profile French execs and politicians including Banijay’s Stéphane Courbit accused of taking advantage of her to secure investment.
“It doesn’t really matter what genre it is as long as it’s got something about it and there’s a secret sauce. There’s a really interesting chemical process with the genesis and the origination of ideas. I’ve literally, suddenly picked up a call and someone says, ‘You want to make a documentary about Amy Winehouse?’ You’re like, sure, where do I sign? Sometimes you chase something for ages. Our development team is across many genres. Obviously, they do a lot of sport because that’s the bread and butter but they’re free to explore pretty much any avenue but it’s got to have something about it as opposed to be imitating what other companies are doing or what they think people want,” said Gay-Rees.
SCRIPTED AMBITIONS
Then, there’s a move into scripted.
A surfing docuseries that Box to Box has made two seasons of for Apple – Make or Break – led to one move into this direction. The company struck a first-look deal with the World Surf League that included potential scripted projects.
“Scripted is something we want to pursue,” said Martin. “We’re not going to suddenly employ 10 scripted development producers, but the World Surf League was something that felt organic. We’ve got a couple of other projects that we’re working with them, if the opportunity comes to do scripted in that space, it makes sense.”
He added that pre-writers strike, the company was also attached to projects that featured both unscripted and scripted components, something that is happening more and more these days.
“We are attached to scripted projects. Whether they’ll be spinoffs of our properties or just completely left-field things is probably up for grabs. But’s it’s a different ballgame,” added Gay-Rees.
INVESTMENT SEARCH
As part of its growth plans, Box to Box is opening to the possibility of new investment. The company is considering opportunities involving a multi-million dollar investment from a minority shareholder.
It comes as many other companies in the sports doc space have raised funds including Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions, which sold a stake to Peter Chernin’s The North Road Company, and Chef’s Table producer Boardwalk Pictures, which sold a stake to investment firm Shamrock Capital, as revealed by Deadline.
Martin revealed that when they started out they weren’t interested in these conversations, but have recently changed their minds.
“For a long time, we’ve been growing quite organically. Whenever you get to a certain level, you have that perceived level of success from the outside and you start getting a lot of people asking questions about investment or a sale,” he said. “We just decided that it’s probably worth finding out if there was a partner out there that make sense, or some investment. It’s very early in that process, but we’ve definitely talked to a few people.”
The company has operations in London and LA as well as a presence in Paris, France, with its joint venture Quadbox. Gay-Rees is based in London and Martin is now in LA, having moved last December.
“Up to now, we’ve grown in a very organic way and the work has dictated how big we get. We’ve brought in a few more executives in the UK and we’re looking at the same thing in the U.S,” Martin added.
All of this comes at rather a strange time in the world of documentaries. Feature documentaries always struggled for distribution, and then there was a boom as the streamers came into the picture. However, there has been a slow down over the last couple of years.
“It’s definitely a tough time,” said Gay-Rees. “We haven’t sold a few things that we thought we definitely were going to sell, outside of the sport space, it has to be said. I think a lot of people are struggling and have been for a while, unfortunately, I think it’s going to last a little bit longer. It seems like it’s just a difficult confluence of events of various buyers and stock prices, aligning to make the golden period come to an end. Likewise, it will turn again at some point. We were just fortunate to be the right company at the right place at the right time in so much as Drive to Survive hit when it did. Sport does seem to be one of the verticals that is sustaining in a pretty major way and we’re lucky that we were may have been marching ahead of the pack.”
The writers and actors strike hasn’t necessarily had an impact on the business, although there was no unscripted boom, as was expected by many in the reality and docs business. “When there was the [last] writers strike, there was a huge unscripted kind of boom, and that certainly hasn’t happened. We’ve been pretty much business as usual through it but we’re not seeing a sudden scramble from networks to devour any kind of unscripted pitch. It’s a difficult time for everyone on every level.”
That is, unless you make the majority of Netflix’s booming sports-adjacent business.
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