France’s Playtime Reveals Why It Made Sense To Join New European Studio Vuelta Group
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EXCLUSIVE: Deadline spoke to leading international sales firm Playtime about why it made sense to join new European film and TV studio Vuelta Group, which we revealed earlier this morning.
Paris-based Playtime, founded in 1997, is well known for handling leading European projects including Oscar winner Son Of Saul, Cannes winner 120 BPM and horror hit Goodnight Mommy. The firm, which handles the international rights to a library of more than 600 titles, has collaborated with filmmakers including Céline Sciamma, Jacques Audiard, François Ozon, Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas, Naomi Kawase and Nanni Moretti.
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It was most recently at the Cannes Film Festival with Competition titles About Dry Grasses by Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Homecoming by Catherine Corsini. It is currently financing and pre-selling Monsieur Aznavour with Tahar Rahim.
In addition to its Paris office, the Playtime Group includes sales and financing companies Films Boutique in Berlin, Be For Films in Brussels and Film Constellation in London. It produces under the Playtime Production banner, and labels Constellation Production, Parallel 45, 27 Tribe and Elementary.
Playtime partner Sebastien Beffa will serve on the Vuelta management board. We sat down with company co-founder and co-CEO Nicolas Brigaud-Robert to discuss the move.
DEADLINE: Why did this move make sense for Playtime now?
NICOLAS BRIGAUD-ROBERT: We’ve been working on this for more than a year. There were times in that period when we didn’t have the right partners or the money wasn’t there, or we had the money but not the right partners, but this opportunity represented the perfect mix of both. The idea is to maintain our entrepreneurial spirits but to benefit from each other’s experience and clout to grow and to have access to a bigger variety of projects.
DEADLINE: What does it mean for your existing backers?
BRIGAUD-ROBERT: They are rolling over. They’re staying with us. We have two French backers: French bank BPI and a VC company Seventure Partners. The important thing is we maintain our autonomy. Our company will be owned by the new startup but we own that startup.
DEADLINE: What does it mean for your headcount and for your subsidiaries Film Constellation, Films Boutique and Be For Films?
BRIGAUD-ROBERT: There won’t be a significant change. We move from having passive investors to having a more active partnership. Everything below Playtime stays as was. It’s what’s above Playtime that changes.
DEADLINE: And you’re now acting as the central sales company for the Vuelta Group….
BRIGAUD-ROBERT: We learnt from the past that you can’t force companies to do things they don’t want to. We agreed on that. We want to work together without having ‘must carry’ deals. We are incentivized to work together. We all remember ventures like Indie Circle. The idea was for distribution companies to team up together with Celluloid Dreams as the central seller. It didn’t last because some people felt obliged to take on certain titles. And there wasn’t a central holding company. We don’t want to emulate that. Sales will be handled by Playtime as long as those titles make sense for Playtime and we also hold shares in SquareOne and Scanbox. Likewise, I won’t be forcing them to buy movies from me because it would be damaging a company that I own.
DEADLINE: What will it mean for your acquisitions and your slate?
BRIGAUD-ROBERT: In the next three-five years we’re looking to diversify our lineup in terms of nationality, budget and genre: we want to take on a few more European ‘tentpole’ titles and we want to do more scripted TV and our own production. By joining with others we respect we think we can do that.
The key word isn’t bigger but more diverse. We have had some big movies, but we need a few more either English or foreign-language. We had two films in Competition at Cannes this year, but we don’t have any at Venice. Maybe we could have two in Venice as well. Maybe we pick up two series a year rather than one.
DEADLINE: And you’ll achieve this through being able to put down bigger MGs and through your new distribution network…
BRIGAUD-ROBERT: That’s part of it. But the secret sauce is intel — shared intel. When you have knowledgeable partners and share information it’s valuable. We’re like each other’s agents. I was recently speaking to a U.S. agent about an English-language project and thought it may not be right for us but could work well for one of our partners so I connected them.
The big unknown for us is TV. We are keen to try to gap finance a series and work on more local TV.
DEADLINE: How does this move position you in France?
BRIGAUD-ROBERT: It makes things more open to us on the co-producing side, especially in TV. We’re starting a co-production with SquareOne right now on a remake of a Korean film. There is strong competition in this space in France but we want to try to be as early as we can on these projects.
DEADLINE: Is there any political headache given that it’s a U.S. private equity-backed company that will likely be looking to win European subsidies on its co-pros?
BRIGAUD-ROBERT: No. We’re controlling the assets of this company. It’s a group of likeminded European companies. This isn’t film Groupon. The trick is that we’ve known each other a long time and we’re all like-minded. Playtime has been a profitable company for 26 years. We could have continued on that track but this move speaks to our ambition.
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