International Insider: Euro Studio Vuelta Emerges; Karlovy Vary Embraces Vachon; Greenbird Flies With STV
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Come one, come all, Insiders. Jesse Whittock back again this week to take you through the past week in international film and TV. Let’s get started. If you’re not already subscribed, click here and make that right.
Euro Studio Vuelta Emerges
Indie shake-up: There’s a new kid in town. Yesterday, Andreas broke the news of Europe’s latest consolidation player: Vuelta Group. Led by French media vet Jerome Levy, the company has launched through the acquisitions of France’s Playtime Group, Germany’s SquareOne and Nordic producer-distributor Scanbox. More companies are expected to join the club, as the indie film sector welcomes a new heavyweight to rival the likes of Leonine, Mediawan and Asacha Media, who have all emerged as major presences in recent years. Also in the European indie sector are the established TV players such as Banijay and Fremantle. Each of Vuelta’s acquisitions are distributors who’ve moved into financing and production as the market evolves. Levy said the company, helmed in Dublin for tax reasons, had an “ambitious plan” to “help the European industry create its own stories and distribute them internationally.” You can read full details of the venture and an exclusive interview with Levy and Chief Content Officer David Atlan Jackson here.
More from Deadline
Why they’re in: Andreas’ reporting also included interviews with the three execs who’ve sold to Vuelta: SquareOne’s Al Munteanu, Scanbox boss Thor Sigurjonsson and Playtime’s Nicolas Brigaud-Robert (who runs the French biz with Sebastien Beffa). All three were united on the benefits: the smarts of distributors who’ve morphed into producers, the security of scale as a group, and the ability to better co-produce, especially as more film companies push into the TV space. It’s an intriguing development for the European market, especially with the ad market contracting and global streamers more cautious over investment as they attempt to correct their business models. Keep checking in to Deadline for more on Vuelta, which roughly translates into English as ‘movement.’ There’s certainly plenty of that afoot.
Karlovy Vary Vaults With Vachon
Honorable mention: Zac Ntim has been in Czechia this week and had this report…Veteran indie producer Christine Vachon passed through the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in Czechia this week, where she was a guest of honor, though curiously, she didn’t receive a physical award like actors Alicia Vikander and Ewan McGregor, who were also in town. Vachon was instead feted with a private dinner at Karlovy Vary’s Grandhotel Pupp hotel, attended by local industry, press, and some of her more recent collaborators, including Celine Song (Past Lives) and Clara McGregor (You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder). While in town, Vachon also chaired a packed-out masterclass alongside Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr. If you’ve ever seen Vachon speak in person, you’ll know she’s an impressive force, and she was in fine form with our Co-Editor-In-Chief as they rattled through her career, digging into specific titles such as the groundbreaking 1999 drama Boys Don’t Cry, which she said was originally set under a different name. “The original title was Take it Like a Man, and when the movie was in post-production, we got a cease-and-desist letter. I can’t even remember from who, but there was a company that was making Boy George’s memoir Take it Like a Man into a movie,” Vachon said. “They had copyrighted the title so we couldn’t use it. Kim was devastated. Finally, we came up with Boys Don’t Cry. At the time, we all thought it was a comedown, and now I can’t imagine the movie being called anything else.” Concluding the session, Vachon, whose credits include Carol, First Reformed and Zola, said she had one project left that she would like to complete during her career. “I really want to do something about the ’80s in New York. I feel like everything I’ve seen about that period hasn’t gotten it right,” she said. “The ’80s bleeding into the ’90s, that period in New York City which was a time of extraordinary collision of art and music and fashion and cinema, but also the time of the AIDS crisis. I just haven’t found a good story.” You can see the full Vachon masterclass here.
“AI’s not going anywhere”: Elsewhere this week in Karlovy Vary, the Eastern Promises industry section kicked into gear, with experts from across the industry offering their insights on local and global trends. One of the central topics was, of course, Artificial Intelligence. “We have a new player in town, and it’s not going anywhere,” veteran creative consultant Tatjana Samopjan said, summarizing the position of AI in our lives. Samopjan was joined on the AI panel by Gerhard Maier, Program Director and co-founder of Seriencamp, and Julia Schafdecker, attorney at SKW Schwarz. The festival also handed out its first award of the year. Emerging Danish director Amalie-Maria Nielsen was the first recipient of a new Los Angeles-based scholarship created by Karlovy Vary in collaboration with talent agency UTA and management company Range Media Partners. Karlovy Vary ends Saturday with a screening of the Woody Harrelson-starrer Champions. The winner of the festival’s Crystal Globe will also be revealed. Competition titles include Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms (read Damon Wise’s review here) and The Hypnosis, starring The Worst Person in The World breakout Herbert Nordrum.
Greenbird Flies With STV
New nest: Though the UK’s biggest indie production group, All3Media, is on the block, there hasn’t been much in the way of major M&A in the country’s TV sector this year. That changed yesterday, when Scottish network STV confirmed a story Max and I broke the day before that it was set to acquire indie production incubator Greenbird Media. STV, which already has its own studios division, wants to be the biggest independent producer in the UK’s nations and regions — that’s TV speak for anywhere that isn’t London. The deal, confirmed by a stock market announcement, for an initial £21.4M ($25.2M) goes a long way to achieving that goal — it jumps from investments in nine production entities to 24 and adds bases all over the UK, and gives it majority stakes in cash-spinning producers such as Tuesday’s Child Television and Crackit Productions. Greenbird’s innovative ‘network’ model is based in London, however, with many companies working out of its offices, sharing back-end facilities and using Greenbird founders Jamie Munro and Stewart Mullin as sounding boards for strategic and financial matters. Some have sold as little as 5% equity to Greenbird, while other stakes are much more than that. It’s all very flexible and collegiate. It’ll take more smart moves for STV to achieve its lofty goals, but this deal isn’t a bad way to move forwards.
“Transformative”: I jumped on the phone with STV CEO Simon Pitts following the deal to dig into the strategic plan behind the deal. He called the acquisition “transformational” for production arm STV Studios, adding it “accelerates revenues and profit away from traditional advertising into a key growth area of global content ownership.” Read the full interview here.
Spacey Trial – The Week’s Big Moments
Accusers take the stand: Kevin Spacey’s UK trial began properly this week, with the two-time Oscar winner in the dock accused of 12 offences, including sexual assaults. Four men are accusing Spacey (who’s being tried under his real name of Kevin Spacey Fowler) and there have been a number of explosive testimonies already. We have heard one claim in a police interview shown in the Southwark Crown Court that Spacey grabbed him “so hard [he] almost came off the road” when driving the Hollywood star, who was living in the UK time and heavily involved in London’s theater scene. Another said he had decided to put his allegations “in a box” before finally coming forwards because Spacey was seen as a “golden boy.” Spacey’s lawyer has said the jurors will hear “many damned lies” over the course of the four-week trial and Spacey, who was granted bails earlier this year, strenuously denies all the charges. The court is not in session today. There’s some way to go before the trial reaches jury deliberations but we’ll be tracking the story all the way. For more on Spacey and the trial, read on.
Senior Women Shortfall
Sixth Cut runs deep: The latest report from UK diversity data monitor Diamond had a depressingly familiar ring to it this week. Damning stats showed that the number of women in senior roles in the TV biz has dropped alarmingly since the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, the proportion of women has dropped every year for the past four to 45.4%. Male representation has, conversely, remained stable. The Creative Diversity Network’s Sixth Cut report said this suggested fewer men left the industry during Covid and women had not regained senior posts after the pandemic. Other blows included female writers making up less than one-third of the total and women directors just a quarter. Only as heads of production and commissioning editors (usually a middle-management level role) did women over-index. There was marginally better news in areas such as Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic representation, which showed some growth at senior level, with overall off-screen contributions shooting up to a level almost on par with the national average. After years of failure, that should provide the UK industry with some positivity. More on Sixth Cut here.
The Essentials
🌶️ Hot One: Nadia Parkes will lead scary BBC drama Kidnapped (working title).
🌶️ Another One: Asa Butterfield and Cora Kirk return to star in British holiday film Your Christmas Or Mine 2 for Prime Video.
🌶️ A third: Prime Video ordered three Latin American versions of Temptation Island.
⛺ Festival: Riz Ahmed will be feted at the 76th Locarno Film Festival next month.
⛺ More festivals: The scaled-down Edinburgh International Film Festival unveiled its line-up.
📽️ Empire in administration: UK cinema chain ceased trading today, as Andreas revealed.
🕸️ Spinning a Web: After Squid Game and Parasite, webtoons are the latest Korean export, reported Liz Shackleton.
🤝 Done deal: Boiling Point producer Ascendant Fox tied with BBC Studios and hired Bank of Dave commissioner Hannah Perks.
📝 Where there’s a will: The late Silvio Berlusconi left the keys to his kingdom to his eldest children.
🏪 New store: AMC Networks International launched a new UK and EMEA content group.
🗣️ Taormina Studio: Mel sat down with ultra popular TikToker Khaby Lame.
💃 Barbie: The Philippines considered following Vietnam in banning the feature over a controversial South China Sea scene.
🍿 Box office: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny clocked soft $130M globally, per Nancy’s analysis.
🥾 Reboot: Brit presenters Ant and Dec are remaking the iconic UK kids drama that made them famous, Byker Grove.
📺 Trailer: For Weasley twins travel series Fantastic Friends season 2.
And finally… RIP to Hong Kong singer-songwriter Coco Lee, who was the first Chinese-American to perform at the Oscars. She passed age 48.
Zac Ntim contributed to this week’s Insider.
Best of Deadline
2023 Premiere Dates For New & Returning Series On Broadcast, Cable & Streaming
Alan Arkin: Photos From His Award-Winning Work On Stage, On TV And In Film
Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2023: Photo Gallery & Obituaries
Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
