Universal Studio Group Partners With ‘Cooking With The Stars’ Producer South Shore, Talks Global Economic Crisis & “Talent Over Territory”
Two of Universal Studio Group’s TV divisions have struck a development deal with South Shore, the Cooking with the Stars producer run by former Twofour bosses Melanie Leach and Andrew Mackenzie.
The deal was unveiled at Content London this afternoon and will see South Shore co-develop and co-produce a minimum of three unscripted projects of scale for the international market with Universal Television Alternative Studio (UTAS) and Universal International Studios (UIS). The focus will be on social experiments, reality and competition formats.
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South Shore will have access to Universal’s transatlantic resources including talent and IP as the pair seek a non-scripted pipeline.
“We’ve enjoyed developing recent projects with the UTAS & UIS teams and we’re thrilled to be working on these three projects with them,” said Leach and Mackenzie.
The pair, who ran Twofour for several years, launched ITV Studios-backed South Shore in 2019 and the company has since produced the likes of BBC One’s Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams, ITV’s Cooking with the Stars and Channel 4 property format Selling Super Prime.
The news comes in the week that UIS signed an exclusive deal with Home Team, the scripted outfit run by The End of the F***ing World exec Dominic Buchanan and Mogul Mowgli’s Bennett McGhee.
UTAS’ UK version of Jimmy Fallon’s That’s My Jam for the BBC is due to air later this year, meanwhile, with Mo Gilligan hosting and Monkey co-producing. pearle
The news was unveiled at Content London where Universal execs including Pearlena Igbokwe were speaking and Universal Television President Erin Underhill revealed Amazon is developing Universal’s adaptation of E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars.
Speaking through Universal’s strategy, Igbokwe rejected the notion that the global macroeconomic crisis will have a major impact on the company. Earlier this week, Showtime President Entertainment Jana Winograde said “belt tightening is coming,” while Warner Bros. Television Studios Chairwoman Channing Dungey posited that “people are taking a look at the costs of production more.”
“So far we haven’t seen [the crisis’ impact],” said Igbokwe. “And a show doesn’t have to cost $20M per episode to be great – it can cost $2.8M to be great.”
Elsewhere, Beatrice Springborn, Universal Content Productions and Universal International Studios President, said the outfit will continue to seek talent tie-ups globally and is taking a “talent over territory” approach such as with Parallels creator Quoc Dang Tran.
“With Quoc we didn’t think ‘We want someone in France,’ we thought ‘He’s an amazing writer who can do genre and we know we can sell him around the world’,” said Springborn.
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