Picture Perfect Federation formed in January after Patrick Wachsberger (left above) joined forces with Lionel Uzan and Pascal Breton of France’s Federation Entertainment, to focus on international co-productions and the development and production of premium television series for the US marketplace.
The team of Wachsberger, who most recently served as co-chairman of Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, and Breton and Uzan, respectively chairman and CEO of Federation Entertainment, brings together considerable expertise in production and finance, and will “operate in a manner that puts story first, creating solid partnerships with talent and producers around the world operating with the ability to be innovative and nimble”, according to the team.
With a strong line-up of hits to his name including La La Land and The Hunger Games, Wachsberger is following the now well-trodden path from cinema to television, having expressed for some time his desire to expand into other media. “After starting the original summit in 1993 and its ultimate sale to Lionsgate in 2012, I have been interested in creating content for not just the cinema but for all platforms,” he said. “I therefore could not find a better group to partner with than my friends at Federation who in a very short time have created an exciting and game-changing company.”
“Patrick Wachsberger has long been a game-changer in the market and we at Federation have also intensely disrupted the status quo by attracting and associating the best European talent to our independent studio,” Breton said, describing the new entity as “a major worldwide independent studio which strives to change the game and allow top US and European creative television talent to take control of their own product and success on the global market”.
In 1990 Breton created his own production company, Marathon, in association with Olivier Bremond. In 2006 after Olivier Bremond’s departure, Breton served as president of Marathon Group, where his hits included Babar and Saint-Tropez. He formed Federation in 2014, and launched it at that year’s MIPCOM, where he announced the company’s debut production, Netflix’s first French-language series, the political drama Marseille. Back then he described the company as “an industry game-changer, offering producers and showrunners unique partnership opportunities and offering programmers worldwide an unprecedented wealth of major creative talent.”
Based in Paris, Los Angeles and Rome, Federation Entertainment has quickly established itself as a leading independent European studio. The creation of Picture Perfect Federation enhances Federation’s growing business worldwide, with some 15 successful series in production in 12 countries. Federation US, meanwhile, has a slate of series for global audiences including the recently announced launch of the adaptation of The Banker’s Wife, the best-seller from Cristina Alger; Ibiza, a thriller created by Ryan Engle (Rampage) and director Jaume Collet Serra; and Peter Landesman’s American adaptation of Canal +’s number-one series Le Bureau Des Legendes (The Bureau), for which Federation is the distributor and co-producer with TOP, The Oligarchs Production. Wachsberger and Federation’s head of US television, Ashley Stern, will be based in Los Angeles representing the newly formed venture.
The Game Changers keynote from Pascal Breton and Patrick Wachsberger is on Tuesday, April 9 at 11.20 in the Debussy Theatre, as part of MIPTV’s focus on Country of Honour, France
This article originally appeared in the MIPTV 2019 Preview magazine, which you can read in full online, here!
