MIPCOM CANNES brings together in Cannes the most influential buyers, commissioners, producers, development executives and distributors from the global kids TV industry. The first of four Media Mastermind Keynotes was from Amazon MGM Studios’ James Farrell and Yoshimoto Kogyo’s Akihiko Okamoto
‘Producers poured their creativity into it’
It can be said that comedy doesn’t always travel well but that’s not the case for Amazon MGM Studios’ LOL: Last One Laughing, which has now sold to more than 20 territories and counting.
At yesterday’s Media Mastermind Keynote on International Franchises & Originals Strategy, Amazon MGM Studios’ head of international originals James Farrell and Yoshimoto Kogyo’s president & representative director Akihiko Okamoto laid out how flexibility and localisation propelled the original Japanese comedy show, called Documental, into becoming a global format success.
The story started in 2015 when Farrell, then Amazon Prime Video’s content lead in Japan, was looking for a big comedy variety show to turbocharge Prime’s entry into the territory and the show has become a cornerstone of Amazon Prime Video’s global original offering.
According to Okamoto, the secret ingredients were the simplicity of Hitoshi Matsumoto’s original idea and “all the producers around the world who, thanks to Amazon, really poured their creativity into it to make it local, and a local success”.
Farrell agreed that localisation and cultural specificity were key, pointing to season three of the French version as the “magnum opus” of casting, attracting TV stars, cinema auteurs, top comedians and YouTubers. ‘It adapts itself to a local sense of humour,” he said.
‘It’s storytelling par excellence’
AI technology has allowed a production team to recreate the voice of the late polar explorer Ernest Shackleton from a few sample recordings. Thanks to AI, Shackleton’s voice will narrate travel diaries he and his team wrote about the dangerous rescue of his crew after his ship Endurance ran aground and collapsed.
All3Media CEO Jane Turton shared the fascinating development as part of a MIPCOM C-Suite conversation with Variety’s co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton. Turton described the new documentary Endurance as “phenomenal”. It was made by producers including the company’s Little Dot Studios, who went on their own adventure trying to rediscover the ship and original footage of the 1914 journey which was then updated and colourised.
Turton was speaking about what drives growth at the content giant, recently acquired by US private equity giant RedBird IMI. “It’s brilliant storytelling,” Turton said. “It is a story of extraordinary human endeavour – they all came back alive – the finding of the ship and the application of some very clever tech. It’s storytelling par excellence.”
The project, under the National Geographic Films banner, will premiere on Disney+ in November.
‘We’re seeing a lot of activity around co-productions’
Chair and CEO of the Warner Bros. Television Group (WBTVG), Channing Dungey, used her Media Mastermind Keynote at MIPCOM CANNES to say that the Hollywood company is more open than it has ever been to international co-production.
Historically, WBTVG has tended to avoid production partnerships with third parties. But Dungey said: “It’s harder than ever to get great ideas to the screen, so we’re seeing a lot of activity in the market around co-productions. For us, it’s about figuring out how we put these things together. But we’re very excited by the possibility of producing internationally and working with other companies.”
While some WBTVG shows, such as drama series The Penguin, are clearly designed for Warner Bros. Discovery streaming platform Max, Dungey also reaffirmed that her studio is keen to work with a wide range of customers.
“Max is a huge priority for us and it’s a big win when we produce a show that lands and resonates there. But we also produce for all the US broadcast networks. We’re the only studio right now that has three new series on three different broadcast networks. We’re doing Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage for CBS, Brilliant Minds for NBC and Rescue Hi-Surf for Fox.”
‘The demand for entertainment is not going away’
SONY Pictures Entertainment (SPE) chairman and CEO Tony Vinciquerra was honoured with the Variety Vanguard Award at MIPCOM CANNES.
He used his Media Mastermind Keynote to explain his no-nonsense approach to turning the ailing company around after he joined in 2017.
“I made three key moves,” he said. “The first was to get rid of most of our 110 cable networks. There are only three countries where we have cable networks now: Spain, Latin America and India. In the rest of the world, you don’t want to have cable networks.”
The second move was to position SPE as a content supplier to global streamers, rather than a competitor. “It was obvious to me that launching another general-entertainment streaming service would not be appropriate for us. But I knew that all of these services were going to be absolutely fighting to the death for subscribers, so they needed product. And we had a lot of creators sitting on our bench…”
The final move was to take a more intuitive approach to streaming’s potential: “We bought an anime company called Funimation, which had a few hundred thousand subscribers. We built that up to 3.5 million, then bought Crunchyroll and merged them. Now we have over 15 million subscribers and a profitable business.”
Garcelle Beauvais hits the G-spot
Actor, TV host, producer and author Garcelle Beauvais brought some Hollywood star power to the 13th Women in Global Entertainment Power Lunch, hosted by A&E Media Group in partnership with The Hollywood Reporter. The event was focused on women finding their G-spot, or whatever helps them to find their voice.
The Haitian-born Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills star talked about the need for diversity in every room. “I’m hoping we’ll have our first female president soon,” she said to applause from the audience.
Beauvais, who met US vice-president Kamala Harris in Washington DC, added: “She really wanted to reach the Black community and talk about how she’s helped and how she’s opening doors. She’s fantastic.”
Nekesa Mumbi Moody, co-editor-in-chief of The Hollywood Reporter, conducted the lunch Q&A with Beauvais. She asked about the false comments by Donald Trump about Haitian immigrants eating pets.
“When I first heard him saying that, I was shocked and I was disappointed,” Beauvais replied. “It was not only disrespectful and hurtful in all the ways you can imagine, but I also thought about all his supporters going after Haitian people… And it’s not true.”
She then shared a social-media video with a response to the allegations, which garnered 1.1 million views in a matter of seconds. “We have to use our voice,” she added.
Evan Shapiro urges industry to get radical
MIPCOM CANNES’ first-ever Innovation Lab got off to a flying start with a keynote by media cartographer and industry thought leader Evan Shapiro.
In the session on How To Thrive In The Media’s User-Centric Era, he declared that the media industry has failed to deliver on its promise of personalisation and seamless user experience.
“We promised consumers a joy-filled, friction-free system but we gave them the opposite,” he said. “There are so many hoops to jump through that it has created frustration among consumers and that has ramifications.”
The biggest outcome, said Shapiro, is that media companies are “getting crushed by the huge data pools controlled by Google, Amazon and Meta. While media companies have set up walled gardens, 60% of the world’s advertising now goes to these three companies because they have the best mousetraps for capturing data. Meta sells almost the same amount of ads as all of the traditional TV on the planet.”
Failure to address this “will put everything that media companies have built at risk. If they want to compete with big tech for existing revenues and new money, like shopping via the TV, they need to embrace a radical collaboration model around data.”
Growth in demand for Spanish content
With Spain in high profile at MIPCOM CANNES this week, a report from ICEX and Parrot Analytics, presented at the market, has revealed that Spain-originated content will generate $1.4bn (€1.3bn) in global revenue in 2024 as demand grows across key regions around the world.
The entertainment analytics company presented data showing that Spain-originated content has generated an estimated $5.1bn in global streaming revenue over the past four years. The report points to the success of Netflix originals including Money Heist (La Casa De Papel) and Elite, which has paved the way for a new wave of content such as Amazon’s show Red Queen, AppleTV+ co-production series Land of Women and Netflix movie Nowhere, all of which have achieved international success.
According to Parrot Analytics’ year-on-year growth data from 2023 to 2024, the global demand for Spain-originated content has seen exponential growth across all regions, for example with UCAN up 40%, LatAm up 56% a, Africa up 67% and Asia up 100%.
The data also shows a 22% increase in the availability of Spanish series and films on major global streaming platforms since 2021, reflecting the increasing investment in Spain-originated content by these platforms.
Decolonisation Of Africa story ‘still resonates’
Delegates were given a sneak preview at MIPCOM CANNES of documentary series The Decolonisation Of Africa. Presented by Accelerate TV, the series is the first Nigerian production to be given the screening treatment at the market.
Colette Otushesho, CEO of Accelerate TV and executive producer, said the documentary is the first to dissect the decolonisation period from an African perspective. Across six episodes, it will explore the withdrawal of the British, French and Portuguese, challenging outdated global perceptions and historical distortions.
“I don’t think we really understood the journey we were embarking on when we started, and the truths that would come out,” Otushesho said. “Not everything is pretty, but the series really speaks to the struggles of decolonisation, the wins, the losses and so on.”
Key to the project has been the energetic participation of former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, now 87, who provided his own invaluable perspective and unlocked access to other leading players.
“We’ve spoken to a lot of people in the positions of power at the time – ex-presidents, ex-foreign ministers, etc,” Otushesho said. “A lot are in their 80s and 90s, and we’ve lost a couple since we started filming, so from a historical point of view, this series has real significance.”
World premiere of Ena: La Reina Victoria Eugenia
Stars walked the red carpet to the MIPCOM CANNES opening night party after the world premiere TV screening of an episode of Ena: La Reina Victoria Eugenia. The original six-part series is based on Pilar Eyre’s historical fiction novel about British woman Victoria Eugenia of Battenberg, known to most as Ena, who became Queen of Spain. She is played by Kimberley Tell and her husband King Alfonso XIII is played by Joan Amargós. The actors were among the stars in Cannes for the event. The series is co-produced by RTVE with Ena La Serie AIE, La Cometa TV and Zona App.
Edited by SARAH KOVANDZICH for the MIPCOM DAILY NEWS TEAM on OCTOBER 21, 2024
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