Story House tells new tales

Transatlantic factual producer Story House Productions is using its experience in international coproductions to push into fiction, with a TV movie and teen drama already in development.

Story House has previously worked with channels including National Geographic International, Investigation Discovery and Smithsonian Channel, which is currently airing Forensics First, a coproduction with the UK’s Parthenon Entertainment.

And with offices in Berlin and Munich in Germany and Washington DC in the US, coupled with a presence in Canada for the past three years, Story House co-president Andreas Gutzeit sees fiction as “the next frontier.”

Its first scripted projects include Open Desert (1×90′), an English-language TV movie coproduced with Meinwerk Film Produktion for Germany’s ProSieben. The story follows a woman who finds herself stranded in the desert and facing a battle to survive.

Financing is due to be completed this summer with production set to start by the end of this year. Talks are also ongoing with prospective distributors.

Story House is also developing a 60×30′ teen drama with an undisclosed German partner that will be filmed in Canada to take advantage of the country’s tax credit scheme – while it lasts. No broadcasters are currently attached, though it is likely to be shopped to US cable networks.

Gutzeit told C21: “We’ve done a lot of high-end drama docs so we understand story and dramatic production. What we’re bringing to the table is the international expertise and the network of potential partners that could come into projects.

“We also understand how the international market works and we realise for a project out of Germany to be saleable, it has to be shot in English. It can still have German talent associated but the production language and set-up needs to be international in scope.

“We’re looking for opportunities for great scripted opportunities in the US, Germany and coproductions in Canada. TV drama series is where the international coproduction model will be used more and more, and we will be there.”

Other fiction projects lined up at Story House include Verita, a theatrical movie to be filmed in 2013, and Scratch (1×90′), which is intended to be a direct-to-VoD or -DVD release.

Gutzeit added: “A story’s a story. That’s what we live and breathe and we think, in the long run, international coproductions will be more requested and more needed on the fiction side because things are getting more expensive. More international partners will be coming together. That’s what we practiced for over a decade on the non-scripted side and now it’s on to the next frontier.”