The fledging TV production arm of Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp has suffered a 90% fall in third-quarter revenue after its flagship series Transporter was put on hold.
Transporter
The division earned revenue of €200,000 (US$263,000m) in the three months to December 2011, compared with €2m for the same period in the previous financial year.
The loss contributed to EuropaCorp posting an overall Q3 revenue fall of 58.2% year-on-year to €22.7m, which was also partly attributed to reduced income from its French cinema operation.
“The TV series segment still did not generate any significant revenue over the quarter due to major projects being deferred (in particular Transporter – The Series, for which shooting was halted and then postponed due to an injury to the lead actor),” EuropaCorp said in a statement.
Transporter is a French-Canada coproduction from Atlantique Productions and QVF. HBO/Cinemax, M6 (France), HBO Canada and RTL (Germany) are onboard the project, which has also been sold to Fox Australia, Russia’s Central Partnership, and Antena 3 in Spain, among others.
Shooting on the US$43m series began last summer but was put on hold when actor Chris Vance was injured on set in October.
Behind the scenes, the production has also struggled to retain a showrunner, as first Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mulli left the production, while their replacement, The Tudors producer Steve Shill, departed last month.
There are still five episodes of the 12-episode series left to film, with shooting scheduled to restart this spring.
In their financial statement, EuropaCorp added that production had begun on a second season of conspiracy thriller series XIII for Canal+.
EuropaCorp established its television production business in 2010.
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