Bavaria buys Story House in factual push

German production group Bavaria Film has acquired local prodco Story House as it expands into the factual and factual entertainment genres.

Christian Franckenstein

Bavaria Film will take full ownership of the Story House Group, which comprises Story House Pictures and Story House Productions.

Story House was founded by Carsten Oblaender, Andreas Gutzeit and Jens Afflerbach in 1999 and become one of Germany’s leading factual and fact ent producers.

Its long-running series include Terra X – A Day in… and The Great Food Report for public broadcaster ZDF, as well as Galileo Plus (ProSieben), Reeperbahn privat! (RTLzwei), Trucker Babes (Kabel eins) and King of Trucks (DMAX).

In the scripted space, Story House Pictures has produced the drama series Dignity for Joyn, HBO and Amazon Prime in Latin America. It is currently making premium drama series Sisi for RTL and Beta.

Christian Franckenstein, CEO of Bavaria Film, said: “The German production market is characterised by an ongoing wave of consolidation. With this takeover, Bavaria Film is also staking a claim as an active participant in this consolidation process.

“We are doing everything we can to maintain our market position as one of the top five production houses in Germany. The expansion of our portfolio to include the growing genres of documentary and docutainment should make us even more attractive as a content provider for our clients, broadcasters and platforms.”