For Mediawan Rights’ deputy director of acquisitions Emmanuel Eckert, the CEE region represents “a land of opportunity” – but exactly how fruitful will depend on how his company’s first foray in the region, Serbian period drama Constantine’s Crossing, performs on the international stage.

Emmanuel Eckert

During SeriesMania earlier this year, Mediawan Rights announced it had picked up distribution rights to Serbian TV series Constantine’s Crossing. The acquisition didn’t only mark the first pick-up from Serbia by the distribution arm of the fast-expanding French media conglomerate, nor indeed the first from the Balkans, but its first from the entire Central and Eastern European (CEE) region.

For Emmanuel Eckert, deputy director of acquisitions at Mediawan Rights and the person responsible for negotiating the deal, Constantine’s Crossing was a personal milestone in his long search to find the right TV series for the global market from a region he sees as on the cusp of a major international breakthrough.

“This is the first CEE project for Mediawan,” says Eckert, a veteran of international coproductions in the TV drama series genre. Indeed, the former director of acquisitions at Lagardère Studios – before it was bought by Mediawan in 2020 – says his attempt to do the same thing almost a decade ago on behalf of Lagardère came to nothing. “We bought a show from Bulgaria, but it didn’t go well; the show stopped in the middle of shooting, so we had to forget about it.”

Constantine’s Crossing is now safely past the filming stage, having taken up studio space at Firefly Studios’ newly opened state-of-the-art studio complex in Serbia earlier this year. But it was the script that impressed Eckert and convinced him to pitch the project to his bosses at Mediawan Rights: “I read the bible, I read the first two scripts and they were very good,” he comments, adding: “That’s always what will make the difference. Good scripts can make a breakthrough.”

Eckert should know. The Frenchman who studied the classics, including ancient Greek text, describes himself as having learnt “to read and watch” and to have “a critical point of view”. He began his TV career as an intern at the French network M6, where he spent 10 years in the acquisitions department, before being put in charge of selections for TV series. “It was before TV series were trendy,” Eckert recalls.

“Then I spent five more years at M6 as a producer.” It was during this phase, as he explains it, “That I tried to start to do coproductions and to find new ways to buy, to produce.” But it was far from easy. “At that time coproduction was a bad word,” he says.

Constantine’s Crossing was shot in Belgrade earlier this year

Nevertheless, amid the failures there were some notable successes, not least two multi-million dollar Canadian-French coproductions: the fantasy action-adventure Highlander: The Series and the miniseries XIII: The Conspiracy, starring Stephen Dorff and Val Kilmer, broadcast by Canal+ in France (2008) and NBC in the US (2009). “It took two years of my life and was a huge TV series,” remembers Eckert of XIII.

By this measure, Constantine’s Crossing has a high threshold to pass to become the sort of breakthrough TV hit Eckert is used to, but when describing the story behind the pick-up, one senses that the pieces have fallen into place auspiciously for the acquisitions exec.

The 10×52’ drama is based on the 2014 Serbian-language Second World War novel by Dejan Stojiljković and was part of an IP-based slate being developed by Firefly Studios’ sister company Firefly Productions, a prodco cofounded by Ivana Miković in 2020. At the same time Miković was working on plans for the major studio complex close to Belgrade, where Constantine’s Crossing was eventually shot this year. But it was through the coproducer, Telekom Serbia, that Eckert was first introduced to the project.

“I don’t remember exactly at one point we started talking about Constantine, but in Firefly’s line-up, there were many, many shows they wanted to produce for the next year. And then this one,” he recalls.

At the time, Constantine’s Crossing stood out, according to Eckert, because of the storyline. “As distributors we are always looking for investigations or cop stories. Everybody around the world knows the rules: there is a body at the beginning; one or two cops investigating, and at the end, you find the murderer. So, it’s very easy to understand. But when you are a new country, you will be compared to some very classical TV series. That’s the tricky point. So, the other way is to find some very specific genre, and so the horror/fantastical genre can be something interesting. Constantine’s Crossing is very weird, very different and therefore very interesting.”

Constantine’s Crossing, an Indiana Jones-style series in which Nazis search for Christian artefacts

The 10×52’ supernatural World War II drama is a lavish Indiana Jones-style period series in which Nazis search for Christian artefacts with magical powers. But, for Eckert, its ‘interesting’ quality did not make it any easier to sell to his bosses: “A Serbian show about World War II, a period drama with a vampire and a werewolf. They said: no, no, never,” he reveals. “So I said okay, I understand, but please read the scripts.”

Although the Mediawan Rights team divides up acquisitions according to territories – Eckert is responsible for CEE, as well as Benelux, Nordics, Canada and Africa – the exec says: “We all discuss the projects.”

Valérie Vleeschhouwer

Indeed, at SeriesMania in Lille when the company announced the pick-up it was Valérie Vleeschhouwer, MD of Mediawan Rights, who spoke of the TV series’ “unique narrative” and of the show having “the necessary assets to persuade the international market.” Vleeschhouwer also noted: “The acquisition of Constantine’s Crossing reinforces our commitment to building a development strategy worldwide and seizing this opportunity in Eastern Europe.”

So what of this opportunity in the CEE?

“I think they are the most western territories that are still not explored but with a lot of possibilities,” comments Eckert. “They have beautiful landscapes, very good technicians, they want to improve themselves, they want to learn and they want to attract some good shoots. And they are doing a lot of tax incentives in each territory.”

In fact, Eckert describes the region as “a new land of opportunity in Europe. In Germany, in France, in UK, in Spain, it’s very expensive to produce,” he says. “Even if Spain is doing a lot of very good tax rebates, we still need to find other ways, new territories, new stories.”

There’s nothing new about Eckert’s time in the CEE region, though up to now it’s been more marked by disappointments than successes. Aside from the failed Bulgarian project, about five years ago, he made an offer on Polish crime thriller, Pleasure Principle, produced by Apple Film Production, but was pipped to the post by Germany’s Beta Film.

Constantine’s Crossing is ‘very weird, very different’, says Eckert

“My friends from Beta Film were already there, of course, because they had been for many years,” he concedes, adding that the race is now on to see which, if either, of these two major European rivals will prove to have the breakthrough hit from the CEE, given Beta also picked up international rights to Serbian crime thriller Operation Sabre earlier this year.

“That’s very interesting, because two very big players in Europe are investing at least some time into those countries. Okay, we are there, Beta is there and we are both waiting for the big breakthrough,” comments Eckert. “I don’t know which one will be the breakthrough. But yes, we are there too.”

With that in mind, Eckert is keen to deepen relationships with companies across the CEE region. Alongside Firefly and Telekom Serbia, he says they include Apple Film Company in Poland, Film.UA in Ukraine, Zolba Production in Estonia, Two Rivers in Serbia, Contrast Film and Concept Studio in Bulgaria, and DE Films in Romania, “among many others.”

But just how much these relationships will come to fruition will no doubt depend on how Constantine’s Crossing performs on the global market. Eckert is open about his desire to sell it to a “local or a global streamer” and says it will likely launch to the market at Mipcom in the autumn. “I would say that if Constantine is a success, that will help a lot,” says Eckert. “I will be able to tell the management, we can do some very good stuff in this region.”