Joerg Winger, co-creator of the Deutschland 83 trilogy, tells C21 how the shows changed things and about setting up his own company, Big Window Productions, during a pandemic.
Joerg Winger
You recently launched Big Window Productions as part of UFA Fiction. Is now a good time to launch a production company?
Well, it’s a good time to be in development, right? That’s the one thing you can really do well at the moment. And for me, this is a good time because it fits into my next stage of my life as a writer/producer. It’s a good fit because I can do what I love most, which is writing and producing, with my own small unit that’s very focused with my own brand. That’s what I wanted to do next.
I had a few offers from other players and those were also very tempting. But in the end, I have very longstanding and trusting relationships with the people at UFA and Fremantle, so it made sense. I like this feeling of being a start-up feeling with a big player so the back office is taken care of.
What does being part of UFA and Fremantle mean on a global scale?
In terms of tradecraft, it’s good to have all those ears and eyes on the ground in all the territories and to have people like [Fremantle’s exec VP of global drama] Christian Vesper and [director of global drama] Sarah Doole, so there’s a lot of exchange of information. That’s one thing that’s very useful because our business is all about timing. You could have a great show and you wouldn’t be able to sell it one year but you would be able to sell it the next year.
One of the projects where we have a development deal with France Télévisions is Ouija, which I’m doing with Thomas Bourguignon at Kwai in Paris; he’s also part of the Fremantle family. So, there are some great people in the Fremantle family who I plan to coproduce with.
What is the production strategy at Big Window?
Even though the streamers are very attractive to work with, the other model that I still find attractive is bi-national coproduction. French/German [with Ouija] or it could be British/German or American/German. For us there’s always going to be a German angle. If you get two broadcasters that are aligned and share the same vision, that’s a really interesting model for us.
In terms of content, it’s really shows that are inspiring to my team and myself, and that will usually have some kind of political element. We’re not interested in pure entertainment. I started out as a journalist so I have a bias towards stories that are based on real life, or inspired by real life.
Deutschland 89 is the final instalment in the UFA Fiction trilogy
We’re lucky because the success of the Deutschland series has opened the doors for us internationally so we can pitch not only in Germany, but also in the UK, France and the US. So, it’s a much bigger playing field. And the arrival of the streamers has brought so much competition on the broadcasting side. For us, we can focus on the projects we really love and care about and then we trust there will be someone out there who will love it as much as we do.
In terms of the broader industry, how do you see the impact of the pandemic?
In Germany specifically, the situation is good. We have already resumed shooting a few months ago. And in some cases, we never stopped shooting. But it’s a learning curve. We have learned a lot about how to design a set and the processes to minimise the risks of any kind of outbreak. It’s a very steep learning curve. And, knock on wood, we hope we don’t get any major outbreak here.
We will get better and better at producing more and more complex shows within the world of Covid before we find the silver bullet. It’s probably going to take us another year, probably next summer we’ll be through with this. But what do I know?
You have a show on your development late called Der Dschungel (The Jungle) which you’re doing with TNT Serie in Germany. It’s about a Covid-19 outbreak at a meat factory. How will you cover that subject?
You have to either stay clear of the subject or throw yourself into the middle of it. But this is not going to be a Covid show, it’s going to be a character-driven show about the meat industry. So, it’s going to be about people in a system.
Institutional insanity is one of my favourite topics, and when you look at the meat industry, you have a great example. It’s something that is basically built on the greed of the consumers, greed for cheap sausages. And people like to look away from what’s happening behind the scenes. But in this instance, the coronavirus shed light on something that people were not willing to look at.
