Studio 1's Adrian Woolfe hopes to strike Lucky 13
Studio 1 co-founder Adrian Woolfe is back and hoping for another big hit as he prepares to launch Lucky 13 on ABC in the US – but could AI have created the format for him?
Lucky 13 is presented by Shaquille O’Neil and Gina Rodriguez
It’s nice to meet somebody who’s got a show away in this climate. Tell us about the origins of Lucky 13.
It’s one of those things where – it’s fantastic, I’m delighted – but it’s taken a while to get here.
It’s a pre-Covid baby, it was 2019 that we started, but the way I describe it it’s been 25 years in the making because it shares a lot of its DNA with Millionaire which I oversaw the launch of and was very involved in its international roll out. Slice me open and you’ll still find Millionaire in my blood.
Lucky 13, even though the gameplay itself is very different, shares a lot of the DNA. With Millionaire the beauty was the simplicity – 15 multiple choice questions, three lifelines. That’s the format. It’s really simple, and then execution is nine tenths of it.
I think these days when I look at game and quiz shows on many occasions producers over-complicate the formats. They do it because if you go in and pitch something as simple as Millionaire you won’t get it away – Millionaire took three years and every broadcaster turning it down. Lucky 13 has taken five years, and lots of broadcasters turning it down, because of its simplicity. The format is to win $1m you answer 13 true or false questions, and the twist is to win the money you have to know what you know and also what you don’t know, which questions you got wrong. If I was to pitch that to you you’d think what am I going to see for an hour? You’ve got to bring it to life? And that’s what happened.
How did you bring it to life?
I started pitching it in 2019. Didn’t get any bites. Covid came along, and then it was the beginning of last year that I decided that if I was to stand any chance of getting the show away I needed to bring it to life. So we went out and we raised some significant money and made pilots, basically a broadcast standard pilot. I wanted to put all the production values into it because I wanted to give myself the very best shot. We also attached Kevin Bacon to the project. The deal we’ve got with ABC is very exciting and we’ve been filming in Vegas ahead of a launch next Thursday.
People trying to get their own shows away will be interested in the funding you got for that development – where from, how much?
Without going into specifics on the numbers, I went out into the market and talked to investors who understand this world in this space. And they bought into the potential opportunity of the value of the format and the IP. Having been on that journey once, I think that there is significant opportunity with Lucky 13 on screen and off.
It was backed by individuals who had been partners at a private equity firm that was very involved in media investment so understand the space. It’s a sophisticated investor rather than dumb money. They’ve bought into the format and the experience behind it.
Lucky 13 was a long time in development for Studio 1 co-founder Adrian Woolfe
Is this the game now?
Money and commissions are scarce. That’s the reality. When we went out to pitch this the market was tough.
Particularly here in the UK. In the ideal world we would have been producing this in the UK first from a rights position. It’s the holy grail if you can do those deals. But they’re impossible to do at the moment. We’ve seen really talented, really experienced producers go out of business because the business just isn’t there. It’s a really tough climate that we’re operating in. I guess one of the advantages, if you can call it that to some degree, is because I’ve been around so long and because of the nature of what I did when I was running Celador. I still enjoy relationships with international broadcasters across multiple countries.
Studio One as a business is not simply a production company – it’s production and distribution and licensing, even though at the moment we’re tiny. The foundations are there in the background and it’s been a matter of waiting until the first format launches and then hopefully we can put all of those things onto into practice. Over the last four years since launch on the business I was looking at launching a show in Greece, I was looking at launching the show in Germany, because it’s so hard to get things away.
A US commission is great obviously but most producers are paid fees for making the show. That model was not going to work for us if we were to be able to be able to unlock the value in the IP, which is necessary to give returns to investors and everything else. To realise the vision it was essential that we be able to control global distribution rights and also ancillary rights in the US as well. Being able to do that kind of deal with an American network is not a normal kind of deal.
So how is the deal structured?
It’s more of a partnership. I guess it’s more akin to a film financing deficit funding model. We made an approach to the networks and said, look, we are willing to take financial risk on this show and deficit finance, but there are certain things that we need, and that’s the way that we structured the deal. I could not be more thrilled with the partnership that we have with ABC. The network has an amazing heritage for gameshows, and were the home of Millionaire in the US.
And what do you intend to do with those rights other than simply trying to get it remade in as many territories as possible?
There are a lot of conversations going on. It’s nice when people start calling, usually it’s me knocking on doors selling. I think we’re talking to potential broadcast partners in 18 countries at the moment. We’re doing the distribution in-house so we can be nimble and make our own decisions. We’ll work with certain other people in territories where I’m not experienced and don’t have the contacts.
The UK version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? with Jeremy Clarkson
Do you buy into this ‘survive to 25’ mantra – do you think this is a blip and then the market reverts back to how it was?
It’s going to be different. Here, in the US, in many countries, broadcasters are in a desperate state financially. Look at Paramount’s market cap today compared to, say, two years ago. Dire straights. So, do I think it’s going back? No, I don’t. There will be adaptation. Not everybody will survive. It’s a tough, tough market. But you still only need one hit out of the park.
Viewership is down, revenues are down. Something’s got to give. I think there is less being commissioned. And we definitely did live in a period where money was being thrown to compete with the streamers. I think everyone’s now realised you can’t do that. That will mean opportunities for unscripted, because it’s a very cost-effective alternative to scripted. Broadcasters who can’t compete with streamers putting drama on air for $4-5m an hour, they’ve got to put something else on so original unscripted is a solution to that.
The challenge is always there and this hasn’t changed, and this is just getting worse. People [are no longer] willing to take risks, which is why we see so many old shows being rebooted.
There’s a lot of very talented people in this industry who’ve got really good ideas, and they just don’t get to see the light of day. Unless you’ve got deep enough pockets to be able to survive until you can find a way through you’ll just fall out of the business. It’s a real shame. I’m optimistic, because I’m a glass half full person, but it is tough.
Could AI have come up with this show?
Well, that’s a very good question.
I think it could come up with elements of it. Would it have done it quite the same? No. And so would it have got it away? It’s about having every single duck in a row – that’s the difference between success and failure. Those nuances, that personal experience, you make one little change and it makes all the difference.
I have experimented with it, I’ve used it to write a couple of speeches I have to admit, and it was pretty good. Some of the tools I’m seeing released now are mind blowing. I think particularly in scripted it will revolutionise the production business. With formats though, it’s a different kind of content we’re creating. I still think there’s no substitute to the real worlds we create.
You don’t worry that somebody can take your Lucky 13 format, or Millionaire, and say to AI ‘I want a version of this, but I want it to score just low enough on the FRAPA copycat scale to avoid a legal action’?
That is definitely alarming of course. I do have a counter to that, though. Within a couple of years of Millionaire going on air there were maybe 15 blatant copycats around the world. Some of them from supposedly very respectable producers. Lots of shows that looked very similar to ours. Were any of them still on air two years after that? No. And Millionaire is still on the air 26 years later. People, or AI, might think they can copy, they might think they know how to do it, but actually do you really know what goes on under the bonnet?
It’s that knowhow, that expertise, that knowledge that can be the difference between having all your ducks in a row.
