Music publishing giant Concord steers into originals  

Executive VP Sophia Dilley on how Concord Originals is mining a music and theatrical catalogue spanning more than one million copyrights and why it is refocusing its development slate as the market turns.

Music publishing giant Concord moved into the TV and film space in 2021 with the launch of Concord Originals, an original content arm designed to mine its enormous library of rights across music and theatrical performance.

Led by executive VP Sophia Dilley, the originals division has been cultivating a slate of non-scripted and scripted titles that leverage the more-than one million copyrights under Concord’s roof.

According to Dilley, Concord is now the world’s largest independent music company and largest theatrical licensor.

On the music catalogue side, it holds rights to music from the likes of Phil Collins, which Concord acquired in 2022 for a reported US$300m, as well as REM, Cyndi Lauper and Evanescence and legendary labels including Stax Records and Fearless Records.

In terms of theatrical performance, Concord holds the rights to the Rodgers & Hammerstein collection, which includes the Cinderella musical, and the Samuel French library, which includes more than 14,000 plays and musicals. Concord also has a joint venture with English composer Andrew Lloyd Webber for theatrical licensing.

Given the breadth of the library at its disposal, one of the biggest questions facing Dilley and her team has been where to begin – especially in the context of a buying market that has contracted markedly over the past two years.

Dilley tells C21 that the first question is whether a project will fit into its mission statement, which is to “champion artists, elevate voices and impact culture.” However, given the industry climate, she admits Concord Originals has been forced to more fiercely interrogate the market potential of any project it takes into development.

“Things are still slow. Everyone is taking stock of what they have, what they need and how they’re going to position in the future,” she says.

“We have looked at our slate and said ‘okay, the market has shifted, what are the things that are working right now?’ That has meant that some projects might take a beat while we reposition them to work in this current climate. That might be restructuring the budget, or rethinking how we get into a creative idea.”

On the unscripted side, many of the titles Concord Originals has been working on for the past couple of years are now being released.

Stax: Soulsville USA, an HBO docuseries about the soul-focused label Stax Records, is set to debut on May 20 after having its world premiere at SXSW, while its feature-length documentary Let The Canary Sing, about the career and legacy of Cyndi Lauper, debuts on Paramount+ on June 5.

Other upcoming titles produced by Concord Originals include My Favorite Things: The Rodgers & Hammerstein 80th anniversary Concert for PBS and Sky. Previously released projects include the CNN original film Little Richard: I Am Everything and Cinderella: The Reunion, A Special Edition of 20/20.

In terms of meeting the needs of the market and what buyers are calling for, Dilley says it has never been more necessary to ‘eventise’ programming. The buying downturn has, of course, brought huge challenges for production companies, but it has also forced producers to be laser focused on what to pursue, which is not necessarily a bad thing coming on the heels of the glut of content that arrived in the ‘Peak TV’ era.

“You’re going to hear this term ‘eventise’ more and more because buyers are pivoting on the kinds of projects they’re aligning with. It’s awoken everyone to think about the ‘why’ more – why does this project need to exist?”

Today, Concord Originals develops around 50% of its titles in-house, while the remainder are in-motion projects that it boards either as a co-financier or coproducer.

As it decides which projects to invest time in, Dilley is interacting with key Concord leaders including chief publishing officer Jim Selby and chief theatricals executive Sean Patrick Flahaven.

Dilley also works closely with Concord’s senior VP, marketing and communications, Imogen Lloyd-Webber, daughter of Andrew Lloyd-Webber. The pair recently worked on the Rodgers and Hammerstein 80th anniversary concert that was filmed in London, UK in December.

While the unscripted side of its pipeline has moved more quickly, Concord Originals is also developing several high-profile scripted projects. The onset of the US writers’ strike last year meant some of those were put on the backburner while it focused on unscripted, but it has picked up with several in recent months.

Among them, Concord Originals is producing a limited series adaptation of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella with Jennifer Lopez’s Nuyorican Productions and Skydance TV, in addition to a remake of 1956 musical The King and I with Temple Hill for Paramount Pictures.

Also in the works is a bilingual (English/Spanish) TV adaptation of Alberto Ferreras’ novel B as in Beauty with Marsh Entertainment and Telemundo Streaming Studios.

Dilley says having access to a vast library of rights and IP, some of it widely known, is a helpful differentiator when taking projects out to buyers in a tough market.

“I think pre-awareness is so important to how executives and buyers engage with material today. So the question becomes: do the people who are ultimately making the decision about financing something have that awareness?” she says.

As more of its projects continue to land, Dilley says the plan over the next three-to-five years is to build the reputation of Concord Originals so that it is discussed among the best and brightest production companies in the musical and theatrical adaptation space.

“I would like to be in a place where people see Concord Originals as the go-to company for adapting music and theatre for the screen,” she says.