Campaign Profile

Cineflix Rights execs Greg Johnson, Sandra Piha and Mike Gould offer an update on the UK-based distributor’s new titles, licensing strategy and activities in the digital space with FAST, AVoD and YouTube.

Cineflix Media distribution arm Cineflix Rights has established itself as one of the world’s leading independent distributors, with a resilience and agility that have enabled it to successfully navigate the global content market for more than two decades.

The UK-based outfit continues to punch above its weight, with a strong slate of new scripted and factual series for 2025. At the same time, it has embraced new opportunities, selling its IP into the burgeoning world of FAST, AVoD and YouTube.

Cineflix Rights’ top scripted titles at the recent edition of the London TV Screenings included comedic crime drama Sunny Nights (8×60’), produced by Jungle Entertainment and Echo Lake Entertainment in association with Cineflix Rights for Aussie streamer Stan, and crime thriller Virdee (6×60’), produced by Magical Society for BBC One/BBC iPlayer.

Exec VP for the Americas and Asia-Pacific regions, Greg Johnson says the Cineflix Rights scripted slate “is small but eclectic. We’re not a huge distributor that needs a lot of series. Instead, we are totally focused on shows like Sunny Nights that can travel internationally.”

The show centres on a strait-laced American who teams up with his loose cannon sister to open a spray tan business in Sydney. The siblings become tangled up in the city’s criminal underworld and must figure out how to stay alive – and in the black. “The onscreen talent is wonderful, but what elevates the production even more is director Trent O’Donnell, who understands audiences from around the world.”

Johnson says the show typifies the way Cineflix Rights likes to get involved early “to help shape what the series looks like. We worked with the producer on the scripts, the casting and the tone to make sure we had a show that stands out.”

A couple of undisclosed licensing deals have been signed, and the company is currently “working hard on finding the right US partner,” says Johnson. The US has been tough over the past couple of years, but Johnson believes it is heating up again. “There are opportunities if you can get the right partners together and make a great show.”

Johnson is equally optimistic about Virdee, which performed well on the BBC in the UK, has been licensed to SBS in Australia, and is starting to “lock in deals” in Europe. The show, which sees a Bradford-based detective hunting down a serial killer, has been praised by critics as “tremendous, tantalising, action-packed fun”.

“It’s a superb series about the South Asian community in Northern England,” says Johnson. “British shows that travel well internationally often have an authentic voice and a kind of specificity of time and place – and that is certainly the case with Virdee.”

Johnson adds that the company is not afraid to back non-English-language shows with a difference. Its current slate, for example, includes Japanese series Heart Attack (8×60’), produced by Skybound and Robot for Fuji TV, a dystopian sci-fi anime drama from the producers of The Walking Dead. “It’s left of centre. But we’re excited to take this show out and see where it lands. The creative team behind it have a sensibility for telling stories in a slightly different way.”

Also coming up is a new Icelandic ‘Nordic blue’ series called Hildur, “which we’ll be taking out later this year,” says Johnson. “We’re a company with relationships all around the world, so we’re always looking for scripted shows that can travel.”

Cineflix Rights is probably still better-known for its factual slate, which spans most of the major sub-genres from true crime to property. Sandra Piha, senior VP of sales, pan-regional, UK, Eire and Scandinavia, says the company is currently offering “a wide range of genres across factual entertainment, history and crime including a strong mix of long-running, returning brands that cater to a wide range of channels and slots.”

Drilling down, Piha says: “We’ve seen a lot of international success in the Aussie ‘tough jobs’ space, so we’re excited to be working with McAvoy Media on Cape Carnage: Killer Catch (10×60’) produced for Seven Network in Australia, UKTV and TVNZ. The show follows Captain Bruce and the Davey family, who make a living from fishing for Spanish mackerel in the treacherous waters of northern Australia. We’ve just closed a deal with a big US network along with sales for the Nordics and Central & Eastern Europe.”

History continues to sell well, says Piha, both in terms of blue-chip titles and the growing ‘pop history’ space. “We have blue-chip doc series Commando Missions (4×60’,) produced by Galaxie Presse for Canal+, France, which features accounts of heroic top-secret WWII operations that had a big influence on the war.

“Sales have been strong with soon to be announced deals for the UK, Benelux, CEE and Sweden. We also have a great new pop history series Vanished History (10×60’), produced by Shark Teeth Films for Bell Media, Canada, which uses archive, CGI and expert interviews to investigate enigmatic mysteries from Cleopatra’s secret crypt to Genghis Khan’s long-lost tomb.”

Piha says Cineflix Rights has worked hard to forge ongoing relationships with third-party producers. As an example: “We are building on our partnership with Pernel Media (Ramses The Great: King of Ancient Egypt) with two new series: Vikings: The Making of an Empire (6×60’) for Planète+ and C8 in France and TV5 in Quebec, Canada; and Alexander the Great: Legendary Conqueror (3×60’) for the same broadcasters.”

The factual market remains buoyant in Europe, says Piha, though, “with the rise of local productions and fewer slots, content needs to truly stand-out to stay competitive. At the same time, reduced budgets mean pre-sales play a crucial role.

Editorially, true crime continues to be in demand – a trend that Cineflix Rights has managed to lean into. “In the past year, we have pre-sold and financed three new crime brands,” says Piha, “including Crime Scene Investigators (13×60’) produced by Cineflix Productions, which we pre-sold to Discovery+ UK and Bell Media in Canada.”

Formats are also an area of growth for the firm. “Our social experiment format Tempting Fortune, produced by Voltage TV and GroupM Motion Entertainment, has travelled well and is now in production in five territories including for Sky Italia, a major Nordic PSB, Mexico, Greece and Romania. The second season has recently launched on Channel 4 in the UK, so we’re confident we’ll be licensing the format in further territories soon,” says Piha.

As referenced above, the company has also made inroads into emerging distribution outlets, with senior VP of digital Mike Gould leading the charge. Looking first at FAST, Gould says: “We’ve now got nine FAST channels across three territories: the US, Canada and the UK. We’ll be launching our first non-English FAST channel later this year through an AI dubbing project that we’ve been developing around one of our shows.”

The channels are a mix of single IP and genre-based channels, says Gould: “Our leading channel is probably The Real Disaster Channel, which is anchored by our hit show Mayday: Air Disaster. But single brand channels around Property Brothers and American Pickers also perform very well for us in Canada.”

Cineflix Rights is planning on expanding further into FAST, though Gould acknowledges that platforms in the more mature markets, such as the US and UK, are getting more selective. “You’ve really got to make sure that the proposition you’re putting in front of them is meaningful. That said, there is more opportunity for channel growth in markets like Europe, where the sector is still establishing itself.”

AVoD is an increasingly lucrative area of the company’s business, says Gould: “We’ve got some close relationships with the big AVoD platforms, particularly in North America. Here we publish our library in return for an ad revenue share, as long as we’re confident it doesn’t impact on traditional sales. We’ve done some volume deals that have started to emulate what a second or third-window licence fee might make for certain titles.”

YouTube has become another focus for Cineflix Rights, as the platform continues to grow its share of voice across Connected TV sets. The company has around 12 channels in YouTube at present, though Gould stresses they are editorially distinct from the FAST portfolio. “The beauty of YouTube is that there is much more room for experimentation with content formats. We can publish full episodes, live streams and compilations, for example, and we’re also leaning heavily into YouTube Shorts.”

One intriguing question is whether the firm is ready to create originals for YouTube: “We’re exploring it. It would mean self-funding, so we need to know what that means in terms of risk vs ROI. We are also monitoring the creator space, to see if there is digital-first talent that might align with the areas where we’re strongest on YouTube.”

For all the excitement around this area, Gould stresses that the digital-first piece is yet to replace traditional distribution for new titles like Sunny Nights or Commando Missions. “There might be specific territories where AVoD, FAST or YouTube could be the first window. But our job is to extract the maximum value for new shows. The way to do that in key markets is to grant first window to a broadcaster or streamer.”

As Cineflix Rights continues to expand its reach in the evolving digital landscape, the company remains committed to maximising the value of its content across both traditional and emerging platforms. By maintaining a strategic balance between scripted and factual programming, fostering strong partnerships with producers, and embracing new distribution models, Cineflix Rights is well-positioned to navigate the ever-changing global media market and drive continued success in the years ahead.