Julia Schulte, senior VP of international sales at France TV Distribution, discusses the growing international demand for French content and offers highlights of the titles the company is showcasing via C21’s Digital Screenings this week.
How is international demand for French content changing?
Along with increasing demand for European content, there is clearly a growing demand for French programming too, because of its specific qualities. French light crime series attract more and more international buyers due to their outstanding offbeat characters that are strongly developed and have the potential to engage audiences around the world.
A good example is our series Bright Minds, a huge success in Southern Europe and Japan. Our young-adult [YA] shows like Derby Girl and Stalk have also proved the power of French humour and creativity when it comes to strong characters and writing skills. The offbeat tone and the natural and light-hearted ways of treating complex and intimate subjects are some of the French qualities that our international partners appreciate when it comes to YA shows.
And it is the growing quality of higher-budget event series, like the high-end production Vortex, that continue to convince the global streamers and linear buyers. High-end technology combined with a solid and original story and a great French cast works well. French producers continue to push boundaries by taking risks to combine audacious writing with innovative production and high-end cast. And the international buyers see the difference.
There is also a growing demand for French documentaries. Our Apocalypse collection continues its success story throughout the world, and we have secured many presales of scientific event documentaries like Eiffel Tower: Building The Impossible. Buyers seem to appreciate the French narratives, the production quality and ambitious ways to treat historical archives and scientific CGI. The demand is also growing for French current affairs documentaries and their impartial and open-minded look at global conflicts and social issues.
Where is demand for French content the highest?
Two territories where the demand for French drama content grew surprisingly quickly during the past years are Asia and Latin America. Driven by the success of our light crime shows, we had an amazing reception of Bright Minds in Japan, for example (the show aired on AXN but then also on NHK) and our YA shows like Stalk attracted viewers on HBO Latin America. The global streamers also continue to stimulate international demand for our shows, as was the case for Call My Agent and accelerate their popularity around the globe. A good example would be the YA series About Sasha, which will have an international release on Disney+.
What are some highlights of your new slate of shows for C21’s Digital Screenings?
Within our new slate of shows, you should definitely take a look at our new French light crime shows Marianne and Cesar Wagner, which are presented together with our sales hit series Bright Minds, already in third season. We also present our recent foreign acquisitions Chantal (from Belgian producer Eyeworks) and Sweetheart (produced in Quebec) – two highly character-driven series with strong female leads characters.
We also present Sisters, a dynamic and colourful musical comedy for young adults produced for streamer Slash, centring on the themes of diversity and homosexuality. And we are proud to present our new OCS show Aspergirl, telling the story about a young mother and her son both dealing with autism spectrum disorders – an offbeat dramedy with an uncommon take on diversity.
On our documentary slate, we present the strong title The Climate: A 50 Year Battle, the science format Expedition Petra and the beautiful and amazing wildlife doc The Secrets of Wild Gatherings.
How are you diversifying your slate beyond French programming?
Our main goal is to distribute French content all around the world but we have also picked up foreign high-end series, such as three Flemish-language productions from Belgium: Two Summers (licensed to Canal+ in France), Chantal and Under Fire. Of course, we aim to widen our network of producers internationally and to look for new talents. Nevertheless, we only take on foreign series when we feel they bring something different, something we do not already have in our local production line-ups. The series produced for VRT (Belgium) have this very unique tone and specific writing and we appreciate them for their originality. We also picked up a Canadian show called Sweetheart for its very specific and fine treatment of a complex issue and the great acting of emerging talent from Quebec.
How else is your content catalogue changing, in terms of genres and suppliers?
We are constantly scouting for new talent and new production partners, but also for new genres, as linear broadcasters and streamers are also regularly redefining their audience targets. We have recently, for example, added adult animation to our slate with the premium animation series Lastman, coproduced by France Televisions. This is still quite a new genre for us, but we know there is an interesting market out there.
How is the growth of streaming changing your distribution strategy?
The streamers are becoming more and more important for French producers to complete their production budgets, as those budgets are growing enormously. And we help producers find the right match and the right windowing models to manage those presales. Global streamers have the power to push French programmes to worldwide audiences, and this is important for expensive, high-end productions. But the models have evolved a lot and we try to find the right strategy for the right programme, with the global streamers, the local streamers and pay TV partners and linear broadcasters, which for the moment have the highest ratings in each local market and will remain very important.
Tell us about your coproduction strategy and what you have coproduced so far?
We come in very early on projects and the projects are these days seeking more and more financing to complete their budgets. For producers, we are already an important partner to handle international presales and presales with global streamers, but also alternative pre-financing through local presales and application for MEDIA funding, for example. We have some international coproduction partners as well. What changed our position a lot is that we became, via our development label Stories By, a coproduction partner for third-party producers ourselves.
We invest much earlier in production and the development stage to put the projects on the right track, contribute to editorial development and to help market the projects at the early stage to find the first partners.
What opportunities and challenges do you see in the content market in 2023?
We are definitely facing a lot of new opportunities, with new platforms opening up and with a high demand for European content in very strong TV markets internationally. At the same time, the markets consolidate and return on investment is important, even for the big players and streamers. As a distributor, we have the chance to be in the middle of those challenges and to prove how we can find creative solutions for our production partners to finance the growing production budgets through our networks, and we continue to develop new businesses as well.
There is, for example, an important market for remakes and scripted content internationally that we are exploring. With Call My Agent, we started to sell format rights to a wide range of countries, such as India, French-Canada, Turkey, the UK and Italy, as well as Chronicles of The Sun in Greece. This allows us to tap into markets and territories that are not yet as open to our French readymades.