As budgets tighten and SVoD commissions decline, history documentary producers and distributors are turning to genre blending, fresh formats and generative AI to keep one of factual television’s most resilient genres relevant.

History documentary is a genre under pressure. Public broadcasters remain its primary engine, accounting for 54% of historical documentary commissions in 2025, according to Ampere Analysis, with Western European pubcasters – led by Arte, NPO, the BBC, ZDF and France Télévisions – responsible for 81% of those.

Global SVoDs, by contrast, commissioned around 25% fewer documentaries in 2025 than in 2024, with history taking a proportionate hit. Against that backdrop, the format is having to evolve, and the clearest expression of that evolution is the growing appetite for genre-blending.

Pernel Media’s Raiders of the Lost Pharaohs, recently greenlit for a second season by France Télévisions, is among the titles setting the tone. The docudrama averaged one million viewers per episode on the France.tv streaming platform and won a Laurier de l’Audiovisuel award in the youth category.

Samuel Kissous, exec producer and founder of Pernel Media, describes the show’s approach as “allowing us to explore ancient Egypt as if we are in Indiana Jones,” and says its success lies in giving audiences a new angle on a familiar subject. “It’s showing it from the viewpoints of the people who rediscovered ancient Egypt around 1800,” he says. “And what it’s doing is showing you how this is done by scientists.”

Sky History has built its entire brand around the blended approach. Di Carter, director of originals and talent at Hearst Networks EMEA, says the channel uses the word “blended” quite a lot, and points to two of its top-performing original commissions of 2025 as evidence of its effectiveness: Bradley Walsh: Egypt’s Cosmic Code, which mixes the supernatural with ancient history, and Original Gangsters with Sean Bean, which blends true crime and history.

The connection to true crime is commercially astute – crime remains the leading sub-genre of documentary commissions globally, and one the streamers have continued to prioritise even as broader factual orders declined.

Also mixing formats is BossaNova Media’s Ancient Autopsy, produced by Yeti Television for Channel 4, which applies crime autopsy methodology to ancient history. Acquisitions executive Iona Hopper says the doc “flew off the shelves,” with sales to Nat Geo in the US, Viasat in the Nordics and Central and Eastern Europe and Histoire in France. The same distributor handles Roman Empire by Train, now in its fourth season, in which Professor Alice Roberts takes a travelogue approach to ancient civilisations. Hopper attributes the franchise’s commercial performance to its “non-traditional route” of mixing travel with history.

At the prestige end of the market, World War II with Tom Hanks, produced for the History Channel by A+E Factual Studios and Nutopia in association with Playtone and Motion Entertainment, launched in the US on May 25 and on Sky History in the UK a day later. Carter says it has “landed more impressively and epically than I think any of us envisaged.”

Coming to market at Sunny Side of the Doc this month, Incognita Distribution (formerly CLPB Rights) is launching William The Conqueror: The Making of a King, a three-parter produced by Bonne Pioche for Canal+ to mark the 1,000th anniversary of William’s birth in 2027, and Silent Warriors, a two-part action-driven miniseries about German U-boat missions in WWII, produced by Indigènes Productions for T18.

French factual producer and distributor ZED, meanwhile, is also building out its history slate with Spartacus: The Man Who Shook Rome, directed by Fabrice Buysschaert, alongside Knut: The Viking Emperor, produced for Histoire TV, SVT, ZDF Studios and Sky History, and Babylon: The Tower to The Heavens, produced for RMC Découverte and AMC Networks International Southern Europe. Bomanbridge Media, in turn, has recently closed sales for Hidden Secrets of the Adriatic to Viasat History and Arte France, and The Lost Secrets of Jesus to Hearst Networks and Viasat History.

Cutting across much of the new slate is the use of generative AI. ZED’s Manuel Catteau, president and founder, says: “Generative AI is a powerful tool that empowers creatives of films about ancient history. It renews the genre by making it possible to tell history as never before, with exceptional visual and emotional ambition, while respecting the conventions and ethical standards of documentary filmmaking.”

Both Incognita titles launching at Sunny Side employ AI technology, and BossaNova’s Hopper notes the production savings can be substantial: “I’ve seen budgets reduced by a really large proportion in terms of just the re-creations. It can go down by a third by using AI.”

Kissous advocates for careful deployment. “There’s no denying that it’s tougher out there, with fewer partners, tighter budgets but expectations still the same – higher even – among the viewers,” he says. “So let’s embrace AI. If we are living in a world of difficulties, let’s use everything we can to make it look great, but let’s be selective about how we use it. Let’s use it in a smart way.”

As budgets tighten and SVoD commissions decline, history documentary producers and distributors are turning to genre blending, fresh formats and generative AI to keep one of factual television’s most resilient genres relevant.

History documentary is a genre under pressure. Public broadcasters remain its primary engine, accounting for 54% of historical documentary commissions in 2025, according to Ampere Analysis, with Western European pubcasters – led by Arte, NPO, the BBC, ZDF and France Télévisions – responsible for 81% of those.

Global SVoDs, by contrast, commissioned around 25% fewer documentaries in 2025 than in 2024, with history taking a proportionate hit. Against that backdrop, the format is having to evolve, and the clearest expression of that evolution is the growing appetite for genre-blending.

Pernel Media’s Raiders of the Lost Pharaohs, recently greenlit for a second season by France Télévisions, is among the titles setting the tone. The docudrama averaged one million viewers per episode on the France.tv streaming platform and won a Laurier de l’Audiovisuel award in the youth category.

Samuel Kissous, exec producer and founder of Pernel Media, describes the show’s approach as “allowing us to explore ancient Egypt as if we are in Indiana Jones,” and says its success lies in giving audiences a new angle on a familiar subject. “It’s showing it from the viewpoints of the people who rediscovered ancient Egypt around 1800,” he says. “And what it’s doing is showing you how this is done by scientists.”

Sky History has built its entire brand around the blended approach. Di Carter, director of originals and talent at Hearst Networks EMEA, says the channel uses the word “blended” quite a lot, and points to two of its top-performing original commissions of 2025 as evidence of its effectiveness: Bradley Walsh: Egypt’s Cosmic Code, which mixes the supernatural with ancient history, and Original Gangsters with Sean Bean, which blends true crime and history.

The connection to true crime is commercially astute – crime remains the leading sub-genre of documentary commissions globally, and one the streamers have continued to prioritise even as broader factual orders declined.

Also mixing formats is BossaNova Media’s Ancient Autopsy, produced by Yeti Television for Channel 4, which applies crime autopsy methodology to ancient history. Acquisitions executive Iona Hopper says the doc “flew off the shelves,” with sales to Nat Geo in the US, Viasat in the Nordics and Central and Eastern Europe and Histoire in France. The same distributor handles Roman Empire by Train, now in its fourth season, in which Professor Alice Roberts takes a travelogue approach to ancient civilisations. Hopper attributes the franchise’s commercial performance to its “non-traditional route” of mixing travel with history.

At the prestige end of the market, World War II with Tom Hanks, produced for the History Channel by A+E Factual Studios and Nutopia in association with Playtone and Motion Entertainment, launched in the US on May 25 and on Sky History in the UK a day later. Carter says it has “landed more impressively and epically than I think any of us envisaged.”

Coming to market at Sunny Side of the Doc this month, Incognita Distribution (formerly CLPB Rights) is launching William The Conqueror: The Making of a King, a three-parter produced by Bonne Pioche for Canal+ to mark the 1,000th anniversary of William’s birth in 2027, and Silent Warriors, a two-part action-driven miniseries about German U-boat missions in WWII, produced by Indigènes Productions for T18.

French factual producer and distributor ZED, meanwhile, is also building out its history slate with Spartacus: The Man Who Shook Rome, directed by Fabrice Buysschaert, alongside Knut: The Viking Emperor, produced for Histoire TV, SVT, ZDF Studios and Sky History, and Babylon: The Tower to The Heavens, produced for RMC Découverte and AMC Networks International Southern Europe. Bomanbridge Media, in turn, has recently closed sales for Hidden Secrets of the Adriatic to Viasat History and Arte France, and The Lost Secrets of Jesus to Hearst Networks and Viasat History.

Cutting across much of the new slate is the use of generative AI. ZED’s Manuel Catteau, president and founder, says: “Generative AI is a powerful tool that empowers creatives of films about ancient history. It renews the genre by making it possible to tell history as never before, with exceptional visual and emotional ambition, while respecting the conventions and ethical standards of documentary filmmaking.”

Both Incognita titles launching at Sunny Side employ AI technology, and BossaNova’s Hopper notes the production savings can be substantial: “I’ve seen budgets reduced by a really large proportion in terms of just the re-creations. It can go down by a third by using AI.”

Kissous advocates for careful deployment. “There’s no denying that it’s tougher out there, with fewer partners, tighter budgets but expectations still the same – higher even – among the viewers,” he says. “So let’s embrace AI. If we are living in a world of difficulties, let’s use everything we can to make it look great, but let’s be selective about how we use it. Let’s use it in a smart way.”