Banijay merges French labels to create premium scripted powerhouse

Dominique Farrugia’s Shine Fiction has merged with Marie Antoinette outfit Banijay Studios France to create a single label focused on premium scripted series, Broadcast International can reveal.

Operating under the Shine Fiction banner, the label will create programming for local linear and global streaming partners. Farrugia, exec producer of upcoming Apple TV+ drama Carême, will run the new structure as chairman with Banijay Studios France managing director Guillaume Thouret serving as chief operating officer.

Shine Fiction is now the home of English-language tentpole Marie Antoinette, which Banijay Entertainment’s distribution arm has sold to over 140 markets, and which has just debuted its second series on Canal+.

Upcoming titles for the label include comedy-crime series The Family Detective, thriller Rien ne t’efface (both for TF1), and mysterious coming-of-age drama Désenchantées (France Télévisions).

The indie’s enlarged production team also includes Chanelle Bernard, Stéphanie Chartreux, Carole Della Valle, and Soizic Gelbard.

Farrugia first joined Banijay in 2020 as managing director of the label, then known as Endemol Shine Fiction, which was rebranded as Shine Fiction a year later.

He told Broadcast International the new structure will allow Shine Fiction to expand the size of its team and increase production volume.

“Our goal is to have a bigger footprint and to satisfy several channels with different projects,” he said. “We have strong relationships with French channels like TF1, M6, France Télévisions and Canal+ and hope to expand our relationship with Apple TV+ and also work with Amazon, Netflix and other global streamers in the future.”

Shine Fiction currently produces between two and three series a year and aims to increase that to between three and five. “Our editorial strategy is simply to make series we want to watch,” Farrugia added.

French series Carême, about the world’s first celebrity chef Antonin Carême, co-produced with Vanessa van Zuylen for Apple TV+, was the opening series to kick off Series Mania in Lille on Friday (21 March) and airs on the streamer on 30 April.

While his pre-Banijay work was mostly in feature films, Farrugia said Shine Fiction will remain focused on series production. Shine Fiction plans to leverage Banijay’s global reach to explore co-production prospects with the group’s worldwide subsidiaries.

“It’s great that the French language and culture can shine all over the world thanks to these global series, but we are open to English-language possibilities and co-productions,” he added.

Alexia Laroche-Joubert, chief exec of Banijay France, said: “By proactively bringing together these two renowned labels under the Shine Fiction banner, we will unlock an entirely new level of creative and production expertise for our scripted business in France.”

Banijay France’s upcoming titles include eight-part historical drama Montmartre, a co-production between Authentic Productions and TF1.

In addition to Carême, Banijay Entertainment has Yellow Bird’s six-part political drama A Life’s Worth at Series Mania in competition within the festival’s International Panorama, and Banijay Iberia label Portocabo’s procedural Weiss & Morales, which is part of the Series Mania Forum content showcase.