Distributors Survey 2024: The view from Europe

FRANCE

• Rodolphe Buet, chief executive, Newen Connect

“We need to manoeuvre carefully in a destructive market and seize every opportunity,” says Newen Connect chief executive Rodolphe Buet. It’s fighting talk from the French distributor and comes off the back of Newen hitting its predicted revenues in 2023-24.

The TF1-owned distributor does not see its competitors as UK-based distribution giants like Banijay Rights, Fremantle or ITV Studios, but European players in the €50-€150m (£42m–£127m) revenue range, like StudioCanal or Beta Film. Buet says, coyly, that his company delivered turnover “somewhere in the middle” of that range, suggesting Newen Connect is pushing €100m (£85m) in revenues.

But despite achieving its target, Buet is mindful that in terms of 2024 sales, “the mix is in favour of catalogue versus new shows”.

US buyers such as Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount “freezing budgets” for acquisitions while they sort out their own issues has not helped, he notes.

“Over the past year, linear channels and digital platforms have been looking for existing IP and long-returning series,” he says. “If we can’t convince [buyers], particularly streamers, that buying fresh content and taking risks on new IP is key for them to reach new audiences or reduce churn, we face the prospect of our investments in programming being only partially recouped, or not at all. We have to crack that.”

Buet expects Newen Connect will continue to be a leader in terms of selling French, German, Nordic and Italian productions, and also selling content into European countries. Buet says Newen is the number one distributor for selling content into Italy.

Key titles include hit TF1 comedic crime show HIP (Haute Potentiel Intellectuel), of which there have been four series since its launch in 2021. Newen has a “lifetime commitment” with most of the show’s licensees, Buet says. Its US remake, ABC’s High Potential, launched on 17 September and Buet hopes it can become a returner in its own right.

Live-action manga remake Cat’s Eyes, he adds, has outperformed HIP in its early days of selling to the international market.

While strengthening its position in its core business, Newen Connect is also expanding its footprint in English-language productions, with Paramount+ original The Serial Killer’s Wife from Clapperboard and BlackBox Multimedia a standout performer.

“HIP is comparable with mid-range English-language shows distributed by BBC Studios or ITV Studios, generating millions in revenues year after year. That’s amazing,” he says.

Does he fear UK-based super-indie distributors will threaten Newen’s non-English-language dominance? “I don’t think they will box in that category,” he says. “It’s extremely complex to make the economics work. They would have to ask sales executives to focus on shows that might generate €10,000, rather than English-language shows that might generate €100,000.

“[Large UK distributors] could potentially explore some key territories, but maybe it would be more intelligent to partner with us and try to fi nd synergies.”

GERMANY

• Oliver Bachert, chief distribution officer, Beta Film

As one of the few truly independent companies left in Europe, Germany’s Beta Film has worked hard to keep its revenue streams diversified. A player in both production and distribution, it doesn’t break out individual revenue lines, but the group’s turnover hit €375m (£316m) in the fiscal year 2023, a decline of 6.25%.

“We have to navigate two landscapes whose futures are difficult to predict: budgets and business models,” says chief distribution officer Oliver Bachert.

Like many of its peers and rivals, back catalogue has proved vital: Canadian procedural Hudson & Rex is one of its three top-selling shows of the past year.

At 116 hours across seven series, it accounts for a substantial chunk of Beta’s 450-hour catalogue, of which 280 hours are from TV series.

But Beta has always endeavoured to be in the “business of creating event programming” and will launch epic series Rise Of The Raven at Mipcom, a Europe-hopping period action drama with a budget of $50m (£37.9m) and multiple financing partners.

Beta has a strong relationship with UK indie Eagle Eye Drama, with which it partners on existing series Hotel Portofino and Professor T, as well as upcoming PBS procedural Patience and Bookish for UKTV, written by and starring Mark Gatiss (Sherlock; Dracula).

Bachert say the creative talent available in the UK market, combined with continental European resources, could be a winning formula.

“We’re trying to anticipate the needs of buyers and audiences,” he says. “We want to create something appealing that doesn’t immediately go to cuckoo budgets. And we see more openness to collaborate.”

As such, Beta is increasingly operating in the pre-buy or ‘acquimission’ model, where there is the potential for better returns.

“This pre-acquisition model becomes much more meaningful, particularly in safeguarding financing,” he says. “Our focal point is to find more early-stage partnerships with UK broadcasters.”