Key executives
Dan Gopal
EVP, Sales - EMEA, International Distribution
Dan Loewy
EVP, Sales - Americas, International Distribution
Joyce Yeung
EVP, Sales - APAC, International Distribution
eOne had begun 2020 strongly, having cemented its position in the UK distribution landscape by posting £293.4m revenues in the 2019 Distributors Survey, a growth of 15.8% from last year and the second highest in the top 10 distributors.
Its status was further buoyed by the £2.9bn takeover by toy giant Hasbro in January, which added an IP library of some 1,500 brands to its more than 6,000-hour sales catalogue.
The deal was the pinnacle of a change in strategy in recent years, which has seen the producer-distributor looking to fuel its distribution arm with in-house productions to retain IP ownership and have greater exploitation leverage in the global market.
“Pure distribution entities depend on other people creating the shows, are less creatively involved and don’t fundamentally own the underlying IP,” says Stuart Baxter, eOne president of international distribution. “Five years ago, that was a big part of eOne’s business. It’s a much smaller part now and after the Hasbro acquisition, it’s going to become even smaller.”
As such, new president of global television Michael Lombardo is overseeing the development, creation, and ownership of programming, drilling down into the Hasbro library and tapping IP for projects.
Furthermore, Baxter says he now spends less than 25% of his time on pure distribution and more working with creatives on the international value of their shows.
One change he has identified during lockdown, however, is that the lack of new content has meant an “uptick in distribution”, with eOne seeing particular interest in library content that is “pertinent for the times”.
Another consequence of the coronavirus lockdown has seen the distributor become more forensic in its client engagement. Without the option of face-to-face meetings, Baxter says eOne has beefed up its online screening system.
This allows sales execs to see exactly what buyers have viewed, how much of a programme they’ve watched and if they went straight on to another episode. “We’re becoming, dare I say it, a little more data-centric, and we’re seeing lots of clients are fully engaged,” he says.
The system will have the added benefit of informing eOne’s development going forwards – though it does not ask clients to rate shows, as there were internal concerns this could be considered as a negotiation tactic.
“We were trying to understand the different motives for buyers – should we do a thumbs up, thumbs level, thumbs down system, or something more sophisticated? Ultimately, we haven’t asked them to rate shows and our thinking is the buyers prefer subtlety.”
However, in this extraordinary time, eOne is further tailoring its distribution to changing buyer behaviours. With more buyers able to watch shows at greater length, Baxter and his team are supplying more episodes, uploading more and offering programmes from older seasons.
While this results in more work for the team, the benefits are clear, says Baxter: “At home, buyers are less prone to pure sales fervour and more focused on their own evaluations. When we engage in discussion, what we’re seeing is they’ve watched more, they know the show better and they’ve done more research.”
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Type: Drama
Length: 8 x 60-minutes
Producer: Six Eleven Media, eOne
Broadcaster: CBC (Canada)
In Feudal, eOne has hopes that it is has stumbled upon the natural successor to breakout Canadian commercial and critical hit Schitts’ Creek. Like its illustrious predecessor, Feudal tells the story of a dysfunctional family of adult half-siblings battling for control of the family business, gone-to-seed summer resort The Moonshine. Set in the small-town area of South Shore, Nova Scotia, the comedy-drama explores lust, legacy, greed and family dynamics.
Stuart Baxter, eOne president of international distribution, says the drama’s amorphous nature, coupled with the interest in off-beat family comedies a la Schitts’ Creek, gives Feudal added edge in the scripted world.
“It’s a drama, but it’s also a comedy, it’s got a crime element, but it’s not a procedural,” he says. “It’s almost because it isn’t your average show, that makes it stand out.”
The show comes from Sheri Ellwood, who also created dark Canadian comedy Call Me Fitz for HBO Canada, and also served as a writer and exec producer on Netflix dramedy Lucifer.
Despite initial pegging it as a “streamer-type play”, having read the scripts, Baxter feels the show would not feel out of place at a broadcaster, and is a beneficiary of commissioning broadcaster CBC’s move away from conservative procedural orders into “edgier, more unexpected” drama.
Therefore, buyer conversations in more mature markets like Western Europe and the US, have fluctuated between pay-TV, OTT, and public broadcasters. In France and the UK, for example, eOne has already seen interest from free- and pay-TV and public broadcasters, respectively.
Feudal’s place on eOne’s slate is also emblematic of how important importance Canada is to in the company’s distribution arm but also as an “IP developer and producer”.
“The quality in Canada has gone up, validated by series that have been picked up by other territories. US networks are picking up Canada shows with regularity,” he says. “We have five Canadian dramas in production, Canada is an important strand of our content arm. We’re picking up shows that we think are quality and timely in terms of subject matter”.
Type: Drama
Length: 10 x 60-minutes
Producer: Seven Studios
Broadcaster: Seven (Australia)
Australian audiences’ penchant for glossy US series often belies the dramas made in the country, but the “unapologetically glossy and commercial” Between Two Worlds changes the paradigm, according to Dan Gopal, executive vice-president of sales in EMEA for eOne.
Without compromising on narrative and characters, typical of the crime-themed drama often produced in Australia, the Seven Studios-produced series provides the “escapist, guilt-free” television – demand for which has skyrocketed under lockdown.
Written by A Place to Call Home screenwriter Bevan Lee, the thriller follows the lives of privileged business mogul Phillip Walford (Picnic at Hanging Rock’s Phillip Quast) and his embittered wife Cate (Cold Feet star Hermione Norris) and a seemingly unconnected widow (Sara Wiseman), who lives an apparently blissful life with her two high-achieving adult children.
“We’ve had broad interest with buyers screening in most markets,” says Gopal, who sees the cast and plotline have opened the show up to wide interest. “In EMEA, we’re intent on selling pretty broad.”
Gopal says fervour has been particularly strong in western Europe, making countries such as the UK, France, Germany, Nordics, and Spain priorities. Given that the BBC and Channel 5 have both recently acquired Australian drama, Gopal feels a UK PSB home is possible, although in more conservative European countries, the focus would be commercial free-to-air.
With ten episodes ready to go, the order also feels manageable for audiences, who regularly get “fatigue” with some of the 20-plus episode US network shows, says Gopal.
“The advantage of having them in the can is that we can be fully flexible with our broadcasters,” he says. “Some will have gaps in the schedule and VoD services they need filling quickly, whereas others may want the more traditional weekly rollout.”
With creator Lee mulling over ideas for series two, Between Two Worlds’ returner potential is also piquing interest among buyers.
Type: Drama
Length: 10 x 60-minutes
Producer: eOne; ICF Films
Broadcaster: Global (Canada)
A sales renaissance for procedural drama Saving Hope is a coincidental foil to Nurses, a drama that came out of eOne’s Toronto development team, and greenlit back in 2018. At the time, the company had been looking for a medical drama for several months, Stuart Baxter says, but wanted a twist to the conventional focus of previous examples in the medical genre.
Putting nursing staff “front and centre” rather than doctors piqued eOne’s interest, with the company also anticipating that the subject matter would make it “skew younger” in viewership, which is key for the company’s sales strategy and buyer demands.
The series, produced with Toronto-based ICF Films, is an ensemble drama following five newly appointed nurses who navigate the traumatic and emotional whirlwind of modern nursing, while trying not to let their personal lives seep into their life-and-death work.
With a “tentative plan” to begin pre-production and production on a second series soon, and a US home for series one currently being discussed, Nurses has created a buzz.
Lead actor Tiera Skovbye, at the head of a young cast, is also a draw, given her recent work on The CW and Netflix’s youth-skewing series Riverdale.
“At a time when we wanted to show strong female characters on screen, this youth-skewing take on medical dramas works really well,” says Baxter.
Interest from the US has come from both traditional linear players and streamers, with its story-of-the-week arc making it attractive to broadcasters and its “little bit of the soapiness” promoting its credentials for on-demand, binge-watching.
The series is an example of the strong, premium drama emanating from Canada, at the expense of US material, according to Baxter, who says scripted from the country is “more European than US”.
While Nurses is “clearly very US-centric”, he adds, culturally it is “a little softer, which works in Europe”.
Stuart Baxter
President, International Distribution
Dan Gopal
EVP, Sales - EMEA, International Distribution
Dan Loewy
EVP, Sales - Americas, International Distribution
Joyce Yeung
EVP, Sales - APAC, International Distribution