Steve Matthews from Banijay Entertainment drills on the market change
The three shows of Banijay Entertainment have been selected for series Mania underlined to what extent the giant of the film TV has come in script, and especially the enormous reach,
Apple TV +’s “Carême”, by Banijay’s Shine Fiction, opened the French TV festival, Europe’s largest, and supplied a portrait of the world’s first famous chef, the Napoleonic Antonin Carême, as Variety Reports, a “sex-oizing rock star”.
Series Mania in International Panorama, “A Life’s Worth”, of the Yellowbird of Banijay Nordics, follows the challenges with which the first Swedish UN -Bataljon, consisting of volunteers, was sent to Bosnia in 1993.
Subject of a mania forum series, “Weiss & Morales” allies of two of Europe’s most energetic public broadcasters, German ZDF and Spain’s RTVE and a German and Spanish agent who crackles a case in the sun-sliced Canary Islands, against OMG landscapes, a characteristic of his Spanish producer, Banijay-Onderdentom.
Steve Matthews, stopped to Banijay’s script, creative, would not claim Steve Matthews to supervise the development on every script series in Banijay. The largest independent TV production company in the world, Banijay as too many labels – 130, 60 of them scripted – to make that feasible.
However, what Matthews does, as in his days in HBO Europe from 2014, before he comes to Banijay at Banijay in 2023, it often offers young or emerging scenario writers on an important sweet spot for a series: the international potential of stories of stories based in local context. That often means adding a feeling of genre, understandable for overseas viewers or narrative propulsion.
Few TV managers are better placed to comment on the latest evolution of global TV drama. Before series Mana Matthews sat down with Variety To locate and give nuance to important growth axes and market challenges.
On a panel on the Berlinal Series market, you quoted Ampere analysis with the effect that crime thrillers were 43% of the top six Global Streamer Scripted Series Commissions in the second half of last year. Is this one of the most important trends in market demand? And if so, how is Banijay dealing with it?
How does Banijay deal with it? That is quite interesting because I do not deal with it at all, because companies are all very mature in their own different markets. It is for them to find their buyers and to decide what to do. And they all follow where the market trend is going, which seems to be crime, although I don’t think crime has never been the core of television.
Why is that?
Crime has certain built -in dramatic bets and certain levels of mystery. It is also a very, very wide church, everything from “true detective” to “undo”.
If such a catchall is a kind of crime drama that you find particularly interesting?
In my role, when I look at the genre, partly because of my experience in a streamer, I look for certain subgenres that are backwards, I always encourage writers to look for the psychological thriller. Did my husband commit the murder or not? Where the COP arrives in episode 2, or the non-COP domestic psychological thriller. Very hard to find. And they have always worked a bit. And if I had a dollar to bet, I would bet something could come between crime and supernatural.
Crime dramas can sometimes seem formal. But is there necessarily a reduction in quality, in artistic integrity if there is so much crime?
When that question is asked, I always draw the attention of people at HBO 1999-2002 who saw the great Renaissance of television. Well, “Sopranos” is a crime show. “The Wire” is a cop show. Genre is an evolution. I mainly try to encourage young writers who feel that genre is a kind of narrowing to see how useful it is like a steno, how good it is like a scalpel to cut in society, how good it is like a lens. But as I say, especially with the adult production companies that we have, I rarely have to fight that fight.
Can you point out a Banijay Crime drama that you are happy with?
For example, I am very happy with “Weiss & Morales”, which will be shown in Series Mania. I think it’s a great show. A classic, salable, understandable, co -production between two different buyers, writers from two different areas. Police officers who solve crimes in the sun. What is wrong with that?
Do you feel other market trends that can be seen in one way or another at Series Media?
I’m less sure about romance. But looking at the Pokeepsie films from Spain, led by Alex de la Iglesia and Carolina Bang, and the huge hit with “Mea Culpa”, Romance seems to be a fairly large area at the moment. But really, crime in all its different versions seems to be dominant.
In recent years, TOP European production distribution companies-Fremantle, Studiocanal, the MediaPro Studio, Federation Studios-Steeds have moved more to English-language shows. This seems to support the trend of the ever greater popularity of the non-English language shows only a few years ago with the streamer tree.
It is a mystery that we have been thinking about for a while. The question is still there. Before the Streamerboom, Nordic Noir already introduced the world to subtitle TV. And at HBO Europe I was in the right place at the right time. We were all in this place, from now on we have no shows with people who speak English with funny accents. When a character comes from a country, they speak their natural language. Then “Chernobyl” comes and we thought, well, maybe there is a way.
Surely there is certainly a market demand for English or paradoxically, a local language?
Yes, there are the local buyers on the market of a production company that might want something in one way or want something else. I am not going to pretend that that does not create a discussion with writers and the distribution side, because the distribution market certainly leans in a more English -language direction. It is not up to me to push the companies in one way or another to go somehow. There must be room for both.
Are there not even opposite market requirements at work at the moment?
Yes. Where are we at Local for Local? Or locally for international? I remember a quote from the writer of “Chestnut Man” who said he was told by Netflix that if you want your Danish show to be successful on the international market, the way not to do it is to make it less Danish. Those among us in the local TV game cheered that.
And if you feel that a local series has potential abroad?
What I try to do is let labels be as locally as possible. But when I see a project that we think that the real chance to be an international hit, I will bring a little weight behind it. That is where I try to put my time, where I can simply move something, can pick up that small level to make it, to bring that little extra bit of glitter and magical dust to a project in development. Some projects are just locally. They are just a small local sitcom, and that’s fine too. One of the great things [about the current TV scene] Is that it is so big that there is a lot of room for many different things.
