Television exports to China may be slowing but that’s not true for exports to Asia as a whole. Co-production deals are back in vogue. And when it comes to the potential for further consolidation among top European production banners, well, one industry veteran declared, “Everybody’s always up for sale.”
There are still COVID costs in that you still have producers saying they have to test all the time. I think we’re out of it, but the tests are still a part of the overall increase in production costs. The costs associated with COVID haven’t completely gone away.You often get surprises after the fact, where it’s like, “Oh, actually, there were some additional COVID costs that we didn’t account for.
Warner Bros. Discovery recently sold 27 HBO Max European originals to Paramount Global and Comcast’s joint-venture streamer SkyShowtime. How does a deal like that affect you?It indicates that there aren’t as many inventory issues that the platform’s had in the past, where [distributors] were able to be quite opportunistic.
Speaking of M&A, it’s been almost a year since CJ ENM bought 80% of Endeavor Content, now called Fifth Season. What does this mean for your content slate?There’s definitely more collaboration happening on the studio side as it relates to film and television production. There’s a lot of work being done there on certain projects and working together and leveraging the relationships in different countries.