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Global production and distribution company FremantleMedia is best known for unscripted shows like “The X Factor” and the “Got Talent” franchise, but it’s increasingly turning the spotlight on dramas, like zombie thriller “The Returned,” which debuts in the U.S. on A&E in March.
The show is one of the first results of a shift in strategy at FremantleMedia, where Sarah Doole, who has been director of global drama since February 2014, was hired by CEO Cecile Frot-Coutaz with the goal of raising its scripted-programming revenue share to 50% from 30% in five years.
Two key challenges that Doole, the former head of drama at BBC Worldwide, faces: Drama takes longer to get to market than reality, and competition for top writing talent is fierce.
“If you look at the U.K. market for drama, for example, there are probably five or six top British writers, and they are booked for the next three or four years,” she says. “In the U.S., there is a bigger writing pool, but availability is pretty much the same.”
FremantleMedia’s primary target is the U.S. A few months after Doole’s hiring, the company tapped Craig Cegielski, a former Lionsgate TV executive, as exec VP of scripted programming and development to assist in the assault on the market.
But rather than trying to sell American shows to Americans, Doole says, Fremantle wants to develop shows with a “European voice.”
Cegielski hired Carlton Cuse and Raelle Tucker to reanimate “The Returned,” based on French show “Les Revenants,” for which Fremantle has rights. Next up for Cegielski is Neil Gaiman’s adaptation of his novel “American Gods,” which Starz is backing.
The objective is to develop shows that FremantleMedia’s international distribution team can present to the global market at an early stage, greenlit via pre-sales, co-production or deficit financing.
It just sold “Deutschland 83,” produced by its German subsid UFA, to SundanceTV. It’s the first German-language drama to air on a U.S. net.
“It doesn’t matter what language it’s in,” Doole says. “If it is a great story, it is going to travel, either as a tape sale or a remake or a re-version.”
