YLE’s presence for the first time alongside DR Sales and SVT Sales in the Riviera at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes was a strong signal from the three Scandinavian pubcasters to show a united front and strategy to export Nordic culture and programmes at a time when the Nordic brand continues to thrive.
“We are very pleased to have a stand this year at the Palais, “said Tuija Snellman, YLE Head of Sales. “Many buyers see the Nordic region as one interface and having one stop shop will be easier for them”.
YLE’s new relationship drama Second Chance (6x50’) and The Limit (3x50’) attracted the most interest, as well as the upcoming ecological thriller Tellus written and directed by JP Siili. “We’ve received excellent feedback from major European broadcasters who liked the new crime twist featuring eco-motivated saboteurs,” said YLE sales executive Maria Kivinen. The 6x50’ series will be delivered in November.
DR Sales reported strong business across its drama and doc slate. Based on the first episode of Heartless (pictured) unveiled at MIPTV, Helene Aurø, Deputy Managing Director and her team were able to close several territories on the supernatural thriller produced by Fridthjof Film, ahead of its airing on Kanal5’s 21.00 slot on April 28. NRK has acquired rights for Norway, VRT for Belgium, while America Video Films has bought TV rights for 23 countries in South America and Russian Report TV Networks, TV rights to 17 countries from the Baltic region and CIS.
The Legacy continued to sell, notably to Australia (TV rights on top of a DVD deal closed earlier), CIS/Baltics and Eastern Europe, with offers on the table from Israel, Greece, Mexico and the States. With the second season ready to roll, co-financier Lumiere confirmed its interest, as well as Australia for DVD rights.
The few remaining territories available on the smash hit series Borgen came up with firm offers for the three seasons, such as New Zealand and Italian speaking Switzerland.
With a remake market as vibrant as ever, DR Sales was able to advance negotiations on a US version of The Legacy and local adaptations of The Killing and Aurø stressed the recent acquisition of the scripted format of Lykke (Happy Life) by UK leading production house Ecosse Films for an English language version.
DR’s new flagship series that will be launched at MIPCOM in October include the financial drama Follow the Money (20x58’) with Per Fly as concept director, based on a script by Borgen co-writer Jeppe Gjervig Gram, and the ‘melancomedy’ The Restaurant (16x30’) scripted by Kim Fupz Aakeson.
Among DR’s long list of quality documentaries, two new titles produced by Made in Copenhagen – Warriors from the North about terrorist organisations recruiting fighters from the West, and Naked about the porn industry were sold respectively to the Netherlands and Belgium.
SVT Sales was popular with its historical mini-series Miss Friman’s War, watched by over 1.6 million Swedes during the Christmas period. A second season should follow up said sales rep Paulette Rosas Hott. In the documentary genre, new titles pushed by SVT Sales were The Bee Effect, Oak-The Tree of Life and Ecmo-The Final Chance.
NordicWorld was introducing TV2 Denmark’s Badehotellet (Seaside Hotel) reported strong interest on the period drama produced by SF Film, in particular from France, the UK, Germany, Italy and Russia. The sales company had as good mix of Nordic TV dramas on its Spring Fiction catalogue – including Icelandic productions from Saga Film, the Norwegian dramedy Dag and NRK’s Home or The King of Christmas, but it was the last time it was representing productions from the Norwegian pubcaster following an exclusive deal signed recently between London-based distribution group DRG Formats and NRK on the Norwegian group’s scripted and unscripted formats.
One of NRK’s flagship titles, the conspiracy thriller Mammon was represented at MIPTV by Beta Film. “We have had fantastic responses and closed several deals such as free TV to ARD/Degeto in Germany, Home Video to Polyband, Germany, free TV to SBS, Australia, and pay TV to HOT in Israel” said Nordic region sales specialist Justus Riesenkampff to nordiskfilmogtvofond.com. “We are in final negotiations for television sales in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic and Slovakia and interest is strong from many other territories”.
A total of 11,000 television and digital executives - including some 4,000 buyers-attended MIPTV where the buzz word this year was ‘the New Age’ of Storytelling thanks to the continued development of high-end drama and formats, strong co-production activity, an emerging international market for online content creators and the coming together of online and offline players. Among the numerous guest speakers, Shane Smith, founder and CEO of multi-platform digital studio Vice challenged its audience to forget about the online/off line dichotomy and made this explicit comment: “I’ve been coming to MIPTV for a long time and people keep asking me ‘Are you on TV or digital?’ All I can say is that I don’t give a sh*t. All I care about is content”!