Exclusive: French TV resellers are putting extra momentum on Paris show events this week with no MIPTV on their schedules.
Several French distribution sources told Deadline that French Third TV Shows (now known as Paris TV Shows) could grow in the absence of MIPTV, the second-largest TV market in France until its demise last year.
These events are held under the auspices of the French film and television export authority “Unifrance” at its twenty-seventh session in Paris. The annual event, which launched in the late 1990s with a focus on cinema, has expanded its scope to television following Unifrance’s merger with TV France International in 2021.
Major France-based vendors such as Mediawan, Newen Connect and France TV Distribution will join smaller stores such as Film & Picture, Studiofact Right, Balanga and Terranoa in screening new shows at the Paris Pathé Parnasse cinema from January 14-16, and holding meetings. at the Film and TV Content Market at the nearby Pullman Hotel, which runs throughout the week.
About 100 TV buyers are expected to be in the City of Light over the course of the week, and there are high hopes that the event can capitalize on recent events.
“This year, we will not have MIPTV, which was essential for us even with the lower numbers,” said Marie-Laure Hebrand, founder and CEO of Film & Picture, which is presenting the four-part serial killer drama. Black widow. “At the Paris shows, all broadcasters will have their new budgets and are starting to get them.”
Black widowwhich launched on France 2 last year and is produced by Episode, stars Odile Vuillemin as a serial killer and is based on a real-life case in France in which a woman killed three of her ex-husbands before being caught trying to kill the fourth. “The show has done very well in France, with around four million viewers per episode, and has maintained that number,” said Hebrand. “People who came, stayed.”
We understand that Film & Picture is heading into the event with pre-sales secured for Antena 3 in Spain and Rai in Italy, with a potential buyer in the US, along with others in Central and Eastern Europe and Portugal.
Hebrand will travel to Series Mania in the northern French city of Lille in March, but has not yet decided whether she will make the trip to MIP London, the event in the UK that ostensibly replaces MIPTV and is held in conjunction with the London TV shows. “Fiction buyers will attend Series Mania and their numbers will increase as MIPTV disappears,” she said.
She doesn’t know how many acquisitions executives will attend MIPTV, which is held at the Savoy Hotel and the IET London conference center next door, assuming that most people in the city will stick with the screening format that has evolved to such a degree over recent years. It’s a question we’ve heard many times over recent months. No distributor wants to put their money in the wrong place in the tough market of 2025.
For its part, RX France, the organizer of MIP London, told Deadline last month that 350 buyers had registered, and that up to 2,000 delegates in total were expected to attend.
Daniela Elstner, executive director of Unifrance, said it was impossible to predict how MIP London would impact a buyers’ market, but she believed TV shows in Paris could benefit from the evolving situation, especially with the popular two-day MIPDoc event in Cannes unlikely to take place. It is the most important event. The same standard is in London. “Especially for real distributors, there is something missing,” she added. “Hopefully we can start something with our event.”
As the end of 2024 approached, Elstner noted that buyers and sellers suddenly appeared more aware that MIPTV wasn’t going to happen, and tension began, with a key element disappearing from their schedules. “No one knows what MIP London will look like, so you can either be anxious or you can reframe it and treat it as an opportunity,” she adds. “I’m more for the second. There’s a shift and you have to adapt.”
Adapting is exactly what Unifrance did last year when it moved its other major TV event, also operating under the Rendez-Vous brand, to Le Havre, Normandy. The next step, in television terms, is to build up the Paris shows, and a bold approach is being taken. In previous years, the film and television promotion body questioned whether an event in January was wrong for buyers, but recent changes have changed the thinking.
“Many broadcasters and streamers close their budgets at the end of one year and then start new budgets and don’t want to spend too much, so we always wondered if the date was too early in the year,” Elstner said. “But with the transformations we have seen, we now believe, on the contrary, that it might start something for the new year.”
A difficult year ahead As vendors prep the installations
Whether the new-look international schedule changes business or not, distributors in France are bracing for another difficult year. International sales of French TV shows reached 203 million euros ($208 million) in 2023, down 5.3% from 2022 as buyers held back from spending, figures released at Rendez-Vous in September showed.
Chloe Pinot, international sales director at another distributor, Balanga, admitted that 2024 had been “difficult for everyone”. She added that it was actually a good year for Paris-based Balanga despite “lower volumes of acquisitions, lower prices and delays in responses”, but highlighted the need for stores to be “very meticulous about the projects we take on”.
Balanga, which celebrated a decade in business last year, has found success by focusing primarily on documents, delving into written text when opportunities arise. One of these examples will see it set up Delivery time (No, Not Us), a comedy drama that revolves around a young drug addict played by actress and singer Soko, who seeks to pay off her debts by working in a palliative care home and stealing their drugs, only for the patient to complain about her and say: They demand that she help fulfill their last wish or Detect it.
“It has a very comedic, sarcastic, very bittersweet tone,” Pinot said. “The lead role is very well written, as she goes from seeing the job as a way to pay off her dealer to developing a friendship with the patient. It is her path to redemption. The theme and tone are unique and set apart from the series, as no one talks about death that way.”
Balanga and Delivery time Producer Mesdames Production adapted what was originally a six-part, half-hour series into a three-hour commercial that would better serve international broadcast slots, and discussed turning it into a TV movie if desired. Pinot said the show’s ratings on OCS in France were good, while noting that Cesar Award-nominated actress Soko, who lives between Los Angeles and Paris, wrote original material for the series. It is a good example of the varied and varied nature of the offers that around 50 TV distributors will be presenting to buyers throughout the week in Paris at the Rendez-Vous.
The need to differentiate is clear, as even the largest distributors in France have faced challenges in the face of the international market reset. Randall Broman, Head of International Sales – Written Content at Count Montecristo Seller Mediawan Right said the past year “presented challenges to our entire industry,” but his company “has navigated this landscape with a high-quality assortment that enables us to quickly respond to ever-evolving market demands.”
Mediawan Right will release the drama on Prime Video France Dear youwhich Broman said “comes to the market at a time when audiences are looking for upscale and entertaining series.” The 15-part series – from The Elephant Story and produced by Aurélie Belko, Julie Albertin Simone and Sébastien Le Delisaire – follows the new guest relations manager (Karla Boquin) at the Folie Hotel, as she must juggle expensive customer orders and cater to a host of clients. Sexy billionaire hotel guest launches a unique dating app.
After Elephant Story’s Elise Castel and Charlotte Denaud bought the rights to Emily Blaine’s decade-old novel of the same name, they quickly sold the project to Amazon. “There was a huge challenge in adapting to this series,” Dinwad said. “First, because the story in the novel is set in New York, and we had to adapt it to Paris, and second, because Emily wrote this novel more than 10 years ago, and since then society has evolved, as have the relationships between men. And women. We really wanted to anchor this series in today’s Paris and paint a current and modern image for the younger generation.
Denaud added that the high-end look of the drama meant that Prime Video’s domestic funding was not enough to cover the budget, and that clever production techniques and additional funding were needed. “Because we believe this series has real international potential – romantic comedies are a genre that exports well and Paris remains the capital of love – we quickly reached out to Mediawan Right, a distributor we know well,” said Denaud. “They responded enthusiastically once they read the scripts and allowed us to complete the budget.”
Of course, France has the additional layer of funding in the form of the CNC, which operates independently of the government and is able to bring a variety of genres into production, along with powerful public and commercial broadcasters and global broadcasters like Prime Video who have bought into the idea. From the local market. “This is exactly how you can create these amazing series,” she added.
For Nadia Chevallard, Senior Vice President of Distribution at Newen Connect, who’s in town to launch the relationship drama Common interestFrench TV shows play an important role in the calendar as the number one market of the year, and “the right place and time to bring brand new French drama series to the international market.”
Common interest Stars Cecile Boas (Drops of God, Candice Renoir), Antonia Desplat (Shantaram, Three days of insanity ward) and Terry Newvik and follows an unconventional threesome of sorts. The film revolves around a 50-year-old working-class woman, Rita, whose husband Olivier is having an affair with 35-year-old Olympe, who has lived a life of privilege. Somehow, Rita ends up as Olympus’s assistant and they form a strange pair bond, just as Olivier tries to win Rita back.
Marie Dupuis Dangiac, producer at Common interest Creator Barjac, who is also part of Newen Connect’s parent company Newen Studios, described the series as “very French – a cosmopolitan story, a threesome in love, set in a luxurious, sexy arena. [fashion store] Hermès in Paris,” she said, adding: “We have a wonderful female duo that people can identify with, wonderful and very likable.”
Another Barjac producer, Lolita Franchet, said the show was unusual for French linear television, making it difficult to finance. “We are more used to broadcasting crime or mystery series, where people know very well what they are going to watch,” she added. “Here, the script generates a lot of questions: What exactly will the show look like? Is it a comedy? Is it a drama? Is it about love? Is it an office drama? We often have to explain the purpose and vision of the show, and we need to reassure people that it is a show.” Character-driven but with high dramatic stakes.
Ultimately, this year’s TV shows in Paris will reflect its members’ desire to be closer to international buyers and start business earlier, Unifrance’s Elstner said. “Psychologically, there is a shift from one year to the next, and we hope that the Paris shows will give buyers and distributors something that will start a new momentum ahead of what comes next,” she added.
“The strength of French production lies not only in its quality, which has been constantly improving over the years, but also in its diversity,” says Broman of MediaOne. “French production companies have developed significantly and are now producing content with a global mindset. This transformation has allowed them to adapt to the international market.” Ever changing and positioning them as a major player in the global television and film industry.
How global these activities are will become clear next week.
