1- 150 NEW ORIGINALS OUTSIDE OF US FOR PARAMOUNT+
Paramount+, the streaming platform owned by Paramount Global - with the CBS library content -, plans to commission 150 international originals by 2025 as it looks to invest in internationally originated content outside of the US.
In particular, the OTT has commissioned 5 factual projects from UK producers for the streamer’s launch in the UK and Ireland on June 22.
Hot Yachts from Curve Media spotlights the luxury yacht world of South Florida, where an elite group of super-competitive, party-loving yacht brokers ruthlessly compete to sell everything from $1M motor launches to $100M super yachts.
The other ones are: Monster: The Mystery of Loch Ness, produced by Two Rivers Media in association with All3Media International, that tries to tell the real story of the legendary creature; the music doc Simple Minds: Once Upon a Time (w/t); Strip, produced by Firecracker Scotland, a glimpse at the lives and careers of nine top exotic dancers working the Las Vegas Strip; and finally, The Premiership: Rise of the Billionaires (w/t) that chronicles the 21st-century history of the English Premier League.
2- A COREAN GUESSING GAME
On the Corean channel SBS is on air Geomeun Yang Geim (The Black Sheep Game).
8 players live all together in a secluded area for 4 days and 3 nights without knowing their own or others' identities. Based on their life experiences, 2 of them are “Black Sheep” (the Mafia) and the other 6 are “White Sheep” (the citizen). Through a variety of missions and games, the players will try to deduct each other's identities and the player with the most sensitive intuition will be the winner of the grand prize money.
An “investigation / mystery game”, quite common in Corea and Japan, but difficult to export…
3- AN INITIATIVE FOR UNDER-REPRESENTED PRODUCERS
We all know it very well: for small producers or independent content creators it is really tough to put a format on air, in spite of the fact that there has never been so much demand for content as today.
There are a few giant prodco groups, with catalogues of thousands formats and hundreds of subsidiaries, but it’s not easy to pitch new ideas to them, even if their executives say the opposite.
There are also a few awards/funds/accelerators (e.g. MIPFormats with Fox, Horsepower with Mediaranch, Pitch and Play Live with Global Agency…), but they are not so many and the possibility to be spread worldwide is uncertain for the winners.
The result of all these factors (and much more) is that the formats around the world are no longer so original and in some cases are even copycats of already existing ones.
But maybe there will be positive news. The unscripted format expert and columnist Siobhan Crawford (pic below), announced in the column of TBI - Television Business International (from which I took some of these considerations) that in the coming months an initiative for under-represented producers will be launched.
We will follow it with interest.