Film and television powerhouse Fremantle has had a busy year. It has added major UK-Irish outfits Element Films and Italy’s Lux Vide, among others, to its growing portfolio of top-tier international production outfits and has begun shooting 33 films, including that of Angelina Jolie No bloodwhich was based at Cinecitta Studios in Rome.
Italy-based Andrea Scrosati, COO of Fremantle and CEO of Continental Europe, speaks to Display about how the company works to bring together all its partners, the different way it invests in projects and companies and why the company is very interested in Latin America.
What can we expect next?
All the M&As we have done have always focused on ensuring a strategic cultural fit. To be clear, this does not mean that we have a single cultural view, quite the opposite as we span 24 countries and multiple languages. But it’s all about collaboration across our system. Our producers are very independent and also very entrepreneurial, but we collaborate constantly, and this is exactly the area where we add value. Otherwise it simply becomes a financial transaction. We look for companies where we can add value and at the same time they add value to our group.
The Lat Am territories are culturally fascinating. They are very different from each other, and creatively alive. We already operate in the area through our Fremantle Latam operations, and we also have an investment in [Camila Jimenez and Silvana Aguirre’’s production outfit] The Immigrant which is based in LA but operates in Latin America. They just released a great movie called Adolfo Tthe hat is shot in Mexico, and they also operate in Colombia.
How are you integrating all your purchases?
We understand that in a creative business, the classic “top-down integration” approach doesn’t work. The producer’s job is to create a creative exchange and add value to the talent we work with. All our projects are based on teamwork. Our job is to always bring people into the room who can add value. If there is only one person in a creative group who actually adds value and the others are just there to take notes, it just doesn’t work.
People should engage in cultural and intellectual exchange. You want someone to say, “I understand your vision, but I actually think there’s a better way to deliver that vision.” That’s the role of the producer and the talents we work with do just that Andrew Lowe and Ed Guiney from Element, Nico Hoffmann from Ufa, Lorenzo Mieli from The Apartment and Mario Gianani from Wildside, just to name a few. Fremantle would be nothing without them.
Our job as a group then is to give them infrastructure, facilitate relationships with buyers, contacts with talent, writers, share production know-how. We have writers that span our entire system. For example, the writer of Infinity [Francesca Manieri] is now working on a drama with another label of ours.
We also offer financing, but that’s only part of the process. If we only did gap financing, we would just be a distributor. Don’t get me wrong this is a fundamental part of our business, but as I say it is a part.
What are the different ways you work with companies?
We are operating many different financial models. Some are similar. Some are cash-flow based, some are gap financing, we’ve started doing studio financing where it makes sense, and still others are partial financing. Each project is a separate project. Each takes time, given the amount of intellectual thought that goes into each project. But that’s how you really add value.
For example the work of Raffaella De Angelis [literary acquisition lead in Fremantle’s drama business], who works on Christian Vesper’s global drama team, thanks to her relationships with writers, she accesses book manuscripts months before they go to press. She is able to tell before a book is actually published if there is an IP value there and then shares this intelligence with our producers, based on her knowledge of what soft spots each producer has.
RTL Group, which owns Fremantle, has revealed it aims to increase the company’s full-year revenue target to €3bn by 2025. Are you on track to achieve this?
“We are working in the direction indicated by our shareholder who has been extremely supportive of Fremantle and we are on the right track. Going from eight to 33 films is a good example of the direction we’re going in.”
What is your vision for the next three years?
The strategic direction for Fremantle is designed and led by our group CEO Jennifer Mullin and is the result of teamwork that starts with our shareholder vision, leadership group and the input we receive from our producers and leaders around the world. Without being a team, it just wouldn’t work.
Our vision as a team is to be the place creators call home. We don’t want to be the place where creators want to sign up, but the place they want to call home, and that makes a real difference to everything we do.
We’ve come a long way in the past years and have massive projects in the pipeline for the next few years, however, despite all these developments, it’s important to say that unscripted entertainment still remains the foundation of our business. Not only because unscripted provides the majority of our income, but without our entertainment business it would have been impossible for Fremantle to become such a significant player in the scripted world.”
