Series Mania caters for fans and industry with premieres and events open to press and public alike, ensuring a wide gaze on the dozens of new dramas having their launch moment.
The industry, meanwhile, also gathers in numbers at the Forum, which comprises conferences, showcases, pitching sessions and space for distributors to set up shop and meet with the growing number of buyers heading to Lille.
Ahead of the drama biz decamping to northern France, Series Mania Forum Director Francesco Capurro breaks down the plan for 2025.
DEADLINE: Series Mania Forum has become a diary date for people in the drama business, but we have to be honest, it’s tough out there at the moment, for producers especially. How will you adapt to the changes?
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CAPURRO: It’s true that the industry is now in what we call a post-peak-TV era, and this will be the main theme of our Lille Dialogues by the way; the new challenges ahead for our industry in this era of readjustment.
But I don’t want to be too pessimistic. There are studies that show that the level of production is more or less 75% of what it was in the peak TV era. There are still a lot of series made every year. It’s different in different places. In Europe, I think that there is still a high volume of production, and there’s still a lot of new content produced every year. Everyone is playing their role, the platforms of course, but also the traditional broadcasters and the public broadcasters who finance a lot, and now also fund shows through [industry collectives] like the New8 and The Alliance.
DEADLINE: You’re launching a new Buyers Upfront, which is a prelude to the Forum and gives execs a first look at some series. What’s the thinking?
CAPURRO: For us, it is quite a big move. We want to respond to the needs of the industry and cover all of the value chain, from screenwriting through to sales and distribution. It’s the first time that we have had an event entirely dedicated to the buyers and the distributors. That is important for us.
DEADLINE: Does it speak to your event becoming more of a market?
CAPURRO: Yes, I am not afraid of using the word ‘market’. I think that we have both: We have a very curated selection of projects in development and the networking and matchmaking parts, so we will still keep our DNA in that respect. But in recent years, we have seen more and more exhibitors coming to the event. All the big players in the market have a booth in the Palais. We already have a showcase of upcoming show from different territories and now we add these Buyers Upfronts.
In this sense, I think that what we do in the Forum is moving to becoming a more complete market and I think that it’s a good choice.
DEADLINE: With that evolution, do you expect a more buyers this time?
CAPURRO: Yes, of course, it was part of the reason why we have this new event. We invited about 100 top buyers from TV channels and platforms from all over the world. And generally speaking, we see more buyers registering to Series Mania Forum, because it’s not only perceived as a co-production market now, but something wider.
DEADLINE: Let’s drill down a little. What do you see in terms of the buyer attendance, is it mostly European?
CAPURRO: Mostly, yes, because we are based in Europe. But we have also seen interest from the U.S., from Japan, from lots of countries around the world.
DEADLINE: Across the piece, what does the overall attendance from outside Europe look like?
CAPURRO: We keep working a lot with Taiwan and Korea. These are the biggest delegations that we have from Asia. We also have more and more Japanese delegates coming, also because of the success of Drop of Gods [which played in competition in 2022], and because there are more and more connections being established between Japan and Europe.
We see a bigger delegation coming from Brazil. Globo will have a booth and we will also have more or less 20 big producers attending. We see growth potential in Latin America because it’s such a huge market. It’s something that we will explore in the coming years.
We are happy to welcome a big delegation from Africa. We know that there is a lot of [African] talent and, of course, it’s a huge market in terms of the number of potential viewers. There is a common interest in collaborating more and more with Africa.
DEADLINE: In terms of the conference and sessions, what can we expect?
CAPURRO: We go from some conferences which are quite technical, one on the AVMS directive and its application in Europe for example, to creative masterclasses, like the ones with James Norton or Sally Wainwright.
We try to have the biggest players in the market to announce their lineup and upcoming shows. We will have showcases from Netflix, from Prime Video, and we will have a keynote from Gerhard Zeiler, the President of International for Warner Bros. Discovery.
DEADLINE: IP has become increasingly important in terms of TV drama, what are you doing in this respect?
CAPURRO: We will have an IP market in in the Palais and host different initiatives to connect people who have some IP and people who can buy it for adaptation. The biggest event within this is the Shoot The Book initiatives from SCELF [the society of French publishers]. They organize meetings between producers and agents. Last year, we had more than 240 meetings, which shows how the industry is looking for those adaptations.
DEADLINE: Series Mania is a launchpad for new series, was it natural that you also leaned into how TV shows are marketed?
CAPURRO: We started three years ago by launching this creative marketing award. At the beginning people were a bit surprised about this choice. We really think that it’s important for series to stand out in a competitive and crowded market, so we continued this initiative. Every year we receive more and more applications from players in the market who are investing sometimes big budgets to try to catch the attention of the audience. It’s important to give a spotlight to those initiatives, because it’s important for the industry.
DEADLINE: Let’s sign off by talking numbers. The calendar has changed with MIPTV no longer happening in April. How do your registrations look this time?
CAPURRO: We have more and more requests for participation and also for exhibiting at the event. I think our place is quite solid. People are continuing to come, and more people are attending.
MIPTV was multi-genre so the MIPTV goers are split now across different events depending on the topic. The ones who worked in fiction are coming to us, but most of them already came. So, I don’t expect a huge growth in numbers. I think that we will be more or less the same or a little bit more this year.
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