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Here we are again, Insiders. It's been another week of big stories in international TV and film, and Jesse Whittock is here with you to run through the most crucial.
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Hotting up:
The international television industry's biggest get-together begins on Monday, with thousands of execs, writers, creatives and on-screen talent heading to Cannes for MIPCOM. It's been a complicated year for TV makers, with much of the talk dominated by the need to partner to fund ambitious ideas, confusion around AI, and consolidation. However, we're starting to see some signs of positivity and stability in 2025 – U.S. networks are beginning to acquire international fare again and challenging TV such as Adolescence has cut through, giving producers and distributors new hope. Ahead of the fair, the Deadline International team has been beavering away behind the scenes to draw up lists of our annual Hot Ones in drama, docs and formats. These showcase some of the hottest new titles
available on at the Palais des Festivals and hear from the people behind them to get a sense of their sales potential. Lucy Smith, the Director of MIPCOM, told Stewart this week that "distribution is back"
– a bold statement that wouldn't have rung true 12 months ago, but given the way things are going, I am intrigued to see if that plays out in the halls of the Riviera next week. "There’s a resurgence in the sales and distribution market, which is obviously where MIPCOM has indisputable strength," says Smith. The U.S. studios will have a major presence, with Sony Pictures Television, in particular, having a visibly larger presence than for several years – stretching back to pre-pandemic days. It will give a world premiere for Matthew Macfadyen comedy-drama The Miniature Wife on Monday evening. MIPCOM isn't built around the red carpet in the way the Cannes Film Festival is, with a far more transactional vibe overall. If it drums up new buyers interest, then
it's job done. The MIPCOM news is already flowing fast, and we're expecting to drop some big-ticket sales stories in coming days, so keep checking back online or read our daily MIPCOM newsletters from Monday. (If you're not signed up, click the link above and fix that.) We've also put together a print issue that will be on magazine stands and in the various hotels along the Croisette, and you can read that either in France or online (look out for the link over the coming days), or you can see Deadline.com versions, some of which we've already printed. Get your rosé pre-ordered and we'll see you at the Majestic for a chat. Before that, read our pre-market MIPCOM news coverage
here.
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Bella Italia: There's been a decidedly downbeat feel to international TV conferences over recent years. Streamers holding back spend, buyers seeking easy crime stories and the necessity for producers to become financial packaging geniuses have been the talk on repeat at many markets, and it is, for want of a better word, tiresome. Taxing, but true. However, at the MIA Market industry confab in Rome this week, I started hearing people say... other things. What was this heresy? Primarily, it was Banijay's Steve Matthews, who shocked an entire room – in a good way –
by saying it's now time to start exploring more ambitious stories again. Get out of the "doom loop," was his main message to producers, because the buyers the much-travelled exec is speaking to "are saying they’re not so conservative” anymore. Whisper it, but according to Matthews, “There is optimism at the moment in terms of a little creative risk. Things are not as grim as it was.” Loads more news from a busy MIA, including a YouTube exec breaking ranks on the usual radio silence over the platform's ratings versus broadcast figures, is right
here. Elsewhere in Rome this week, Ted Sarandos was in town to unveil plans to restore one of the city's most-loved cinema theaters, and I went to the streamer's very posh office near the U.S. Embassy
to interview his Italian content chief, Eleonora 'Tinny' Andreatta, about the streamer's ten years in Italy.
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'paddington' vs 'paddington' |
"Things are always happening to me. I’m that sort of bear": In the first Paddington film (small spoiler to follow), everyone's favorite bear from Peru is dragged through the courts and jailed (for a crime he didn't commit, of course). He could now be back in court for real. Paddington Bear's owners and StudioCanal have sued Avalon after the British producer’s Spitting Image series on YouTube depicted Paddington as a foul-mouthed podcast host, who claimed a healthcare routine of “100% Peruvian, biodynamic, organic, catastrophic cocaine.” Jake broke the news
of a High Court complaint that cites copyright and design right concerns. Satire is broadly covered in British law, but let's see how this one plays out, as StudioCanal hasn't yet fleshed out exactly what the problem is – time will tell. Maybe everyone should just have a marmalade sandwich and calm down.
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wide awake at the london film festival |
Big hitters in town: The 69th BFI London Film Festival opened Wednesday evening with a lively screening of Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out film, Wake Up Dead Man, at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. Johnson was present with most of his extensive A-list cast, including former 007 Daniel Craig. The crowd inside the Southbank Centre was just as starry, with familiar faces such as Greta Gerwig rolling into the theater. Across the next week, headline LFF galas will include fall festival big hitters like Yorgos Lanthimos’s
Bugonia, Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, and Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On?. Follow our coverage of the festival here and our pre-festival interview with BFI Festivals Director Kristy Matheson, who talked of "a really deep responsibility" for festivals to encourage people to watch movies at the cinema, here. |
Calling out preconceptions: "I’m at a point in my life where collaboration is so powerful," African screen powerhouse Mo Abudu told Destiny Jackson this week about her new short film, Dust to Dreams
, and African content more broadly. The collaborators in question this time? Idris Elba, who wrote and directed the movie, and musician Seal, who plays a singing soldier in the pic about a Lago woman (Nse Ikpe-Etim) who aims to pass on the family business, an ailing nightclub, to her musically-inclined daughter despite the protests of others. Abudu is among the strongest advocates for African screen content worldwide, and in a wide-ranging chat, she again calls out existing preconceptions, saying, "The world needs to wake up and understand that there’s more to Africa than pity porn and poverty porn, which, unfortunately, is what people expect to see of us at any point in time." This, and a lot more, can be found
here.
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