A Sundance Film Festival award lags only behind an Oscar nomination as a measure of success for documentarians. 2.4%! Are those the odds that a documentary will earn a slot on the Sundance program? $852 million! Is that really the total production spend on all those submissions that missed out? Read on for my 2023 update on …
Sundance 2023: $852 Million Spent on Docs That Were Not Selected Read More »
HBO Max‘s release of the David Bowie interpretive bio doc Moonage Daydream reminds us that the market leaders can spend big on Music: $25 million by Apple TV+ for Billie Eilish. $30 million by Disney+ for Elton John. In this post, Camran Shealy updates her July 2022 profiles of commissions that feature musical celebrities and …
Independent producer / director Ruth Berry creates for Terra Mater Studios and PBS’s NOVA series, a fast-track special that navigates the many cultural challenges to successful field production in Africa while revealing that space exploration is for everyone – not just for the wealthiest countries. Watch our MIPCOM 2022 Coproduction Case Study panel video here. …
A Sundance Film Festival award lags only behind an Oscar nomination as a measure of success for documentarians. But what are the odds that a U.S. or international documentary will earn a slot on the Sundance program? Is $848 million really the total spent on all those submissions that missed out? Read on for my …
The Sundance Documentary Economy: $848 Million Spent by Producers Who Miss Out Read More »
The COP 26 UN Climate Change Conference opens in Glasgow on October 31, bringing urgency to the race to save our planet. Documentary commissioners, producers and distributors have responded with lots of new orders. Does global warming have the urgent audience appeal of programs that address hot button issues like true crime, gender, and social …
News Roundup: Climate Change Documentaries Breaking Through? Read More »
Matt White recently passed away due to cancer. Here, his friend and colleague, David Royle, pays tribute to the passionate archivist, producer and longtime active member of documentary community. Few people have made a more important contribution to the world of non-fiction program-making than Matt White, but his name seldom appeared in the credits and …
In memory of Matt White, passionate archivist and producer: David Royle’s tribute Read More »
The giant Discovery and Nat Geo shark promotions are going strong 33 summers after the launch of Shark Week in 1988? What do these promotions tell us about how the legacy channels are transitioning to streaming? And is the Shark programming niche really a $23+ million opportunity for producers? Veteran programming executive and senior consultant …
The hyped rocket jaunts by Jeffrey Bezos and Richard Branson remind me of the combination of publicly-funded Space Science and broadcasting revealed in my COSMIC SHORE Case Study from Japan. Public broadcaster NHK developed a $100K space camera for a US$6.5 million coproduction with PBS‘s NOVA strand. Their mission: capture the edge of our world, where …