Festival In Focus: Series Mania’s Laurence Herszberg & Francesco Capurro On Industry Trends, The Rise Of Co-Production And How ‘Succession’ Inspired A New Wave Of Family-Themed Drama

Stewart Clarke
·7-min read

Series Mania brings the world of drama together every year in March in Lilles, France. It has public screenings and competition strands spanning various types of scripted TV. The industry component, the Forum, includes the Co-Production Pitching Sessions, which have become one of the event’s signature elements.

Less than three weeks out from the latest edition, Founder and General Director of Series Mania, Laurence Herszberg, and Francesco Capurro, Director, Series Mania Forum, stepped away from the last-minute travails of organizing a festival to give Deadline the low-down on what to expect this time.

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Deadline: It’s almost showtime, thanks for finding the time. You spend the year getting Series Mania together, what’s changed since last time and how will you adapt?

Laurence Herszberg: What we do during the year gives us time to monitor the evolution of the industry, which is a key to our success – all year long we’re connected to the industry. Series Mania Forum was built on asking, ‘how can we provide the industry with answers, contacts and new projects?’ We consider ourselves as a tool, a toolbox for the industry.

It’s key when you are running a festival or a market to understand you have to adapt all of the time. The industry has changed a lot. We have all seen the evolution of the streamers, and we know that we are not at peak TV anymore. Now, it’s about producing less, but producing better and to being able to reach your audience.

Deadline: Where does Series Mania Forum fit into the TV calendar?

Francesco Capurro: It’s really the place where the studios, the streamers and the broadcasters can find the best producers and talents from all over the world. This has been our positioning since the beginning. We have more and more buyers, and it’s becoming slightly more of a traditional market because we have more exhibitors too, but at its core, is still very much a place for co-production and development.

In a very competitive and crowded market, the fact that a project has been selected in Series Mania helps the commissioners, the financers to make a choice because it’s already had that label of quality.

LH: The American strikes had an impact. A lot of season twos were canceled. And a lot of projects, you know, went away. The industry was reshaping itself. Seeing that, we understood that we have to be the place where series begin, meaning that we know that the buyers now jump on series not after they’re done but at script stage. We have to be the place where people can gather with scriptwriters, producers, broadcasters, buyers, the sales agents.

Deadline: With budgets under pressure, co-production has become more important. How have the Co-Pro Pitching Sessions evolved?

LH: The Co-Production Pitching sessions have evolved into something that extends beyond co-productions. Producers and buyers come to acquire rights and sometimes because they want to be there at the beginning of a series.

At the beginning, it was really just a gathering of producers focusing on co-production in the strict sense of the term. But now you’ll find buyers and you’ll find broadcasters from other countries, even if the project does not have a domestic broadcaster. You have, of course, producers, but now you have everyone. That’s a change in the industry.

Deadline: Given the focus on co-production, are there more attendees from different countries?

FC: This year we will welcome [expanded] delegations from key Asian countries like Taiwan and Korea, two really creative territories. It shows something about their interest in establishing bridges with Europe and the rest of the world.

We will have delegation from South Africa, which is also very much open to welcome high-end TV and international production in their country, and they have also studios, and they really are keen to cooperate on an international level. We will have a delegation from Brazil, a big presence from Canada as always, and we will have also Japanese companies attending. There are two Japanese projects in the selection of the co-production part of the Forum this year (Japan-Germany drama Issak and Japan-U.S. project A True Novel). These are examples of how the business is becoming more and more global.

Deadline: The volume of drama being made is down, what does mean in terms of the number of projects submitted?

LH: We’re not in need of series or projects on both sides – the Festival or Forum. The numbers are still very high, but we see the trend: it’s taking more time to greenlight a series, people are working even more work on IPs, and need big talent. We see that this world is changing.

Deadline: For the Co-pro Pitch you had 413 applications for 15 projects (the sixteenth is selected in conjunction with the Berlinale). Are you ever tempted to widen the selection, to let more in?

FC: Yes, of course, but we intentionally kept it in the same dimension because we want to be selective. All the content that we present during Series Mania is curated, it’s not like a market… you need to pass through a selection committee. We want to be sure that we believe in the content that is pitched during our events, basically.

Deadline: With the number of shows in the Festival and Forum you are very plugged into to drama trends. What are you observing based on the projects you have seen this time?

LH: People are focusing more on families. One reason is the world is so difficult, that [these kinds of projects] reassure people and offer something familiar to them – the family. Although these series aren’t always just about happy families, they also include conflicts, often across generations.

Deadline: It’s interesting to see family and family relations become a theme in the dramas in the Festival selection and we can see Apples Never Fall, Ourika, Hotel Cocaine, After The Party and Bouchon all speak to that. The Series Mania teaser clip with Brian Cox was great fun and maybe one of his shows also kickstarted the trend for dynastic family drama?

LH: Yes, the other reason is the unexpected success of Succession. I can say that, because you remember years ago, the world premiere of Succession was at Series Mania (in 2018). We knew that we had a great show for our audience, but I must confess that we could not foresee, and neither could Brian Cox, who has become a great friend, or Jesse Armstrong, that it would develop into such a massive success.

Deadline: Has non-English-language drama gained ground and are there territories submitting projects for the first time?

FC: The business is more and more global in the recent years, language is not a barrier anymore. We can enjoy shows in Korean, like Squid Game, or in Spanish, like Money Heist. I think that it’s especially true for younger audiences, and it’s partly thanks to the streamers.

LH: We had new territories, also sending projects to the Copro Pitching session — Mexico, Cameroon, Panama and Chile. It shows that okay, we’re all used to the success of the American, Anglo Saxon and European series, but now, it’s worldwide. And that the industry understood that.

Deadline: You are expecting over 4,000 people for the Forum, which is up year-on-year. Do you want to grow the industry piece dramatically?

LC: It’s very difficult to resist, because everyone wants to be in, it’s difficult. How can you say to someone ‘No’. We have also a lot of other countries coming, you cannot close the doors to those people. So, what we did is add 3,000 square meters of space. It will make it comfortable, and allow for more places to meet and connect, because everything is about connection during Series Mania.

But it’s not a battle of figures. I don’t want to just to say every year, “We have more and more people”. The reality is there are more people, but we’re not fighting for more, if you understand the difference? I want this to be a quality rendez-vous.

Deadline: Your one-day summit, the Lilles Dialogues on March 21, has the strapline “Gen AI, the technology we’d love to like”. What can we expect?

FC: One of the questions that we will address will be copyright and the protection of creators, because this is one of the most immediate impacts that artificial intelligence will have. This is a very critical question that needs to be addressed quite soon and we need to have policies and regulations to protect creators.

We will try also to explore the opportunities that this technology can offer, because it’s not only a threat. It will probably save time and money for a lot of producers and writers. I don’t think that it will replace human beings… maybe later, but not in any near future. We will also talk about the opportunities that that this technology offer and see what the possible scenarios are through concrete examples.

Deadline: In a world where people can easily connect on Zoom or Teams, why is it important for industry people to still attend festivals like Series Mania?

LH: We all work online, but we need to gather, we need human contact. When you want to co-produce or to buy something, when it’s not finished, when it’s still in the process of the writing, you need to know if you want to spend two or three years of your life with this person. It’s about the human qualities – do you share the same vision and want to go on the same journey together? Whether it’s the broadcaster or producer, they want to be reassured that the team is the right one.

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