Global Entertainment Supply Chain Digest (January 2023 #1)

January 3, 2023

Global Entertainment Supply Chain Digest (January 2023 #1)

Global Entertainment Supply Chain Digest (January 2023 #1)

The entertainment value chain globally is massive, fragmented, and complex! It begins with content stories & IP and ends with the theatrical, streaming, broadcasting, and inflight devices that deliver content to consumers. We keep a track of all the global action, in the supply chain across content development, production, post-production, VFX, animation, localization, promotions, distribution, and delivery… so you don’t have to!

Vitrina AI is the global sourcing hub for the entertainment supply-chain marketplace. Our mission is to enable worldwide partner and content discovery with our proprietary AI-powered search, daily market intel, and business platform.

Companies Making Headlines

IP Deals

Hottest IP [Stories, Formats, Books, Games, Podcasts] to be turned into the next big blockbuster

Paramount+ to adapt Jane Casey’s book The Killing Kind, an international bestseller, for their next series 🌎
Element Pictures, a Fremantle company, has acquired rights to the book, Bellies (A Queer Love Story) after a heated auction for the book which will be published in 2023 🇮🇪
Muck Media announced adapting Miguel Angel Vega’s memoir ‘El Fixer’ which is about fixers who escort foreign journalists into the darkest corners of the Mexican drug traders 🇺🇸
Sony Pictures Entertainment to produce the film adaptation of the stage musical Beautiful starring Daisy Edgar-Jones as Carole King 🌎
Reality format The Island to get a Danish version. Warner Bros Discovery Denmark has commissioned The Island Denmark (Øen VIP) for their Danish networks Kanal 4 and Discovery+. This local version is being produced by Banijay’s Nordik Film TV 🇩🇰

New Global Arrivals

Recent biggest releases across the globe!

Critically acclaimed, Indian National Award-winning Marathi film Goshta Eka Paithanichi released in theatres in Dec 2022 🇮🇳
French Documentary Par Coeurs Un Film Benoit Jacquot starring French actors Isabelle Huppert and Fabrice Luchini get a theatrical release in France in Dec 2022 🇫🇷
Tom Hank’s much awaited movie, A Man Called Otto, based on a Swedish novel, releases at the end of 2022 🌎
South Korean film, Broker (Cannes Film Festival: Best Actor (Song Kang-ho)) released in theatres in the US 🇺🇸
Samuel Goldwyn Award winning screenplay based film Inspector Sun y la maldición de la viuda negra comes to the theatres in Dec 2022 🌎

Production Deals

A sneak peak into recently announced production projects, worldwide

Hombale Films well known for KGF is producing their next venture in Tamil with Raghu Thatha, starring Indian National award-winning actor, Keerthy Suresh 🇮🇳
Pro-wrestler Ric Flair teams up with Peacock for the biographical documentary Woooooo! Becoming Ric Flair 🇺🇸
NBCU commissions DreamWorks Africa for Inspiration Station Africa, the first live-action series set in Africa 🇿🇦
On Stan Lee’s 100th Birthday, Disney+ announces a documentary based on the legendary artist which is scheduled to release in 2023 🌎
UK’s Channel 4 commissions 2 shows with indie Spirit Studios: a 6-part comedy series named Fundraiser and a 10-part true crime series Outsmarting 🇬🇧

Distribution Deals

Distributors securing worldwide content across different genres, languages and format types

Finnish sales agent The Yellow Affair closes multiple deals with distributors around the globe for Welby Ings’ directorial debut Punch 🇫🇮
German distribution company Global Screen closes deals with Bir Films (Turkey), and Sena(Iceland) among other distributors across the globe for Sky’s animated film The Amazing Maurice 🇩🇪 🇹🇷 🇮🇪
Rom-Com ‘The Threesome’ scores multiple Pre-Sales deals by Mister Smith Entertainment 🇬🇧
Dutch distributor, Fortissimo Films, sells the German film We Might As Well Be Dead which has done well in the film festival circuits, to global distributors 🇳🇱
UK-based distributor TVF International renews its first-look deal with Singaporean media giant Mediacorp 🇬🇧 🇸🇬

Acquisition Deals

Streamers & channels acquiring latest content across the world

Mehdi Fikri’s first feature film Avant que les flammes ne s’éteignent is pre-bought by leading broadcaster & streamers such as France TV, OCS Network and Netflix 🌎
Abacus Media sells 400 hours of programming to several broadcasters in Australia and New Zealand. The varied set of programming spans across scripted as well as unscripted shows. Buyers include Foxtel, SBS, Madman Entertainment, Warner Discovery New Zealand, TVNZ, and Acron TV 🇦🇺 🇳🇿
The Media Pioneers UK take the Portuguese animated series Boris & Rufus to Hong Kong and the Nordic region 🇬🇧 🇭🇰
Reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race picked for production of Brazilian, German, and Mexican versions by MTV 🌎
Netflix acquires Season 2 of the Japanese reality show Old Enough 🌎

Partnerships/M&A

Cross-Border Collaborations, Joint Ventures, M&A and Partnerships!

Fremantle acquires majority stake in Israeli Documentary production studio Silvio Productions 🇬🇧 🇮🇱
Banijay Americas strengthens its footprint in Brazil by acquiring a major stake in A Fabrica, the company which produces trending TV sitcoms 🇺🇸 🇧🇷
Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment, the producer behind Moonlight and The Big Short, has been bought by France’s Mediawan in a rare transatlantic deal that values the US group at more than $300mn in cash and shares 🇺🇸 🇫🇷
London & Singapore based 108 Media has acquired a stake in film and TV financing company Piccadilly Pictures (UK) 🇬🇧
UK giant BBC Studios buys stake in premium indie company Turbine Studios, producers of Munich: The Edge of War (Netflix) 🇬🇧 🇩🇪

Companies Making Headlines

Launch and Expansions of facilities, studios, services & technologies

Netflix to build one of the largest fully integrated production facilities worth $848M in New Jersey 🇺🇸
Global VFX Studio The Mill announced the next step in its international expansion with a new studio in Seoul, South Korea 🇰🇷
DNEG opens VFX Studio in Sydney Australia 🇦🇺
OTT platform ITVX, launches with 10,000 hours of programming and has replaced ITV Hub as the home of all ITV content 🇬🇧
Amazon Studios debuts AWS-Powered Virtual Production Mega Stage. It announced the opening of Stage 15, its new virtual production stage, and the formation of the new Amazon Studios Virtual Production (ASVP) department 🇺🇸

Featured New Specializations

Global innovations & breakthroughs in the Entertainment supply-chain

In the movie Avatar, Wētā FX adopted a global illumination system called Spherical Harmonics for lighting. This innovative service pre-calculates the lighting contributions for a scene and allows characters and environments to be placed within it, while also enabling the ability to move the light around them dynamically 🇳🇿
Unreal Engine 5.1 – With over 300 LED VP stages, of which 50 are high-end VFX stages and another 50 that are high-end Broadcast stages, the UE5.1 release offers some serious improvements 🌎
The new major feature of the new MetaHuman Plugin for Unreal Engine, is Mesh to MetaHuman. This enables users to take their own custom facial mesh and convert it into a MetaHuman, fully rigged and ready to animate. Characters in Death Stranding 2 will be developed with Unreal Engine 5 MetaHumans 🌎
Toon Boom is celebrating the release of their latest software versions, Storyboard Pro 22 and Harmony 22, by commissioning Mercury Filmworks to produce an animated project using these updated tools 🇨🇦
DNEG is an early adopter of TPN+, a new platform launched by the Motion Picture Association (MPA)’s Trusted Partner Network, the world’s leading content security program 🇬🇧

Localization & Post-Production

Latest updates in the world of content Localization & Post-Production

Shark Tank Season 14 gets dubbed in South Indian languages by Treasure Tower for streaming platform Voot 🇮🇳
Urban Post Production Canada provides complete post-production services for TIFF screened film Alice, Darling 🇨🇦
CD Cine Dubbing Italy dubs the second season of Attack of the Giants (Amazon Prime Video Show) for the Italian audience 🇮🇹
Formosa Group concludes post-production for season 1 of Netflix’s series BEEF 🇺🇸
Hiventy Media (Poland) delivers the first Ukrainian dubbing of Jack Ryan, Season 3 for Amazon Prime Video 🇵🇱

Animation, VFX & Virtual Production

Latest global updates in Animation, Visual Effects VFX & Virtual Production

DNEG delivers 502 VFX Shots and 179 assets for the iconic show Doctor Who 🇬🇧
BeloFX is working on VFX for much awaited HBO show The Last Of Us 🇨🇦
Famous Studios India delivers its first regional film music video via the Unreal Engine pipeline 🇮🇳
14Kalidor Media Group, Viskatoons, Xentrix Studios, and virtual world/social platform Netvrk have announced their partnership to release the animated series called Jungle Freaks – The Animated Series on the Metaverse. The series is based on the NFT project Jungle Freaks 🌎
Rodeo FX Animation, the new animation division of the award-winning visual effects company, has provided animation services for the film Canary using Houdini software 🇨🇦

FAST Channels

World of FAST channels & related market moves

UK-based broadcaster Da Vinci Media launches its FAST Channel. The same named FAST channel has been launched with SLING and TLC Channel 🇬🇧 🇺🇸
German production & distribution company Splendid Film launches its first FAST Channel on Freevee 🇩🇪
Fuse Media partners with OUTtv, the world’s first LGBTQ+ network to launch a FAST channel OUTtv Proud on their platform. OUTtv Proud will cater to the audience with some original programming with the top as well as up-coming talent 🇺🇸
German streaming service waipu.tv and sports platform DAZN come together to launch a new DAZN-branded FAST channel. Named DAZN FAST, the channel is the sports streamer’s first free channel 🇩🇪
Video API and infrastructure platform Zype assists WMX to launch its first FAST Channel exclusively on the Roku Channel 🇺🇸

Cancelled Deal/Shows

Recently cancelled!

The WarnerMedia and Discovery merger which may lead to one streaming platform for the company, has seen multiple shows being cancelled from HBO. A few cancelled shows are Raised by Wolves, Made for Love, Time Traveler’s Wife, Gentleman Jack, Close Enough, Gordita Chronicles, Chad, At Home With Amy Sedaris, Camping, Vinyl, Mrs. Fletcher, Run, and Here and Now 🌎
DC Extended Universe (DCEU) cancels Wonder Woman 3 Man of Steel 2 and Aquaman to revamp and recast the franchise movies 🇺🇸
Acclaimed show As We See It Canceled After One Season on Amazon 🌎
Starz has canceled Dangerous Liaisons after one season — despite that the historical drama was renewed in Nov 2022 🇺🇸
Netflix’s The Midnight Club has been canceled after one season. The cancellation comes on the heels of executive producers Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy exiting their overall deal at Netflix for a new pact with Amazon Studios 🌎