– The head of the Series Mania Festival’s professional sidebar, unspooling in Lille between 24 and 26 March, sheds light on the state of the series industry
(© Chloé Leclercq)
We met with Francesco Capurro, the director of the Series Mania Forum (running 24 – 26 March – read our news), which is the professional sidebar unspooling within the 9th Series Mania Festival (which kicked off on Friday – article) in Lille.
Cineuropa: The Series Mania Forum is attracting growing numbers of professionals. Is this very positive trend a result of a slight contraction in the market which is pushing people to look for co-production partners?
Francesco Capurro: We received around 400 projects for our Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, which has been a pretty standard number for us in recent years, but we’re also welcoming increasing numbers of international delegations and, globally speaking, more and more participants. It all goes to prove that professionals need to find new ways of financing their projects, especially in a context where it’s harder to obtain funding from networks and streamers who’ve reduced their investment volume slightly, compared to 3 or 4 years ago. But the overall picture is pretty positive.
This year’s Lille Dialogues will focus on new alliances. What form might these take?
There’s a growing number of transnational projects. At a time when historic American domination is less keenly felt, there might be an opportunity to redesign alliances with new actors in Asia, Canada, Latin America and other regions around the world. There does seem to be an appetite for it, as demonstrated by the heightened presence of Japanese participants in the Forum, for example, and our first delegation from Singapore, the resurgence of Taiwan, and Korea which is our focus country this year, the strong Canadian presence, etc. There’s a desire and a need to create co-productions, or for global discussions, at any rate. These can take the form of IP adaptations, since Asians are highly skilled in that domain. There’s a huge pool of works with the potential to be adapted into series and a strong desire for international cooperation in an increasingly global market, thanks not least to platforms who have operations all over the world and audiences who are fairly open to series coming from abroad, as proven by the worldwide success of Squid Game and other works. There’s also an increasing number of local productions which do really well in domestic markets. These two phenomena exist alongside one another: the current market encompasses fairly local productions and highly ambitious, international productions with global potential.
What trends are you seeing in terms of genres?
Thrillers, and crime-based works more generally speaking, are still the most popular genre, but it’s such a huge genre that it allows for a wide range of approaches. Lately, what broadcasters like and what’s working well with audiences are “light crimes”: thrillers which aren’t too violent. It’s a real market trend and we noticed it in the projects we were sent. Producers are also conscious of declining budgets, so there are fewer period drama projects and science-fiction projects. There are also fewer mega expensive projects, formats are shorter – between 4 and 8 episodes – and series sometimes only consist of a single season. But there’s great creativity, great diversity, and various projects attempting to explore subjects which speak more to younger audiences, about screen addiction, influencers, etc.
What’s the situation with these young audiences?
Younger generations are starting to move away from traditional screens, so the challenge is more industry wide. The youngest viewers are turning to shorter formats, to YouTube or to micro-dramas. Traditional series, 52-minute formats, etc., aren’t necessarily what they watch the most. So we have to think about how to get them interested using other kinds of stories and narratives. We’ll have debates in the Forum, especially on micro-dramas, and Justine Ryst will talk about how to turn YouTube into a partner for promoting and broadcasting series.
Professionals seem mostly interested in getting YouTube to contribute towards funding audiovisual creation.
It’s a real issue, but we can’t ignore the reality either: according to the 2025 European Media Industry Outlook, people spend almost as much time watching YouTube as they spend watching SVOD across Europe. An event like ours has to open the floor to everyone and allow people to express their different viewpoints.
What’s your view on the fairly major change of the same content being broadcast on multiple platforms?
Broadcasters see it as an opportunity to grow their audiences, but you don’t necessarily get the same audience types watching TF1 or Netflix, for example. They realised that instead of competing against one another, they could actually complement each other. We’ve also seen that series broadcast on linear TV and then on platforms can achieve good audience ratings through both broadcasting approaches, they don’t necessarily reach the same audiences at the same time. So it’s really interesting, but producers’ associations, in particular, are wary of this phenomenon because we have to make sure it doesn’t limit the potential for financing works. It poses a problem when a work funded by a broadcaster, for example, subsequently finds itself on a platform which hasn’t contributed towards funding the work before that point, etc. It’s a complex issue that needs to be examined on a case-by-case basis, but it’s a trend we’re seeing more and more frequently, and it will be difficult to go back. Obviously, we have to find the right regulatory framework which suits everyone, but I think we’ll see increasing numbers of works on different platforms, different apps, etc.
Series Mania Forum was an informal market, but since last year you’ve been organising Buyers Upfront. Is this a prelude to creating an official market?
Historically, we work to promote co-production, and that remains our USP. 40% of our participants are producers. But it’s true that we’ve welcomed growing numbers of exhibitors, over the years, many of whom are distribution firms and sales agents. There’s also the Coming Next From line-up, which reveal series from different key territories around the world, which are ready to be sold worldwide. Last year, we created Buyers Upfront when MIPTV came to a halt, in order to position ourselves favourably in distribution and sales too. We’re advancing on two fronts: in co-production on the one hand and in sales and buying finished programmes on the other. They’re two complementary approaches. Our aim is to turn our festival into a fully rounded event, so that people working in our sector can discover new talent, develop co-productions, and buy finished series. Moreover, the festival itself is a wonderful showcase of unreleased series, some of which – like Empathie last year – were discovered here and have gone on to enjoy great success.
(Translated from French)
