“If we want European stories to keep their texture, humour and ambiguity, producers and writers based here must own the IP that carries those stories abroad”
– Ahead of the launch of the new programme, Cineuropa spoke to the head of studies about why IP ownership has become increasingly important for European producers
The Erich Pommer Institut (EPI) is launching IP Development for Creative Professionals, a new residential workshop dedicated to intellectual property development across film, television, publishing and gaming. Taking place from 17-19 September in Potsdam, Germany, the programme will be led by Emmy-nominated producer Nuno Bernardo, founder of beActive Entertainment and creator of the internationally successful cross-media property Sofia’s Diary. Bernardo tells us more about the workshop.
Cineuropa: The financing chain that European producers have relied on for years is under pressure at every link. Does IP ownership offer a structural answer to that problem, and what is at stake culturally if European producers fail to act?
Nuno Bernardo: What stays valuable is owning something. If you produce a series or a film and do not keep the IP, you have a credit, not an asset. The day the show stops airing, your balance sheet is empty. If you own the IP, you have something that can be relicensed, adapted and extended into books, games, formats or sequels. The cultural stakes make this even more urgent. A strong piece of European IP, properly built and properly extended, reaches millions across several years. The alternative is having European cultural specifics filtered through US IP. If we want European stories to keep their texture, humour and ambiguity, producers and writers based here must own the IP that carries those stories abroad.
You have personally made the shift from single-format projects to a sustainable IP ownership model, most notably with Sofia’s Diary. What was the moment you realised that thinking beyond the individual project was a necessity?
The moment came when the audience told me what the project was, and it was not what I had built. We launched Sofia’s Diary in 2003 as a short-form online series in Portugal. Within months, people wanted her diary in book form, wanted to text her and wanted her on television. I had designed a show; the audience had received a character and a world. Once I understood that, the question stopped being “What is the next season of this show?” and became “What is the next product in this world?” The first time a foreign broadcaster called about format rights, I understood that the asset was not the episodes. It was the character, the world and the relationship the audience had built with both.
Bearing in mind US studio budgets, IP development might sound daunting to smaller European producers. Why should they still pursue it?
The budget comparison is a trap. US studio IP is industrial, expensive to build and increasingly homogeneous. The opportunity for a European producer is not to compete on budget; it is to compete on specificity: local stories, cultural texture and voices that cannot be replicated from outside. Independent producers can also test an IP cheaply first — in books, podcasts, audio drama or short-form digital content — before committing to more expensive formats. Big studios often cannot work this way, because their overheads make small experiments impossible.
What are the most common mistakes that European creatives make when developing their IP?
Four come up repeatedly. First, confusing a transmedia approach with marketing. Posting a teaser on Instagram is not extending the IP; building a podcast that lives inside the world of the series and adds canonical story elements is. Second, ignoring the legal structure until it is too late. If the rights are split among several parties, and there is no clear chain of title and no plan for derivative works, by the time someone wants to license the format or adapt the project, the rights are a mess and the deal collapses.
Third, falling in love with one format. If a film producer treats the project purely as a film until the movie is made, then they will wonder why nothing more stems from it. Fourth, treating the audience as eyeballs, rather than as a community. You do not capture an audience once; you must build a relationship that brings them back.
The workshop brings together filmmakers, game developers, publishers and licensing professionals in the same room. Why is that cross-sector mix so important?
Each of these sectors has solved a problem that the others are still working through. Game developers understand how to build worlds that people return to over long periods. Publishers understand reader loyalty and back-catalogue value. Licensing professionals think in terms of portfolios and long-term exploitation. Putting these people in the same room is faster than learning each discipline separately. Three days of cross-sector conversation will save participants months of mistakes, and the peer network that forms across sectors is usually the most durable outcome of any well-designed workshop.
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For those wishing to learn more before committing, EPI is offering two free online information sessions with Nuno Bernardo and the EPI team: on 11 June 2026 and 18 August 2026. Further information, registration and scholarship applications are available here.
