EXCLUSIVE: This could be a landmark moment in international TV distribution.
France’s Mediawan Rights has launched a metaverse for buyers to access new catalog releases and connect with sales execs.
Distributors face increasing competition as international production and sales markets expand and become more competitive every year. They are being pressured to find better ways for acquisitions and coproductions executives.
Over the years, we’ve seen the development of digital rights management systems and digital trading platforms, and the Covid pandemic resulted in a shift to web-connected dealmaking that’s persisted despite markets reopening. Mediawan’s response to current market conditions has been to enter the Web3 world, though it will also still have a significant physical presence at Mipcom in two weeks.
The company’s virtual space, Metawan, will give users a choice of five rooms to explore: Documentary, Drama (split into Francophone and International), Unscripted and Animation. In each are new titles being launched at Mipcom in two weeks’ time.
Programs available to access include Rai Fiction and Eliseo Entertainment’s StrandedEight-part drama series about a private ski resort, which is cut off from the outside by a large avalanche. Guests soon discover that their predicament is part a much larger system that could explode at any minute.
NL Films’ Dutch title The Golden Hour;Darknet Shores(White Lion Films/Mediawan),The Dirty Black Bag(Palomar/Mediawan), Euforia(Veranda/Mediawan),Gaïaland(Imagissime /Mediawan),Barnz Kids(La Station/Mediawan),Miraculous – Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir(Method Animation/ZAG/Mediawan) andThe Little Prince and Friends(Method Animation/Mediawan).
Valérie Vleeschhouwer, Managing Director of Mediawan Rights: “The distribution business has constantly been reinventing itself and integrating new skills over the last few years. We are proud to be the innovative with this new digital tool, which represents real added value for Mediawan Rights and its content.”
This news comes just a month after Mediawan Rights sold Prime Video drama series for buzzy sales. Zorro. The reboot, which Secuoya Studios is producing in Spain, is the first live-action version of the masked vigilante’s story in two decades.
Mediawan Rights is the sales arm of Mediawan, which owns a fleet of European production operations such as Lagardère Studios, Makever and the French TV division of EuropaCorp and has a majority of the UK’s Drama Republic through a deal struck through its Mediawan & Leonine Studios venture. Mediawan also holds 25% of Leonine.
Mediawan is well-known as the producer of the original. Contact My Agent (Pour Dix Cent), though it doesn’t sell the rights internationally.