Freemantle Awarded With Hollywood Reporter’s First “International Producer of the Year Award”
The ceremony will take place on September 3rd, in Venice.
The Hollywood Reporter will grant Independent London-based company Freemantle its inaugural “International Producer of the Year” award. It will present the honor at a gala event, on September 3rd, at the Venice Film Festival where the company will bring five highly anticipated titles: Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, starring Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo; Sofia Coppola’s Elvis-era biopic Priscilla, Stefano Sollima’s crime drama Adagio, with Italian stars Pierfrancesco Favino (The Traitor) and Toni Servillo (The Great Beauty); Enea, Pietro Castellitto’s follow-up to his breakout debut, The Predators; and Saverio Costanzo’s Finally Dawn, featuring Lily James, Willem Dafoe and newcomer Rebecca Antonaci.
Fremantle is an independent company, but it is far from small. The company generated over $2.5 billion in revenue in the past year alone. Since 2021, Fremantle has been actively acquiring other companies, spending over $270 million on 11 different acquisitions. Despite flying under the radar, Fremantle has become one of the leading art-house and specialty cinema producers worldwide. The group’s Chief Operating Officer, Italian manager Andrea Scrosati, likes to say Fremantle has “film in its blood.”
Ten years ago, when Fremantle started out, the company focused on fiction productions.
Since then, they have acquired European companies, such as Miso Film in Denmark (known for producing successful shows like Wallander and HBO’s The Investigation) in 2013, as well as Italy’s Wildside (known for The Young Pope) in 2015.
The secret of its success relies on its business model.
Scrosati reveals that with every production, Fremantle manages to find or create a way to bring it to completion: “It’s not like working for a very structured, global or even national player that is vertically integrated, where you maybe get a lot of money upfront, but it is evident how your film will get made and where it will end up,” he says. “You do a deal with Netflix, your film will land on Netflix, which is fine. But our pitch to talent is exactly the opposite. We say: If you come to us with your project, we will invest to make it the strongest project in the world, and then, together, we’ll go out and find the right home for it.”
This project-first, model-second approach has created new ways to finance and distribute indie film, pointing to a possible future for the struggling industry. “If you are willing to take a risk, there are hundreds of different business models you can use to make an independent movie these days,” says Scrosati. “You can sell it to a global streamer. You can deal with a studio distributor and take off separate territories. You can presell to a domestic buyer like A24 and then go out territory by territory worldwide. If producers are willing to take risks, there are all these possibilities to make independent movies.”
After Venice, the company has an upcoming slate featuring Conclave, Edward Berger’s follow-up to Oscar sensation All Quiet on the Western Front; Without Blood, Angelina Jolie’s latest directorial effort, starring Salma Hayek; and Queer, Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novel, starring Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Share:
Related Posts
The ceremony will take place on September 3rd, in Venice.
The Hollywood Reporter will grant Independent London-based company Freemantle its inaugural “International Producer of the Year” award. It will present the honor at a gala event, on September 3rd, at the Venice Film Festival where the company will bring five highly anticipated titles: Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, starring Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo; Sofia Coppola’s Elvis-era biopic Priscilla, Stefano Sollima’s crime drama Adagio, with Italian stars Pierfrancesco Favino (The Traitor) and Toni Servillo (The Great Beauty); Enea, Pietro Castellitto’s follow-up to his breakout debut, The Predators; and Saverio Costanzo’s Finally Dawn, featuring Lily James, Willem Dafoe and newcomer Rebecca Antonaci.
Fremantle is an independent company, but it is far from small. The company generated over $2.5 billion in revenue in the past year alone. Since 2021, Fremantle has been actively acquiring other companies, spending over $270 million on 11 different acquisitions. Despite flying under the radar, Fremantle has become one of the leading art-house and specialty cinema producers worldwide. The group’s Chief Operating Officer, Italian manager Andrea Scrosati, likes to say Fremantle has “film in its blood.”
Ten years ago, when Fremantle started out, the company focused on fiction productions.
Since then, they have acquired European companies, such as Miso Film in Denmark (known for producing successful shows like Wallander and HBO’s The Investigation) in 2013, as well as Italy’s Wildside (known for The Young Pope) in 2015.
The secret of its success relies on its business model.
Scrosati reveals that with every production, Fremantle manages to find or create a way to bring it to completion: “It’s not like working for a very structured, global or even national player that is vertically integrated, where you maybe get a lot of money upfront, but it is evident how your film will get made and where it will end up,” he says. “You do a deal with Netflix, your film will land on Netflix, which is fine. But our pitch to talent is exactly the opposite. We say: If you come to us with your project, we will invest to make it the strongest project in the world, and then, together, we’ll go out and find the right home for it.”
This project-first, model-second approach has created new ways to finance and distribute indie film, pointing to a possible future for the struggling industry. “If you are willing to take a risk, there are hundreds of different business models you can use to make an independent movie these days,” says Scrosati. “You can sell it to a global streamer. You can deal with a studio distributor and take off separate territories. You can presell to a domestic buyer like A24 and then go out territory by territory worldwide. If producers are willing to take risks, there are all these possibilities to make independent movies.”
After Venice, the company has an upcoming slate featuring Conclave, Edward Berger’s follow-up to Oscar sensation All Quiet on the Western Front; Without Blood, Angelina Jolie’s latest directorial effort, starring Salma Hayek; and Queer, Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novel, starring Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
