EXCLUSIVE: This could be a first for the international TV distribution world.
France’s Mediawan Rights has launched a metaverse for buyers to access new catalog releases and connect with sales execs.
As the international production and sales markets continue grow and competition gets fiercer each year, distributors are under pressure to find better ways to reach acquisitions and co-productions 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 Stranded, an eight-part drama series about an exclusive ski resort that becomes cut off from the outside world after a massive avalanche traps its guests inside and they soon discover their predicament is part of a more complex mechanism that could explode at any moment.
NL Films’ Dutch title The Golden Hour; Darknet Shores (White Lion Films/Mediawan), That 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) and The 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.”
The news comes just over a month after Mediawan Rights boarded sales for buzzy upcoming Prime Video drama series 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 owns 25% of Leonine.
Mediawan is best known as owning the producers behind the original Call My Agent (Pour Dix Cent), though it doesn’t sell the rights internationally.
