Studiocanal is heading into a new era. Not only is the Paddington producer coming off the back of a banner year at the global box office, with its titles having grossed close to $300M in 2024 (up 94% year-on-year), but in December its parent company Canal+ Group made a headline-grabbing debut on the London Stock Exchange after it was spun off from Vincent Bolloré’s French media conglomerate Vivendi.
While the launch was well below the £6.7BN ($8.3BN) valuation Vivendi had hoped for – Canal+ floated on the LSE with an initial market value of £2.5BN ($3.1BN) – internally, the IPO (which marked the largest debut on the LSE since 2022) is viewed as a promising next step for the company as it continues the growth trajectory it has been on across the last two decades.
In addition to navigating controversial local shifts in media windowing on its home turf, the French film industry’s biggest financial backer is eyeing an expansion in Africa through an increase in its 45.2% stake local platform MultiChoice, a move that will effectively double its subscriber base. Studiocanal is also planning its next moves in the Paddington franchise, which will include another feature film as well as a TV series and stage show.
It will continue to invest heavily in development and production finance – it deploys €200M ($206M) per year in film and television productions – with upcoming feature titles including WWII title Pressure, starring Andrew Scott and Brendan Fraser, Glen Powell revenge thriller Huntington and James McAvoy starrer Control. On the TV side, it’s drawing on its huge library of IP to reboot projects such as The Wicker Man and The Avengers. This week, Studiocanal will launch sales at EFM on a reboot of slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night from its new genre label Sixth Dimension.
IPO & Windowing
“We saw this as a great opportunity,” Studiocanal CEO and Canal+ Group Deputy CEO Anna Marsh tells Deadline in a rare interview at the company’s Paris headquarters. “The group is in a true development phase and the London Stock Exchange listing will enable us to use stock as currency to expand as well as opening up opportunities that we simply didn’t have before.”
Studiocanal currently operates in France, the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Poland, Australia and New Zealand. It invests in around 80 releases per year, of which 30 are self-produced. It holds stakes in 19 production companies, including wholly owning British TV indie Red, with minority stakes in Andrew Rona and Alex Heineman’s The Picture Company, Benedict Cumberbatch’s SunnyMarch, UK outfit Urban Myth Films and Spain’s Bambú Productions. It also has offices in L.A., New York and Beijing.
Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse in Studiocanal’s ‘Back to Black’
Dean Rogers/Focus Features
The company has worked with all the major streamers across the years, in different capacities. In 2021, it co-produced an adaptation of Matt Haig’s book A Boy Called Christmas with Netflix while a few years later, Studiocanal fully financed The Picture Company production Role Play with Kaley Cuoco and David Oyelowo, which Amazon Prime Video took U.S. rights and many offshore territories.
Through its Spanish production company Bambú, it produced Now and Then, the first Spanish-language TV series for Apple+ while UK outfit Red is behind many of Harlan Coben’s TV series on Netflix such as Fool Me Once and The Woods. Hulu took U.S. rights to Paris Has Fallen, the Studiocanal series based on Gerard Butler’s Has Fallen film franchise. In France, Netflix had the second window for its local hit Beating Hearts after Canal+’s pay-TV window.
“Every single one of these platforms have their editorial or creative idiosyncrasies and when we put a film or TV series together, we know which door we should knock on in terms of the story we’re trying to tell,” says Marsh. “Canal+ is definitely complimentary. Some of the movies we can make with a platform but also release in our territories directly where other times we are quite experimental.
“Nothing precludes us, for example, of releasing a movie for Netflix in theaters and having it on Netflix afterwards or selling to a free TV channel. You just have to be open-minded, and I think these days platforms understand that partnerships are really important, and that production is a slow and expensive process. Working with partners, you can be more agile, quicker and deploy less capital. But because we’re a streamer ourselves, we certainly don’t close the doors to any of those partners.”
French media chronology remains a hot button topic as global streamers have shaken up the landscape since their entry into the country. A few weeks ago, Disney+ signed a landmark deal in France, committing it to investment obligations in French and European works for a shorter release window of nine months after theatrical release (against a current window of 17 months). Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada has been vocal about what this will mean for the French landscape, and said Canal+ will look to trim its windows across both its pay-TV offering and streaming services.
“Granting Disney the broadcast of films nine months after their release for €35 million per year, where Canal+ now pays €220 million for a six-month broadcast, mechanically degrades the value of cinema,” said Saada in an op-ed in Le Monde last week.
“Selling access to the first operating windows thus jeopardizes the first pillar of the model, the financing of cinema,” he continued. “Canal+, its main financier, will therefore be forced to adapt and reduce its investments. This new situation also risks making a crucial financing window disappear by leading to the merger of two operating windows, that of pay television and that of platforms, which are now separate.”
Growth in Africa and beyond
While the pan-European giant doesn’t have direct distribution in the U.S., Marsh indicated that the company is not ruling it out. “The U.S. is a really important territory, particularly when it comes to the theatrical market, and it’s certainly one that we’re keeping an eye on,” she says. The IPO will give the company more wind in its sails and “growth will certainly be organic and through external opportunities.”
More immediately, Marsh says the group is looking to expand in Africa with a focus on English-speaking countries. Canal+, which has had a strong presence in French-speaking Africa for decades, currently owns a 45.2% stake in the continent’s leading platform MultiChoice. “There are ongoing discussions to increase our ownership in that company,” she says.
Presently, Canal+ Group’s pay-TV platform operates in 52 countries, with more than 26.4 million subscribers, of which two-thirds are from outside of France. Adding MultiChoice’s 20.1 million (mostly English-speaking) subscribers, would mean the multi-billion acquisition would place the French company among the top five biggest entertainment companies in the world and the biggest outside of the U.S.
“It’s an incredible opportunity, not only for the Canal+ Group, but also for Studiocanal when it comes to our growth and production strategy,” says Marsh. “Just being able to tap into that incredible English-speaking subscriber base really opens things up.”
‘Spinners’ is a co-production between MultiChoice’s Showmax and Canal+
Showmax
She stresses that “investing in local content is really important” to the group, noting that the move will allow them to tap into South Africa’s local industry. Canal+ and MultiChoice co-produced TV series Spinners, which Studiocanal distributed around the world. The company also recently shot John Patton Ford’s revenge thriller Huntington, starring Glen Powell, Ed Harris and Margaret Qualley, on location in South Africa, using local crew and tapping into the nation’s 25% plus tax incentive.
There are plans to make “many more projects” in the country, says Marsh, and the company is already in development on “one massive South African story” which it is making as a feature film and will announce soon.
Canal+ has also been aggressively investing in Southeast Asian streamer Viu, where it owns a 36.8% stake, and also has a 29.3% stake in Swedish streamer Viaplay.
There are also plans to move more into the elevated genre space. Last year, the company tapped Jed Benedict to head up new in-house genre label Sixth Dimension. Reporting to Studiocanal EVP of Global Production Ron Halpern, Benedict will look to identify high concept horror, thriller and science fiction films that the group can develop, produce, acquire and distribute. The label recently announced its first title, a reboot of 1984 slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night, which the company will distribute in its own territories and shop to buyers at EFM.
In addition to Benedict, Studiocanal made a number of key hires in 2024, including M-K Kennedy as Executive Managing Director for TV Series and Isabelle Pain as Head of Global Acquisitions and Analytics. Anne Chérel was promoted to Chief Commercial Officer while Chloé Marquet was promoted to Head of International Sales for Films and TV series and Françoise Guyonnet was upped to CEO of Studiocanal Kids and Family
Banner year
Studiocanal’s 2024 bumper year was buoyed by a raft of its own productions: Paddington in Peru has taken $104M globally and has yet to open in major markets such as the U.S., Germany, France and South Korea; Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh starrer We Live In Time is closing in on $65M; Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black earned $15M in the UK; Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley starrer Wicked Little Letters took $12M in the UK; while French production Beating Hearts took a huge $30M at the local box office, marking the company’s highest-grossing film in France to date. Its global box office tally of nearly $300M in 2024 is four times higher than compared to 2021 ($75M) and nearly double of 2023’s takings ($155M).
Paddington is a prime example of how the group can exploit IP. Studiocanal fully-financed the $130M third instalment of the franchise. While not a critical hit compared to its predecessor Paddington 2 (which has a score of 99% on Rotten Tomatoes), the film was the highest opening of the franchise when it was released in November. “There will be a fourth film,” says Marsh. “We’re thinking about the next movies and we’re working on a new TV series as well as the stage show musical with Sonia Friedman and Eliza Lumley.”
Investing in development is paramount to the company, with Studiocanal veteran Halpern playing a key role in nurturing projects from script to screen.
“When you’ve got an excellent script that attracts excellent cast, then you’re going to find partners quicker and have a higher chance of getting the movie made,” she says, highlighting We Live in Time as a prime example. “Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh agreed to make this movie quite quickly because of Nick Payne’s fantastic script.”
With its major productions, U.S. partners are key. It partnered with Focus for Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black, Sony for Paddington in Peru and A24 for We Live in Time. “We definitely try to find a U.S. partner before the cameras roll because it helps us at the final stages of development to nail our story and make sure we can resonate with an American audience,” she says. “Often we come to a U.S. partner when it’s fully packaged, but sometimes we can go and cast the final pieces together and then what’s really important is the dating.”
She continues: “More and more we’re seeing that you really need to be creating an event that is global and worldwide, rather than a stop and start where Europe may release a movie, and you have to wait a long time before it comes out in the U.S.”
‘Beating Hearts’
International rise
Marsh has been with Studiocanal since 2008 and has earned a reputation for being one of the savviest European execs in the business. A New Zealand native, she moved to France after university where she attended the prestigious HEC Paris Business School, whose notable alumni include Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault and former French President François Hollande. “My dream was to work in the culture business in Paris, because I had such an admiration for the French passion for culture and cinema,” says Marsh.
She started her career at French TV production outfit Tele Images before moving to TF1 International where she worked across La Vie En Rose, which saw Marion Cotillard earn a Best Actress Oscar for her turn as iconic French singer Edith Piaf.
“That was a real opportunity to understand how things work, the ins and outs of the business and the fact that non-English movies can travel and have potential to resonate worldwide on the big screen,” she says.
But for Marsh, the end goal was to work at Canal+. At the time, Canal+’s Studiocanal banner was ramping up is overseas acquisitions, buying UK distributor Optimum Releasing in 2006 followed by German production-distribution banner Kinowelt.
“It seemed to be the most globally facing company, even back then, amongst the all the French studios,” she says. “You could just feel this real pull towards the international globalization of Studiocanal, which fitted my career perfectly at the time.”
She joined Studiocanal as VP of International Sales to Head and quickly rose up the ranks to International Sales and Head of International Distribution Strategy, working across titles such as Atom Egoyan’s Chloe, the first international production fully financed by Studiocanal, as well as Paddington and Liam Neeson starrer Non-Stop.
“It was an incredible opportunity to work on the sales side but also understand the ins and outs of distribution, picking the right dates, coming up with a media plan and deploying P&A dollars, working with our third-party partners in conjunction with the Studiocanal territories to establish a global distribution strategy,” she says.
Marsh credits Saada as being a big supporter as she climbed the ranks at Studiocanal from EVP of International Distribution to MD of Studiocanal UK and then CEO of Studiocanal in December 2019. Her tenure across different parts at the organization has, she says, “really enabled me to identify the challenges and support the teams to achieve their goals.”
Back catalog
Studiocanal sits on one of the biggest and most diverse film libraries in the world, with nearly 9,000 titles in the catalog, ranging from classics such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, Carole Reed’s The Third Man and Humphrey Bogard and Katharine Hepburn starrer The African Queen to franchises such as The Avengers, Rambo and Bridget Jones.
Being able to tap into this wealth of IP and find stories that can be adapted for modern audiences is a key part of the gameplan moving forward. A remake of library title Escape From New York is still in the works with 20thCentury Studios and The Picture Company, with Studiocanal retaining distribution rights in several territories.
Huntington, which is being produced with Graham Broadbent and Pete Czernin’s Blueprint Pictures (a frequent collaborator with Studiocanal) with A24 releasing in the U.S., is an adaptation of Robert Hamer’s British crime black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, which sits within the Studiocanal catalog.
Likewise, Robin Hardy’s horror classic The Wicker Man, which is also owned by the group, is being made into a TV series with Urban Myth Films and Andy Serkis and Jonathan Cavendish’s The Imaginarium. There’s also a reboot of iconic 1960s television series The Avengers in the works with Industry writers Mickey Down and Konrad Kay.
“We go above and beyond to restore our movies, re-release them and take them to a younger audience,” says Marsh. “We’re always thinking about remakes or reboots or spinoffs and how we can sell movies. There are so many clients around the world from the platforms to free-TV channels or pay-TV platforms to the distributors themselves, so we make sure no stone is left unturned, and we invest a lot into catalog sales teams so that they have a real depth of knowledge of every single market and what every client is wanting.”
For Marsh and the group, the ambition is to continue to support talent and make movies that work for subscribers in France and the Canal+ Group across Europe, Africa and beyond.
“We’re looking to grow with the group and make sure we are working together in the best possible way, optimizing synergies that can create event cinema and add value to the group,” she says. “It used to feel like Studiocanal was its own island in the Canal+ group. But now we’re definitely part of the same continent and we’re working hand in hand to build the company, to tell better stories and to identify the best talent and help each other out when needed. And when that translates through to revenues and profits, then everybody’s winning.”
