Variety; All3Media CEO Jane Turton Discusses What Drove RedBird IMI in Its $1.45 Billion Purchase of TV Giant: ‘Opportunity for Growth,’ Scale and Portfolio

Story from Variety:

In one of the most anticipated keynotes held at the 40th edition of Mipcom in Cannes, All3Media CEO Jane Turton discussed what drove Jeff Zucker and Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird IMI in its $1.45 billion purchase of the TV production powerhouse behind “The Traitors.”

“I think it’s definitely the IP. People want to see growth,” Turton said at a fireside conversation with Variety’s co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton at Mipcom in Cannes on Oct. 21. “They want to see something that’s been consistently growing, that the management team understands margins and all of those things. And then I think the range, the scale, the portfolio, that breadth, it was appealing.”

Turton suggested RedBird IMI also saw an “opportunity for growth” with All3Media. “Because if you think about it, you don’t buy something to watch it plateau or worse…”

The executive, who became CEO of All3Media in 2015 and grew its portfolio from 19 to 40 production labels, admitted that the sales process had been “exhausting.”

“It’s a lot nicer being out of the process. We’re very confident that we’ve got a narrative and a long-range plan that gets us to the next day.”

Turton discussed the strategy she has implemented since taking the helm of the company, and discussed trends in scripted and unscripted, citing the international track record of “The Traitors,’ the Emmy-winning U.K. competition series which has yielded 30 versions to date and has just been renewed for two more season on Peacock with host Alan Cumming.

Although All3Media is best known for its unscripted hits such as “The Traitors” and BAFTA award-winning reality competition series “Squid Game: The Challenge,” Turton said the banner was aiming to ramp up its scripted output. “We’ve found that there are places where we want to get stronger, gaps in our portfolio,” said Turton. “We’ve added in scripted considerably and we’re continuing to do that. Actually, the announcements we’ll be making over the next few months/years, may well include quite a few scripted, units and labels.”

She pointed out streamers’ push into original content several years ago had “given a great big injection of adrenaline to certain sub-genres within scripted.” “Big global platforms” like Netflix have “created an opportunity that I suspect just simply wouldn’t have been there before,” Turton said.

“Is there a place for domestic drama? I think the answer is, ‘Absolutely yes!’ I think there’s a difference between global and universal. I suspect it’s more than just semantics. My personal view is very good local drama can have universal appeal.”

She also cited All3Media’s high-end theatrical documentaries like Ernest Shackleton’s “Endurance” which premiered at the BFI London Film Festival and came out in cinemas in the U.K., as an example of an unscripted title that had strong narrative elements.

The documentary, which was produced using AI tools, will soon to stream on Disney+ and follows the explorer’s legendary Antarctic expedition and charts the mission to find the wrecked ship in 2022.

“I think it’s all about the brilliant storytelling,” Turton said, adding that it’s “an example of a documentary that no one would have predicted.”

“The filmmakers had access through the BFI, National Geographic Film Society, to original footage from the original trip in 1914. They’ve created this phenomenal documentary with the original footage, colored because it was black and white, and will the new footage from 2022, and some very clever AI, where they took small samples of Shackleton and his crew’s voices, and they’ve now used the AI to voice them reading their diaries that they wrote at the time.”

The keynote was part of the “C-Suite Conversations” series being presented across the opening afternoon of the market in partnership with Variety. The other interviewees taking part in this series are Channing Dungey, chairman and CEO, Warner Bros. Television Group, and Tony Vinciquerra, chairman and CEO, Sony Pictures Entertainment.