Young adult shows are red hot, but the producer of the Culpables movies, which have been huge streaming hits, has said it took years to find a buyer for the seminal YA projects.
Pokeepsie is the Banijay Entertainment production company that made the Culpables trilogy: Culpa Mia, Culpa Tuya and Culpa Nuestra. Prime Video took the leap, greenlit the films, and said earlier this year that the Mercedes Ron book adaptations with Nicole Wallace and Gabriel Guevara have been watched by over 100 million viewers.
Carolina Bang, CEO of Pokeepsie, recalled pitching YA before it was in fashion. “We moved into young adult, and now everybody is doing young adult, but five years ago, it was impossible.”
With buyers wary, the Culpables took years to get off the ground, she added: “I spent three years trying to sell Culpables. Nobody wanted it at the very beginning, trust me.”
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A raft of YA movies and series have followed the Culpables movies, with Spain a hot-spot and new projects including Pokeepsie’s latest for Prime Video, Drawn Together (Enfrentados), which went straight to the top of the streamer’s chart upon release.
Bang was speaking at the IberSeries industry confab in Madrid. There was no update on the possibility of another Culpables movie after Ron published a fourth instalment in the series earlier this year.
Banijay Scripted After All3Media Merger
Steve Matthews, Head of Scripted, Creative, Banijay Entertainment, was also on stage and spoke about prospects for the business following its merger with All3Media. Deadline has covered the personnel changes and exits since the deal. Matthews was asked if this kind of mega-merger can have a negative effect on creativity.
“The answer is no. I don’t have any concerns at all about this at Banijay because I don’t think anything changes.”
He added: “There’s a lot of work to do in the UK,” noting the number of labels based in the country. “That’s going to be a busy place.”
He also surveyed the current landscape in the scripted TV biz. “I know it’s very difficult out there, I know that contraction means that there’s a lot less work to go around,” he said.
“I think where it’s going at the moment is forcing quality up … good shows will get made. Shows that are manufactured to be commercial will not, so love your show.”