Right now, hundreds of TV program buyers are in the air flying to Los Angeles for the annual LA Screenings. It might not be the all-singing, all-dancing party week of yesteryear, but buying sources we’ve spoken to for this report head of the studio get-togethers have been stressing its importance as they attempt to navigate increasingly fragmented and complicated pictures in their home markets.
While there are more industry events than ever, with the London TV Screenings in particular stealing others thunder, there is a broad optimism from those heading to the Californian sunshine (and the darkened cinemas on the studio lots). On the back of a hectic Upfronts week, the network schedules are becoming clearer, but what breaks out internationally is still guesswork.
Donald Trump’s tariffs talk has added extra confusion to the mix, and the aftershocks of both the pandemic and the Hollywood strikes are still being felt globally. Still, it’s fair to say this is the time to shine for Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount Global, Fox Entertainment Global, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures Television and Disney – not to mention the many indies at the associated LA Screenings market, which has been held at the Roosevelt Hotel on the Sunset Strip this week.
“There’s definitely a buzz around the upcoming slates, and it’s an important moment for us to assess how new U.S. content is evolving and where it might align with our local strategies,” says Nina Lorgen Flemmen, International Content Director at Norway’s TV2. “The LA Screenings are not just about individual shows, they’re about identifying broader trends in storytelling, format, and tone.”
But what about those shows? After all, they’re what make the headlines. The LA Screenings was the first place most buyers first encountered Paramount’s Colin From Accounts, which was barely on radars before the Australian comedy’s pilot jolted the audience into action. “Everyone was queuing up to meet the producers by the end of lunch,” remembers Dermot Horan, Director of Co-Productions and Acquisitions at Irish pubcaster RTÉ. Even further back, many buyers recall how Desperate Housewives and Lost were piloted with very little fanfare before it became apparent to everyone that they were hits-in-waiting.
Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer in ‘Colin From Accounts’, which famous broke out at the LA Screenings
Paramount+
For the Hollywood sellers, “It still feels it’s a singular moment,” says Jason Spivak, Co-President of Distribution and Networks at Sony Pictures Television (SPT). “There are a lot more touchpoints on the calendar now, but nothing compares to the LA Screenings,” adds the other SPT Co-Prez, Mike Wald. “We’ve had great success launching shows here, and it’s still the single biggest events for clients.”
Spivak and Wald will be welcoming those clients to Culver City on Sunday (May 18) for the first time since they replaced Keith Le Goy in the sales hot seat – or seats. Le Goy, an LA Screenings fixture for many years, was promoted to SPT Chairman in January. Staying in the family means he’ll be on the lot meeting clients, along with SPT President Katherine Pope and International Production boss Wayne Garvie. (The event comes a little too soon for Charlotte Moore, the BBC content boss bound for the CEO post at Sony’s Left Bank Pictures – a role that doubles with her overseeing international creative output.)
SPT’s line-up comprises Jon Hamm drama American Hostage, Outlander prequel Outlander: Blood of My Blood, the BBC and Stan’s new take on Lord of the Flies, Australian series Playing Gracie Darling, ITV’s true-crime drama The Lady and docu-drama Titanic Sinks Tonight, as we told you first last week. Recently added to the slate is Peacock comedy The Miniature Wife, which is a third-party title produced by Media Res.
Debuting SPT shows ‘The Lady’ and ‘Titanic Sinks Tonight’
Sony Pictures Television
“Over the past few years we’ve been bringing a broad mix of content,” says Wald. “That has helped us at a time of change in the marketplace. We’ve hit a lot of what buyers want in their markets.” The varied slate, Spivak adds, is a reflection on Sony’s status as the only non-network-aligned studio. “The breadth of our content is really an outgrowth of our independence and the ability to work with everyone. Clarity has been our strongest asset.”
Another new face at the top of a studio sales operation is NBCUniversal (NBCU)’s Michael Bonner, who is at his first L.A. Screenings since being promoted to President of Global TV Distribution. He says the NBC screening, which will include a showing of the live-action How To Train Your Dragon, has been months in the planning phase.
Riding high off the back of the success of The Day of the Jackal, NBCU has Office spin-off The Paper starring Domhnall Gleeson on offer to buyers along with IP-based series like Joe Barton’s Mozart retelling Amadeus and The Death of Bunny Munro based on the Nick Cave book. Procedurals are the order of the day for Bonner, who shouts out Dick Wolf Entertainment, whose wares “continue to be strong performers for our clients.”
NBCU will be screening the live-action adaptation of ‘How to Train Your Dragon’
DreamWorks/Universal Pictures/Everett Collection
Indeed, the scramble to secure the best procedurals, with their tried-and-tested credibility, has even attracted the attention of the UK’s irreverent, youth-skewing broadcaster Channel 4, a notoriously un-procedural brand, according to its acquisitions chief Polly Scates.
She speaks to us a day before Channel 4 pre-buys a second season of the quirky Patience and points out that the UK show, starring Ella Maisy Purvis, is a perfect example of a “procedural with a Channel 4 edge to it.”
More change
There’s also change over at Fox Entertainment Global, which has just drafted in Fifth Season‘s sales chief, Prentiss Fraser, as President of Global TV Distribution. Fox didn’t put the newly installed chief up for interview for this article, and it is surprisingly not putting out a traditional LA Screenings slate after the recent international launches of Dennis Leary comedy Going Dutch, Gordon Ramsay’s Secret Service, Extracted, and Yellowstone to Yosemite with Kevin Costner at the London TV Screenings.
We hear there will be personalized screenings for buyers on the Fox lot, and a studio event taking place on New York Street, where execs will unveil a new brand missions and their vision for the future. FEG will introduce two new scripted series, Best Medicine, a light medical comedy-drama starring Josh Charles based on the UK’s Doc Martin, and Carol Mendelsohn biblical event series The Faithful, along with unscripted shows series The Snake and Next Level Baker.
Fox launched comedy ‘Going Dutch’ at the London TV Screenings
Back in Burbank, Disney will be hosting buyers from May 19-21, kicking things off tomorrow (May 17) with a special screening of Lilo & Stitch followed by a drinks reception. Not many more details to report this year, but we known the slate will mix new and returning broadcast shows and streaming titles. Among them is 9-1-1: Nashville, the latest from the Ryan Murphy cop universe. Disney declined to comment for this article.
A mile down the road at the Warner Bros Discovery lot, President of Content Sales David Decker sees the 2025 event as “a reaffirmation of how important these gatherings are” for both buyers and sellers to drive business and talk through trends and their evolving business relationships in a challenging and uncertain market for all players. For sure, across the Hollywood studios there is a desire to understand how individuals markets are changing.
“We’ve taken much more of a partner-focused sales strategy,” says Decker. “It’s not one-size-fits-all for any market or buyer. We’re listening a lot more and we continue to adapt because this is just the new normal. The change and uncertainty is the new constant.”
WBD’s slate is underpinned this year by The Pitt, the John Wells drama that looks set for the Emmys race. Having been a breakout for Max (or ‘HBO Max’, as we should now say again), the series starring Noah Wyle as a dedicated senior attending physician at trauma hospital is interesting buyers. “We’re finally cracking the medical procedural for streamers,” says Decker. “It took that calibre of talent to do it and no one could have done it better at this level than WBD.”
As with most studio TV originals these days, first window will be available in territories that don’t currently offer HBO Max, with a second window possibly in those that do. “We’ve seen the evolution of windows – from broadcast networks to syndication to international output deals – to where we are now, which is much more customised to every platform and client,” says Decker. “Every company has individual strategies and we have to adapt to everybody. When we had ER, it was much more formulaic in terms of how it was licensed globally. The Pitt will take a much more customized because it’s on Max and because of how the business as evolved. But the genres don’t die.”
WBD is reporting buzz around ‘The Pitt’
Also on the WBD slate is the Mark Ruffalo-starring law enforcement drama Task; The Seduction, the HBO Max reimaginging of Dangerous Liaisons starring Diane Kruger and Anamaria Vartolomei from France; horror series IT: Welcome to Derry, Game of Thrones‘ latest spin-off A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms; and animated miniseries Charlotte’s Web.
Sticking to the traditional network theme this year is Paramount, which will be screening a pair of spin-offs: Sheriff Country, staring Morena Baccarin as the straight-shooting step sister of Fire Country‘s Cal Fire division chief Sharon Leone (Diane Farr) and Boston Blue, a universe expansion of CBS drama Blue Bloods, with Donnie Wahlberg reprising his role as NYPD cop Danny Reagan as he takes a role with Boston PD. Jerry Bruckheimer’s is among the exec producers. “There was a lot of fan feedback, especially from the U.S., about how crushed they were to spending their Friday nights without Regans, but we solved that by creating the spin off,” says Lisa Kramer, President of International Content Licensing at Paramount Global Content Distribution.
“These shows perform. You mitigate your risk by picking them up. We have found that during the strikes and during some of the ad downturn that people were turning to what we called ‘the tried and true.’ There was a great uptick in library catalog, particularly procedurals, and films.”
CBS single-cam sitcom DMV includes Colin From Accounts star Harriet Dyer and could fill voids in comedy slates. The show, from CBS Studios and set in the Department of Motor Vehicles, has been scheduled so Dyer can film around the next Colin. “DMV is going to be a delight,” says Kramer. “We all need more comedy in our lives.”
Also on the Paramount slate are more international titles such as Tony & Ziva, the NCIS spin-off set in Europe; Blood Cruise (aka The Cruise), a Paramount+ and SVT co-production starring the likes of Tuppence Middleton about a killer on a cruise ship; and dark YA comedy Club of Dinosaurs. Most of these come through CBS Studios International, which has become a specialist in international co-pros.
Tuppence Middleton in Paramount’s ‘Blood Cruise’
Andrej Vasilenko
Kramer and her team will no doubt field questions from anxious buyers around the Skydance merger, which Paramount said earlier this month is set to close in the first half of 2025 (or any time now). However, with discussions still ongoing at corporate level, there might not be any answers quite yet.
“One can’t see the future and there are certainly discussions happening outside of my zone, but we’re operating in business-as-usual fashion,” says Kramer. “The relationships we have with clients around licensing and monetizing content will not change and we hope at a minimum it continues as it has been. We’re looking to be more innovative in future with new windows and business models.
“The slate is so strong, not only from CBS Studios, but clearly on the streaming side, where they are swinging for the outfield, and we have an amazing feature film Mission Impossible 8 on the heels of Gladiator 2. We only expect any expect any forthcoming transformation will just make that stronger.”
Independent’s view
On the indie front, Jennifer Ebell, Fifth Season’s new global TV sales boss, is in L.A. talking about Canada’s The Borderline (formerly Underbelly) starring Minnie Driver, MGM+’s Kevin Kline comedy American Classic and buzzy Australian show He Had it Coming.
Ebell has big dreams for American Classic, which launches next year and is only the second half-hour comedy in MGM+’s history. She feels it could move the audience “the same way they were moved in Ted Lasso,” the smash Apple TV+ comedy that has been recommissioned for a fourth season. “It’s funny but the transformation of our protagonist is what you show up for every day,” she adds of American Classic.
The slowdown in American co-productions has been under the microscope this year so far, especially in the UK, but the London-based Ebell is bullish about Fifth Season’s future in the co-pro game. “Our business was built on co-pros,” she adds. “You think of shows like The Night Manager and Killing Eve, which were there at the birth of Fifth Season, so although there might be fewer co-pros because of the uncertainty in the marketplace, we’re still doing them and there is still a variety.”
Co-productions have certainly come under scrutiny since Trump announced his 100% tariffs on shows imported to U.S. or produced for U.S. networks and streamers outside the states. Of course, his proposal isn’t law right now, but it has poured even colder water over an already icy co-productions market. And though the finished programs on sale at the LA Screenings would not come under Trump’s diktat, buyers we’ve spoken to are keeping a close eye on the situation.
President Donald J. Trump film tariff plan has added uncertainty
Win McNamee/Getty Images
Each studio has stressed a BAU position, but NBCU’s Bonner “suspects clients may ask” about the controversial tariffs, while SPT’s Wald says: “It’s a rapidly evolving topic that I’m not sure anyone has a clear steer on, but we have many clients coming out to L.A., so were not seeing less appetite to get deals done.”
Paramount’s Kramer adds: “You can’t divert your eyes from headlines, but there is limited information, so we are not operating assuming one outcome or the other. That’s the most measured, strategic way to move forward. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
What the studios and acquisitions execs can discuss at length is the nature of their relationship and the shape of the deals they are making. Each studio boss we’ve spoken to has acknowledged the days of bidding wars and simple transactions are (mostly) gone, and the future will be far more tailor-made. That might mean more work for sales staff, with some clients preferring old-style volume deals and others looking at curated slate or opportunistic international pick-ups, but it does encourage loyalty and unity among both sides of the deal.
“We’re sitting down, sharing and finding solutions to help the consumer,” says WBD’s Decker. “We’re always trying to figure out what’s next, how we work with buyers to find the right models and approaches, and look at how they can hold on to rights,” adds SPT’s Spivak.
The Sony Pictures studio lot in Culver City
Jay L. Clendenin/Getty Images
Acquisitions execs understand there are limits to what can be achieved and they go into the Screenings knowing that the show they like best might not even be available. The choice then is how much second window content is palatable to their audiences. “As buyers we have to go with an open mind and be very flexible,” says RTÉ’s Horan.
“Twenty years ago, when you saw Lost or Greys, you could get into a bidding war with local competitors and you either picked it up or not. Now when you go any screenings, if it’s material that’s being sold by a studio, particularly one with a streamer, you’re looking at the show with the knowledge they will probably go there for a first window. Generally, that will be 12 months to get your paws on it.”
TV2’s Lorgen Flemmen agrees: “The LA Screenings have changed significantly over the years, especially with originals largely off the table, but, of course, they can be interesting in the second window, if available. This is simply the new playing field, and we have to adapt to the rules as they evolve. Success in this business has always been about flexibility and a willingness to work with the market as it is, not as it was.”
With the TV landscape has uncertain as its ever been, the nature of the LA Screenings place in it will be revealed over the next few days, and we’ll report back on how they buyers are feeling in coming days. Ahead of the action, Paramount’s Kramer sums up why it remains such an important calendar date: “You would be hard press to find a buyer who says it’s not their favorite trip.”
