International tv manufacturing powerhouse Fremantle continued its shopping for spree Tuesday, buying a majority stake in Wildstar Films, the award-winning British documentary and factual specialist behind collection reminiscent of National Geographic’s America’s National Parks and America the Beautiful and Monkey Kingdom for Disneynature.
Fremantle, a part of media big Bertelsmann’s RTL Group, didn’t disclose monetary particulars of the deal, which can see it take 51 p.c of Bristol-based Wildstar.
Mark Linfield and Vanessa Berlowitz, producers on such groundbreaking nature collection because the BBC’s Planet Earth and Frozen Planet, and feature-length docs together with Chimpanzee (2012) and Elephant (2020) for Disney, co-founded Wildstar to premium factual content material for international streamers and broadcasters. They will stay in cost on the firm, which is at the moment in manufacturing on two feature-length movies for Disneynature and a number of premium collection for Disney+ and National Geographic together with Queens, Sentient with Darren Aronofsky’s Protozoa Pictures.
“Fremantle is a fantastic fit as a partner – we share a similar culture and the same ambition of working with the best talent on and off screen to make genre defining shows; we’re also really excited that their international teams will help us grow Wildstar and reach more viewers around the world,” Linfield and Berlowitz mentioned in an announcement.
The Wildstar deal is simply the most recent in a raft of acquisitions by Fremantle, which is ramping up its manufacturing operations with the aim of rising its income from $1.9 billion final 12 months to the goal of $3 billion by 2025.
Last week, Fremantle took a majority stake in documentary producer 72 Films (9/11: One Day in America) and the group has been gobbling up unbiased corporations over the previous 12 months, together with scripted Italian manufacturing firm Lux Vide (Devils, Leonardo), U.S.-based Fabel (Bosch), and Australian-American TV group Eureka Productions (Parental Guidance, Finding Magic Mike) amongst many others.
Fremantle is betting the speedy development of streaming platforms worldwide will gas a brand new demand for high-quality content material that the streamers will likely be unable to satisfy on their very own, opening up a chance for unbiased manufacturing corporations with a world attain.
