The numbers are in. Serielizados, the colourful Barcelona on site/online TV festival saw in-person attendees soar 80% to 16,000 over Nov. 3-12. Running Nov. 13-23, its online version, hosted by upscale SVOD service Filmin, hit 194,000 viewers. That makes Serielizados, after San Sebastián, the second most-watched film-TV festival in Spain, its organizers announced Tuesday.
“On this twelfth edition we’ve made the definitive leap to becoming an important series festival within the country, growing each in variety of viewers and in content, with over 35 premiere series and with a global congress for professionals, Serielizados Pro, that further positions the festival as a driving force within the Spanish series industry,” Serielizados co-director Betu Molero stated Tuesday.
Serielizados attendance also frames a paradox. Launching in 2014, Serielizados, won last yr by Sweden’s “Pressure Point,” has carved out a status for exquisite taste. The lineup of 2025’s festival also featured a masterclass by Alan Ball, 20 years after “Six Foot Under,” “The Danish Woman” and a masterclass by its creator Benedikt Erlingsson, “Reykjavik Fusion” and “Nepobaby,” plus a screening of Sally Wainwright’s BBC One series “Riot Women.”
Serielizados Pro proved equally popular generating a high-quality debate blessed by a big Nordic presence, with executives from SVT, DR and YLE, plus also reps from BBC Studios, Arte France, Germany’s Beta Film and Paris-based Slot Machine.
Speakers also took in a cream of Barcelona producers – notably nearly all women – plus reps from TV operators Movistar Plus+, 3Cat, RTVE, Atresmedia and Filmin.
Well, who wouldn’t want some Barcelona sun in November? There have been other reasons, nevertheless, for the top-notch industry presence. If this yr’s Serielizados Pro delivered a message, it was that Europe – and Canada – still seems series of the highest-caliber but that its industry needs to attach, which it did in Barcelona.
That’s due to sobering state of the international TV industry. Symbolically, Serelizados Pro, which took place Nov. 6, began not with sun but a near biblical torrential downpour.
Following, just a few takeaways:
What Serelizados PRO Debate Said In regards to the State of the International TV Industry
The short answer was that, yes, the industry is in a state. “Almost 18 months after we first identified the trend, we’re still at ’75% Peak TV.’ In other words, the market has contracted to 75% of its Peak TV size,” Ampere Evaluation’ Guy Bisson said at October’s Cannes trade fair Mipcom. Much of the downturn is driven by streamer pull back, down over 100% on early 2024 original series commissions, he added. Add to that multiple more aspects, sketched at Serielizados Pro. For one, production costs have rocketed. Also, “streamers have great libraries, windows are getting much shorter, and so they usually are not so insistent on exclusivity and open to selling their very own content. MGM is selling Amazon, That makes normal distribution rather more difficult,” Beta Film’s Christian Glockel said at Serielizados. The grand issue debated at Serielizados is how players can react.
What Buyers Want
One response: Players are playing it secure. “Everyone seems to be feeling the pressure and due to this fact are backing shows that they know might be successful for them,” said BBC Studios’ Rebecca Ransley. What buyers want is crime, whether “cosy crime” or “where you lean back in shock,” she added. “Returnable crime series with talent attached” are also plus points, said Ransley, citing “Death Valley,” starring Timothy Spall, sold to 100 markets. “There’s definitely been a resurgence in an appetite for hyper-local authentic storytelling that reaches globally,” she went on, calling it the “‘Adolescence’ effect.”
Also, there’s demand for uplifting entertainment, Gockel argued. “The world’s a large number, a litany of bad news. ‘Maxima’ is about how a young woman becomes a princess, then a queen. If you happen to had include that five years ago, there probably would have been no interest.”
Buzz Titles
Serielizados Pro had no formal market. That said, speakers talked up shows. Arte France’s Alexander Piel and Movistar Plus+’s Susana Herreras sneak-peeked excerpts from “Killing a Bear,” an actual facts-based wild bear murder mystery exposing deep social conflict within the high Pyrenees suggesting one in every of the large lures of international TV: a way of stunning local place. Of finished series, 4 of Serielizados biggest titles proved its final winners: Norway’s “A Higher Man” and Canada’s “Empathy” in its international competition, “The Anatomy of a Moment” and “Jakarta” in its national contest.
A packed audience at Barcelona’s Serielizados for ‘The Anatomy of a Moment’
Co-Production: the Key Get Out of Jail Card
Co-Production is now seen, in some ways, as probably the most major way forward for Europe’s TV industry. For one thing, it serves an important purpose in Europe’s so often director-driven industry: On “The Danish Woman,” produced by Paris-based Slot Machine and Iceland’s Gullslottid and Zik Zak Filmworks, the “foremost goal had been at all times to guard the very original and unique voice of Benedikt Erlingsson and for that we would have liked independent financing not directly,” said Marianne Slot at Slot Machine. Bedrock finance got here from Slot Machine itself and Icelandic public broadcaster RÚV, then European broadcasters and funds including the E.U. Creative Media Program.
Retaining IP
Patchwork funding on the open market may allow producers to achieve what, until recently, was seen because the Holy Grail: Retaining IP. Sold by Beta Film, “Pubertat,” was backed by Catalan pubcaster 3Cat, HBO Max for Spain, soft money including a Catalan government €1.5 million () grant and a tax credit, in addition to Eurimages and Media Program funding, said Miriam Porté at Distinto Movies. “We’re lucky that we will keep type of 99.5% of the IP, which may be very amazing. The important thing query in fact is that if the series sell, and sales are not any cake walk today, Serelizados PRO suggested.
Co-Production: A Default Mode
“At SVT, we hardly make fully-financed projects: without co-production, no show,” said Sonja Hermele at Sweden’s SVT. As Jarmo Lampela at Finland’s YLE identified, the Nordics five national public broadcasters have been collaborating for years, launching the Nordic 12 in 2018 to make 12 premium dramas a yr, adding ZDF (Germany), NPO (Netherlands) and VRT (Belgium) to create in 2023 the New8, with a view to co-produce eight series annually. ZDF also partners with France Televisions and RAI in The Alliance, Lampela noted.
Let’s Hear It for Global Streaming Services: How They Have Can Help Co-Production
Disney+ and Hulu took international on Cold War comedy thriller “Whiskey on the Rocks,” from SVT and Stockholm-based Dramacorp, which in late October won the 77th Prix Italia within the TV Drama category. The series activates an incident in 1981, when a Soviet U-137 ‘Whiskey’-class submarine ran aground on rocks deep inside Swedish territorial waters — in the course of a sensitive Swedish naval exercise. That context is hardly well-known for modern-day Swedish audiences. “Whatever Disney felt was the worldwide attraction for an audience to the show was actually also something that benefited the Swedish audience,” said SVT’s Hermele.
Partnerships
In such a pressured market, “it’s really about partnerships. You recognize, our whole business is about relationships,” said Ransley, citing BBC Studios relationship with Germany’s ZDF, which has generated “Famous Five, “Chelsea Detective” and “The Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.”
Serielizados Pro’s inaugural session drilled down on one in every of the important thing consolidating alliances in Europe, between Spain’s Movistar Plus+ and France’s Arte France, co-producers on “Hierro,” “The Recent Years,” “Anatomy of a Moment” and “Killing a Bear.” It’s a like-minded title-by-title alliance. “We talk lots at Movistar Plus+ about what’s business. Often, it’s not probably the most open of series. It’s more about driving about social conversation, about people considering they’ve to look at our series. Finding someone on the market in Europe who understand things like us may be very vital,” said Movistar Plus+’Herreras.
For Arte France, partnership can also be about accessing talent, said Piel. “It was about talent and content. Talent with a vision, a special vision about easy methods to do TV series and and with something so deep inside them that creates singular and unique content. So we probably had two dreams. Attending to work with Rodrigo Sorogoyen and Alberto Rodríguez,” said Piel.
And the Future?
Seeking to the longer term, “streamers will concentrate on big IPs which bring subscribers and increasingly co-produce with good distributors or studios which take the responsibility of packaging the productions,” said Glockel. So Beta Film is increasingly involved in upstream production. “Before we might wait until a product was finished after which decide to distribute it or not. Now with co-production, we get in much earlier, on the script stage,” he said.