‘Crime, Food, Music, Sports’: Documentary Producers Get ‘Very Strategic’ as Content Budgets Tighten
variety.comCynthia Littleton Business Editor The days of elastic budgets are over. The documentary arena is feeling the great contraction in the volume of content ordered by the largest networks and streamers as the entertainment industry reckons with its spending binge of the past decade.
The high-end nonfiction and documentary production community benefited enormously from the spike in demand for episodic series and evergreen films.
In recent months, filmmakers, producers and buyers say strictures have tightened on producers to deliver highly accessible, easily promotable documentary content. “Crime, food, music sports”: that’s how director and cinematographer Nicola Marsh describes the hot subject areas for docu makers in the present writers strike-disrupted marketplace.
Despite the momentarily sluggishness, spending on nonfiction and documentary content by the largest platforms is only poised to grow.
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