Mediawan CEO Pierre-Antoine Capton on Breaking Barriers to Build One of Europe’s Biggest Independent Production Groups
variety.comMediawan CEO Pierre-Antoine Capton into France’s Legion of Honor last October, calling the exec “the ultimate French success story.” In a country rarely known to promote social mobility, Capton-esque career trajectories are scarce.
A self-made entrepreneur born into a middle-class Normandy family, Capton began his professional life as a teen with an entry-level internship, eschewing elite universities, making the exec a rare bird among France’s top media execs.
For all that, Capton remains more humble than flamboyant, letting his track record speak for itself. In 2015, he co-founded Mediawan with investment banker Matthieu Pigasse and telecom billionaire Xavier Niel, and since then the group has traversed a tumultuous period marked by a pandemic, strikes and economic recessions by growing stronger.
Following its recent acquisition of German production-distribution powerhouse Leonine (“The Lives of Others”), Mediawan is now worth more than €2 billion ($2.1 billion) and boasts an estimated annual revenue of $1.3 billion, encompassing more than 80 production labels around the world, including Brad Pitt’s Plan B, France’s On Entertainment (“Miraculous”), Chi-Fou-Mi (“Beating Hearts”) and Chapter 2 (“Limonov: The Ballad of Eddie”), Italy’s Palomar (“The Count of Monte Cristo”) and, more recently, the U.K.’s Misfits Entertainment (“Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story”).
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