Sister Co-Founder Jane Featherstone Champions Original Storytelling: ‘We Have to Be Bold and Brave’

variety.com:

K.J. Yossman Sister co-founder and chief creative officer Jane Featherstone spoke about how difficult it is to back original IP – as opposed to the relentless stream of reboots and spin-offs – in the current climate. “We have to hold our nerve,” Featherstone said. “As producers, we have to try and [walk] that tightrope of kind of giving people what they think they want but surprising people.

And I don’t think audiences always do know what they want until they see it, and you can’t always emulate. So we have to be bold and brave.” Featherstone was speaking in Cannes during a keynote speech at MipTV as she accepted Variety’s 2023 International Achievement in Television Award on behalf of Sister, the production company known for original fare such as “Chernobyl” and divorce drama “The Split,” which she runs with Elisabeth Murdoch and Stacey Snider.

The exec also credited the many writers Sister work with, from Abi Morgan (who created “The Split”) to “Giri/Haji” showrunner Joe Barton. “I stick with the talent,” Feathestone told the audience in Cannes. “Hold your nerve, but speak to a mainstream audience, but do it in an elevated, dynamic, quality controlled way.

It’s what we try to do.” Featherstone also predicted that the economic downturn will encourage buyers, particularly streamers, to structure deals differently in future, with excessive rights hoarding likely to become a thing of the past. “I think that the market for exclusive buying up all rights in perpetuity has to change because all of these big companies need to make money,” Featherstone said. “And so selling rights and selling secondary windows and you know, making the program have an audience globally with different buyers and on different channels, seems to