Sky Studios Touts Flexibility, European Collaboration As Keys to Success
variety.comBen Croll Speaking at a panel organized by Series Mania’s Forum, executives from Sky Studios touted flexibility and autonomy as their keys to success, teasing further synergies with fellow Comcast-owned services like Peacock and SkyShowtime while emphasizing that such broadcast bids were but one option among many. “[We take things] very case-by-case,” said Meghan Lyvers, director of original drama at Sky Studios U.K. “Not all projects that we develop as Sky Originals in Europe will go into the SkyShowtime cluster of territories, [but] they can.
And we [welcome] this flexibility, because it allows projects to come to us with other territories attached.” Prompted by Variety’s Manori Ravindran, and flanked onstage by colleagues Nils Hartmann, Tobias Rosen and Sonia Rovai from Sky Studios Germany and Italy, Lyvers accented Sky Studios’ wider commissioning activities, saying: “This is the team that develops, commissions, or buys series, and then [either] makes or programs them on Sky as Sky Originals.” The exec pointed toward upcoming projects like the Eddie Redmayne led “The Day of the Jackal” and the literary adaptation “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” which were co-commissioned by Sky Studios and NBCUniversal’s Peacock, while noting that Sky Originals like “Gangs of London” and the upcoming Julianne Moore starrer “Mary & George” found broadcast homes outside of Europe (and outside of the corporate family) with AMC Networks.
The panelists offered a resounding ‘no comment’ when asked about a rumored Comcast selloff that could split up the U.K, Italian and German divisions, while using questions about a contracting U.S.
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