How Gaumont Germany Is TV Drama’s Big Shake-Up

Getting an international TV show made these days is a tough business.

Rising production costs are meeting falling budgets and even the deep-pocketed streamers — who had turbo-charged the global business with big-budget commissions for the past several years — are shifting gears, making fewer shows and focusing more on lower-cost crime shows and less on big-budget drama.

But Sabine de Mardt continues to find a way. Since taking over as head of the German division of legendary French studio Gaumont in 2018, the veteran producer has delivered a wide range of high-end series, from historic epic Barbarians for Netflix to the post-war drama The Interpreter of Silence for Disney+/Hulu, to In Her Car, a Ukrainian-set psychological drama, produced with some eight broadcasters across as many European countries, and shot amid the ongoing war.

Her upcoming slate includes the crime thriller Bone Palace for Netflix, the fantasy-flavored Parallel Me for Paramount+ and a reboot of the classic children’s franchise Heidi, being produced for Swiss broadcaster SRF and German streamer RTL+.

De Mardt sat down with The Hollywood Reporter ahead of this year’s Series Mania TV festival to talk about the changing strategies of global streamers, the growing role of European co-productions and how the Trump government is impacting the business.

Gaumont is known for its high-end drama series, but that market has been shaken up in the past few years as the streamers have changed their strategies.

When the streamers first arrived, there was the big hope in Germany that we could finally tell darker, more complex stories — all the things that we weren’t allowed to tell before. And that was true for a while, but it’s striking how the streamers have developed. They initially focused very much on the younger target group, but that’s changed. They own the younger demo anyway so they are focusing more on older audiences and on genres like crime and thriller, which has been successful with that audience. Crime is so effective because it has that narrative engine that pulls you in. Even in a brilliant show like The White Lotus, you have the body at the beginning, that helps to drive the story engine.

Does that mean the era of daring TV is over?

Not entirely. The streamers have a larger data set to work with now and they’ve determined what is most successful. But if you put the public broadcasters next to the streamers, you can say the public broadcasters are much more willing to experiment, to dare to tackle more pointed topics and themes. This is also due to the fact that they are trying to attract a younger target audience, which the streamers already have. The streamers have become so successful that they are [now] looking more to the older demographic. Our new series for Netflix, Bone Palace, stars Susanne Wolff [aged 51], and Felix Kramer [52], which is a cast for an older target group, not just the very young.

Have the streamers’ budgets for local-language content come down?

It depends on how they evaluate the show. It’s very flexible. My experience has been that the streamers will give you the budget you need. But compared to before, getting to a greenlight takes a lot more time. When we made Barbarians [for Netflix] we got the go-ahead based on a short pitch alone. That doesn’t happen anymore. Now they are developing more and taking longer to greenlight.

When it comes to your more ambitious series you’ve been doing more co-productions, like your reboot of Heidi, which is backed by Swiss public broadcaster SRF and German commercial streamer RTL+.

Yes, well with Heidi politics also played a role, because we wanted to make a Swiss series and RTL wanted that too. But we are shooting a historical series, which is relatively expensive for a family program, so it was clear from the start we needed to do co-financing. RTL couldn’t or wouldn’t have wanted to do it alone. It’s clear everyone doesn’t have as much money to spend to be able to finance everything on their own. And it’s about spreading the risk. A lot of partners are open to co-productions depending on how you reconcile the windowing. There are no real fixed rules yet — you always have to negotiate who gets which windows and how. It’s also new territory for the broadcasters, which are slowly getting to grips with it. We’re just at the beginning of these kinds of cooperations. As we go forward how it works with the windowing will become clearer.

Are the global streamers becoming more open to windowing and licensing, or to taking select territories as opposed to worldwide rights?

Yes, definitely. Some streamers will say: I only need the show for Germany or German-speaking territories and you can do what you want with it outside. That’s an advantage for producers who can keep some of those rights.

For something like Bone Palace, that’s a classic financing model. With Netflix, if they want to do a project, they don’t need any additional money. But there are other models. For example, we’re developing a show now that is a revival of an old brand. I can’t discuss it in detail, but we’ll be working with a free TV channel and a streamer together, and shooting outside the country to take advantage of tax breaks, but where the main domestic channel will be an American streamer.

We did In Her Car, a Ukrainian series, as an independent production with eight different European public broadcasters. In the end, the question is always: What rights are involved? Is it possible to set up financing together with a tax break, inside Germany or outside, where the rights are not affected, or to do it as a co-production where you have a rights split?

You’ve been a loud voice for a reform of the German funding system for film and TV, including requiring the global streamers to pay into a fund to back local productions. Do you expect the new German government to push those reforms through?

We’re very committed to it. If you do the math, it has to happen, because it would give such added value [to the German industry]. At the moment, so much money is being transferred abroad. The idea of an investment obligation is based on the French model so that the profits [from the streamers] don’t flow untaxed to the USA, so to speak.

Staying with politics, the Trump government has brought a lot of chaos to international trade with his tariff wars. Are you seeing an impact on the film and TV industry?

It’s still too early to say, but of course, there is a lot of uncertainty. I do think the current moment gives us the chance, in Europe, to reinvent ourselves as Europeans, and come closer together on European issues, to focus on consciously preserving and standing up for our democratic values and our diversity, the polyphony, of Europe.

Do you expect to see a backlash in Europe to U.S. content, or to U.S. companies like Netflix and Amazon?

I think Netflix and Amazon are very solidly positioned and have the advantage of their local productions. I don’t think Netflix is viewed [in Europe] as an extension of the U.S. government. But I do think that a certain narrative, the great American dream narrative, the one that we in Western Europe used to so closely identify with, is being questioned, and reconsidered.

There’s a new opportunity to strengthen our European identity, and I am really looking forward to that. It’s something that’s been neglected over the last few years. That’s why I’m so happy with In Her Car, because that was such a crazy pan-European cooperation. I’m not talking about making didactic, “Europe is great” shows but more subcutaneously, conveying the values we stand for — democracy, diversity — in the drama or thriller narratives we develop.