EXCLUSIVE: Rupert Murdoch’s News UK is co-developing more than a dozen licensed TV projects based on its original journalism.
The Times, Sunday Times and The Sun owner launched a partnership last year to mine its vast archive for scripted projects that could work on U.S. stablemate Fox. Richard Halliwell, who runs film and TV IP development for News UK, said in recent months this has expanded well beyond Fox and beyond the scripted genre.
News UK’s first big project under Halliwell, Channel 4 documentary Poison, launches tonight, and the executive revealed that News UK licensing has a further 14 projects in various stages of development on a “very deep slate,” around half of which are for Fox and half are with UK producers.
“We have a vast treasure trove of content [at News UK],” Halliwell told Deadline. “There are a bunch of projects with writers and a bunch sat here with UK indies. Poison will be the first but not the last show with our masthead. We have a scale of ambition that we can service over the next three to five years.”
When Halliwell joined News UK last year, he said a “grown up conversation between us and the execs at Fox” found that the pair “should formalize what we are doing more between businesses, using the well of IP coming out of this building and the massive studio operation in L.A.”
But while Fox has something of a first-look deal in place on licensed News UK articles, the News UK team is now open to talking to all and sundry. “We quickly realized that we don’t need to limit to a single genre and the other obvious realization was that the content coming out this building is vast, so what happens when Fox doesn’t want to take something forward?,” explained Halliwell. “Poison was never going to find a scripted outlet at Fox but was perfect for Chanel 4. So the role is serving Fox but then recycling IP or finding homes for projects that aren’t suitable for a U.S. studio.”
Halliwell and the team were initially seeking a development exec to mine its newspaper portfolio for scripted TV projects, but this job has effectively been filled by Halliwell, a former TV distribution exec who ran DRG and Nent Studios out of the UK and is an EP on upcoming James Norton-starrer King and Conqueror.
Halliwell pointed out that News UK already has three business units producing original shows ranging from podcasts to YouTube series, including a recent Madeleine McCann doc in partnership with ITN and Channel 4. Yet it is licensing that is “opening a new door to working with production companies to develop original programming around our peerless archive of award-winning journalism.”
“We were attracting brilliantly talented programme makers [for the development exec role] who wanted to grow flowers but what we really needed was someone to plant seeds,” he explained. “The breadth of experience I have allows me to see commercial opportunities and understand how producers work. We wanted to follow a licensing model, not a production model.”
That being said, Poison, which launches tonight, is far more than a licensing deal, according to Halliwell.
The series produced by David Abraham’s Wonderhood Studios is hosted by The Times journalist James Beal, who wrote the original Times investigation and made a podcast on the subject. The doc spotlights the barely believable story of how a Canadian chef was accused of sending more than 1,000 packages of poison to suicidal young people across the globe, leading to hundreds of deaths worldwide.
“Not everything we do will be a massively commercial project but on this one we are not licensing a headline and walking away,” added Halliwell. “We are not trying to be programme makers but want to earn our seat at the table in other ways. There are 400 journalists sat around me researching and digging into stories, a resource that no production company will have.”
The move is reflective of how the TV industry has leaned heavily into IP over the past few years, according to Halliwell, who said this has now gone way beyond just adapting novels.
“It has become a much more important part of the commissioning process and perhaps we have focused too much on the book publishing market and not enough on the newspaper and journalism business,” he added. “We have been licensing articles to producers who want to go and make a show but have never leaned into that process. I think we are just being more proactive now and one of the reasons I am doing the job rather than a programme maker is that I have this network I can reach out to.”
More info about the 14 projects in development is coming in due course, Halliwell added.