Ahead of their first Development Days and MIPCOM with BossaNova Media, Francesca Johnson and Iona Hopper, who are leading acquisitions at Paul Heaney’s factual outfit, join ScreenMDM Talks to share what they’re looking for across the history/mystery, access, and true-crime genres.
BossaNova Media has spent the last few months restructuring its team to best position itself for shifts in the business of factual distribution and commissioning. Upon the exit of Claire Runham earlier this year, the venture, founded and led by Heaney as CEO, tapped Francesca Johnson and Iona Hopper to oversee its acquisitions efforts, tasked with identifying properties that will resonate with broadcast and streaming clients and ultimately deliver returns for the company and the producers it works with. The pair bring complementary skill sets to the company. Johnson joined as head of acquisitions after a career that included roles at National Geographic and Anyway Content. Hopper was tapped for the newly created role of acquisitions manager, reporting to Johnson. She was previously part of the acquisitions team at DCD Rights.
Johnson and Hopper are tasked with building on BossaNova’s successful strategy of boarding projects early, bringing on key commissioning and presale partners, and then monetizing across the value chain. Recent projects unveiled by the company include The Land That Made Us, originated, financed, and now presold by BossaNova to Channel 4, BBC Select and SBS; Ruins Rise and Fall, an eight-parter from Like A Shot that emerged out of its Development Days; and true-crime docs on Lizzie Borden and Aileen Wuornos via a successful partnership with Spirit Studios and Hearst Networks.
Johnson and Hopper joined ScreenMDM Talks to lay out their strategy for working with producers, prioritizing returnable and repeatable shows, and exploring the world of digital-first content. The episode is available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
“The core strategy does remain the same,” said Johnson on the acquisitions remit at the company. “We want returnable, repeatable, scalable, sustainable franchises. That has really been the name of the game since the start, and we want to honor that. We’re focusing a lot less on one-offs as a team right now in the spirit of doubling down on that strategy.”
With BossaNova also recently having restructured its sales team, “We’re also really excited to see BossaNova move from a boutique distributor to a group that has bigger scale and is continuing to grow,” Johnson added. “We are one of the only distributors that fully finance projects in-house and cash-flow them to get them greenlit and into production. And right now that’s something that everybody wants.”
BossaNova was among the earliest factual distributors to lean into the self-commissioning model, moving away from the traditional model of just deficit-financing to help producers fill the gaps. “We’re getting projects over the line where commissioners in the traditional broadcaster sense used to be able to,” Hopper explains. “It shows the fluidity in the distribution model; it’s a jigsaw puzzle of finance, and we are main players now; we’re not the last to come to the party.”
In a competitive landscape, Johnson and Hopper are eager to leverage their complementary and diverse skill sets across genres and markets. “Iona’s experience at Fremantle and DCD and mine at National Geographic and working with the indie production community mean that we brought a network across all those areas of the business,” Johnson said. “So, as well as being well-versed in distribution, broadcast needs, and development, we also have contacts in all of those parts of the business. We organically divided up responsibilities based on the existing relationships we had, which complemented each other quite well—me having a U.S. network and experience and Iona being based here in the U.K. for her career. That’s worked out quite well, and it allows us to lean into creative development and deal-making as we piece together that jigsaw of how to get stuff across the line.”
Building strong, sustainable relationships with producers is at the heart of the team’s strategy, Johnson adds. “Just as we are collaborative and flexible in the way that we approach these deals, we want to work with partners who are collaborative, cooperative, flexible, and don’t bring an ego to the table. If you’re going to get something done and make it happen, you have to be willing to work together and be realistic about what’s doable in this market. We want to work with people who want to develop the right idea, shape the budget in the right way, brainstorm about the best partners, and be flexible in how they amend editorial and budgets accordingly to make stuff work.”
Repeatable and returnable are largely the order of the day, with limited series being “much more of a streamer play,” Hopper says.
“We’ll look at a limited series if it is an event or a tentpole one-off that ties to an anniversary and can sell itself in the EPG because of some unseen footage or genuinely untold story,” Johnson says. “But we’d much prefer to find a way to place them within a brand, with a distinctive style and point of view. So, the Alice Roberts by Train series is a great example. If you just pitched ancient history on its own, that’s very generic, and it’s been done a thousand times. If you just pitched a train series, there’s nothing specific about that that is hooky. But ancient history by train, great. It somehow hasn’t been done before. It’s unique. It’s got a point of view with Alice as host. Although those might be limited series on their own—we’ve got Ottoman Empire, Egypt—they sit within a brand. Days That Shocked the World is another good example. They could sit on their own as anniversaries, and they do in the Channel 4 schedule, but it’s a brand and a point of view. We want treatments that aren’t just a Wikipedia dump or the chronology of a story. What is your point of view? What makes this stand out? We also know anecdotally from broadcasters that their overall budgets are so crunched that they can’t throw that same heft behind one-offs. The budget just isn’t there. It has to be exceptional access or an untold story if it’s going to sit on its own as a one-off. We much prefer series that are a hit and then just sell themselves when they come back rather than having to market in isolation around individual titles.”
The pair is eager to meet with new producers with compelling ideas at MIPCOM and other markets. “Just as the consolidation of super indies continues and factual content can sometimes be lost in bigger catalogs alongside competition, fact-ent, and drama, BossaNova is excited to be the port of call for best-in-class unscripted and factual content,” Johnson said. “We’re also starting to look at factual docudrama with the right partners.”
In its quest for the best factual—which, Johnson says, needs to “do what it says on the tin”—the team is eager to explore the digital-first space. “We’re keen to build on conversations with creators who want to go down the more traditional linear route and how we can work with them and reverse engineer back into linear television,” Hopper said.
“We’re flexible on rights,” Johnson added. “We understand you might want to retain AVOD or YouTube rights, and we’re very open to that. There’s some fantastic talent on YouTube right now. I’m a big fan of Benjamin Zand and Zandland. Obviously, Goalhanger. There’s a new creator [channel] called Chloe vs History that is doing some really cool stuff in the AI space. We’re excited to see how we can grow in this space.”
