NBCU’s Corie Henson Floats New “Aggressive” Co-Pro Model To Help Counter Spiraling Entertainment Budgets

deadline.com:

NBCUniversal and the BBC‘s co-pro partnership has reaped rewards by birthing The Traitors and the former is pondering how to expand the model in a world of squeezed budgets.

Corie Henson, who is EVP, Unscripted Content, Competition and Game Shows, NBCUniversal Entertainment told Content London her team is in conversation with potential partners and is thinking about “even more aggressive” models whereby multiple co-pro partners would commission a single show. “If they’re all English-language speaking networks then we could just do one version,” she said. “Then you go from [spending] $3M to a $1.5M big spectacle of, say, a singing show.

That extends the lifeline of a show if you don’t have to go back to everyone and justify how much that costs.” Henson said NBCUniversal already seeks to adopt this model in some senses by ‘hubbing’, which has become more commonplace, while many of its productions are shot abroad.

Streamers such as Netflix have commissioned English-language shows in recent years like Too Hot to Handle, which bring together contestants from all over the world and air globally.