Yahoo News Emerging UK Sales Company Architect On Curating A Gen Z Slate, The Impact Of The WGA Strike & Which Partner Once Starred Opposite Russell Crowe — Cannes Market
EXCLUSIVE: UK company Architect was recently founded by sales executives Calum Gray and Max Pirkis, together with Patrick Fischer and Richard Kondal of financier Creativity Capital.
Gray and Pirkis previously worked together for five years at sales firm Embankment, including on Oscar winner The Father, Oscar nominee The Wife, Netflix’s hit Purple Hearts, and BAFTA nominated documentary McQueen.
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Creativity Capital have invested in 28 independent films and TV shows, including the aforementioned McQueen and BAFTA winner Under The Shadow. Combining sales and Creativity’s financing, Architect is looking to become a go-to partner for indie producers.
Initial projects on the slate include survival thriller The Bayou, which is being produced by Fall and 47 Meters Down outfit Tea Shop, Mckenna Grace and Asher Angel teen romance 99 Days, Jenny Slate horror Mindful, BFI and BBC Film-financed Lollipop, and Sundance world premiere The Starling Girl.
We spoke to the partners about the company, their take on the current market and impact of the WGA strike, and even squeezed in a few questions about their reading habits and what they might be doing in if not beating the halls of the Palais and the Loews. Fun Fact: one of them once starred opposite Russell Crowe. Read on for more.
DEADLINE: Tell us about your new company. When and how did it all come together (finance, partners etc)?
CALUM GRAY: Max and I bonded over five years together at Embankment, driving each other mad but with a shared energy and enthusiasm! We first met our partners Richard and Patrick when they financed Ian Bonhote and Peter Ettedgui’s McQueen back in 2017.
RICHARD KONDAL: Patrick and I were looking for a new challenge after selling our post house Creativity Media to Fulwell 73. Building businesses and teams is very much in our DNA and when Calum and Max came to us looking to set up a sales company of their own, joining forces made a lot of sense – we immediately felt a spark between us, and saw a rare opportunity to offer producers a new one-stop-shop.
PATRICK FISCHER: We are four partners, each with a specific and well-honed set of skills. A deep understanding of how to package content for the modern day market, how to leverage and to guide producers through the minefield of financing their projects, while protecting their hard earned IP. Drawing on a history of production, post, sales and finance, we saw we could find a wide range of solutions to greenlight projects.
MAX PIRKIS: We’ve been going six months now and the reaction from producers and the market has been really encouraging – we’ve seen a response to our fresh approach and style, and we want to play our part in re-energising a tough marketplace. We can’t wait to hit the ground running in Cannes, with a slate that we think condenses our mission statement perfectly.
DEADLINE: What’s the ambition for the company (size etc) and the slate (size, genres etc)?
CG: When buyers see the Architect line-up, we want them to see the clarity of audience focus, quality filmmakers who deliver innovatively, strong marketable concepts with inherent virality and the emotional and visceral impact inside these movies. So we’ll be curating a selection of films per year, rather than driving volume into the market. Ultimately, we want you to be able to read a script and say ‘that’s an Architect movie’. And to be that selective we need to remain nimble and avoid a bloated overhead – think of us as a special forces operation.
MP: A key part of our approach is to seek out producers who really know and love their audience and we’re proud to be working on our early line-up with production companies that have particularly strong track records for specific target audiences. It’s also no coincidence that our slate skews towards younger, commercial movies that will resonate with modern Gen Z and Millennial and Gen X audiences – we’re collectively a younger set of executives with an innate feel and love for those stories.
More than anything, we want to become a home away from home for like-minded producers – a partnership they can rely on to greenlight their IP, and who will not cut and run but will genuinely support them in the market, problem-solve and champion their projects.
DEADLINE: To what extent will production and TV be a part of your business?
RK: With regards TV, Patrick and I have already rolled up our sleeves and got stuck in, not least with Amazon’s Spanish series Boundless which we co-produced last year. Our sister company Creativity Capital has provided financing to four TV and streamer series in the last six months and we’re making that part of the Architect mission, for sure.
DEADLINE: Why was it time for a change from your previous roles?
CG: Max and I are blessed to have been given the career opportunities that we have and, when we saw demographic shifts accelerating in terms of entertainment consumption during the pandemic, we saw an opportunity to capitalize.
We saw more Gen Z enter the audience pool, older millennials becoming more time rich and Gen X taking on more of the high-end cinema space. That is shifting the bar in terms of what content is viable in the independent market – and, given our ages and sensibilities, we felt we were well placed intellectually and culturally to seize the moment.
MP: Calum and I believed we could bolt our sales and acquisitions engine room successfully onto the entrepreneurism and financing clout of Richard and Patrick. And, after the grind of the pandemic, we thought we’d make that leap and give ourselves a chance of owning and building something together.
PF: For Richard and I it was a no-brainer. We’ve long wanted our investments to be better informed by market-driven data and fuelled by the best quality IP and presales. The ambition and appetite of our investors is growing exponentially – Calum and Max are market-facing experts, with an excellent track record of independent film finance, who can satisfy that expanding demand.
DEADLINE: What’s your read on the health of the international sales market at the moment?
CG: It feels like a cuspal moment, where the SVOD debt driven, loss leading, catalogue-building model is shifting to more precision-based acquisitions strategy; where the growth of AVOD will continue to rise alongside the cost-of-living crisis; where theatrical is undoubtedly still the best form of escapist consumption and increasingly regaining its vitality and where the broadcasters are investing in original content to guarantee their place in the ecosystem.
In all that diversity there is opportunity for packages that cut through and are generous to their audiences, especially those where you can act as an ‘architect’ and design a clear pathway between the various rights and platforms internationally.
On the other hand, the consolidation of companies and bottlenecking of opportunities in the pay one window is a structural challenge and we need to see how the global and local OTT and pay players will ultimately engage with independent content once those tectonic plates have stopped shifting.
In essence – we see a tipping point. And for our flexible set-up plenty of opportunity to make the most of a fragmented marketplace.
DEADLINE: What is working in the indie film market at the moment and what or who are buyers seeking out?
MP: Films that know their audience and offer them an unbreakable agreement – one of our directors recently described it as ‘handshake’ – to entertain, move, thrill and stimulate.
CG: Our films have to beat Youtube, boxsets, podcasts and video games, cutting through and rising above (or the case of social media interacting with) all the available distractions. They have to be made for and offer something new within the context of a 2020s audience, otherwise you will not cut through with consumers.
MP: And they have to be ripe for discussion, participation and co-creation – so inherent virality and inbuilt talking points are a massive benefit. Right when we were starting up, we were inspired by how movies like Smile, M3GAN and Barbarian engaged with their audiences – their ability to capture in an image or moment something that can harness the power of social media, but also offer a genuinely shocking, visceral experience that immerses an audience.
DEADLINE: To what extent do you think the WGA strike will impact the independent film market?
PF: The WGA has pulled the band-aid off and said enough is enough. Rightly so. The industry needs to address ongoing profit participation for creatives that has fallen by the wayside in the streaming wars. The WGA strike in my opinion has opened the eyes of other creatives to look at their renumeration in earnest. We’re hearing of some bond companies not underwriting production in the summer with a view to a possible SAG strike. Things are going to get rocky for production in 2023 but ultimately this is an important point for the industry.
MP: One thing we experienced following the previous strike was a bottleneck of packaged material about six-nine months after the fact. We’ve made good headway to provide buyers with films to pre-buy now, but also have been working furiously behind the scenes to expand the nascent slate for the back end of the year and into 2024.
DEADLINE: What show or movie have you most enjoyed recently and why?
CG: I just watched a classic horror from the early 80s – The Changeling by Peter Medak. I had heard it was awesome but hadn’t got round to watching it. I can say the hype is justified. It’s so elegantly made, and it has a depth of characterization and perfectly judged economy in the way it world-builds and delivers scares. I can see how influential it has been on later horrors. Outstanding.
PF: I’m head over heels in love with season four of Succession. Utterly captivating storytelling and the anticipation every week and water cooler conversations in the meantime have bought me back to how we used to watch shows. The fact we can’t binge it but have to all watch it at the same time has made for a more shared experience. Food for thought…
MP: I’m late to the party on both counts, but I’ve just finished The Offer, and am knee-deep in Yellowstone. As long as the world is enticing, the ‘misfit family’ formula just has so much fuel. As for movies, I’ll always seek out the next tentpole horror – it’s been a moment, but Megan’s viral dance lives rent free in my head!
DEADLINE: What will you be reading on holiday this year and why?
CG: I’m trying to understand early English history better. The next book on the list is Britain After Rome by Robin Fleming.
RK: I’m reading Einstein’s War by Mathew Stanley, a beautifully crafted insight into the person and his relationship with scientist Arthur Eddington. It balances a great narrative with the social and political history of the time. As a bonus you also end up understanding the theory of relativity.
PF: I’ve just finished Eric Schlosser’s phenomenal Command and Control about America’s nuclear arsenal and all the accidents and incidents over the past 60 years. Now I’m convinced we must have annihilated ourselves and are actually living in a simulation.
MP: Hopefully we’ll sell out in Cannes and be too busy over the summer for a holiday! That said, I’m completely lost in James Clavell’s Shogun, it’s extraordinary and has more than stood the test of time. Can’t wait to see the upcoming new adaptation.
DEADLINE: If you weren’t in the film industry what would you be doing?
CG: I was thinking about going into the wine trade before film swept me up but perhaps in my fantasy alternate universe I would be running an exquisitely high-end restaurant.
PF: Rockets and space exploration. But you know, studying film was easier than studying the way friction ratios affect steering outcomes in aeronautical use under reduced gravity loads.
MP: I tried acting [Pirkis had a key supporting role opposite Russell Crowe in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and was in 13 eps of HBO series Rome] but turns out you need to know what you’re doing!
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