10 A Successful Event Rises On the Banks of The Hauts-de-France Region The closing of MIPTV, which used to take place in early April in Cannes, located in the south of France, has moved an even larger business crowd to Lille, a city in the north of France, in March, for the fourday Forum (the professional part of the Series Mania Festival), which ran March 24-27, 2025. In effect, MIPTV leaving the city of Cannes has helped Lille make Series Mania an even bigger success than previous years. And the town of Lille showed its appreciation, giving it great visibility throughout the city center. Series Mania was co-founded by Laurence Herszberg in 2010 as the world’s first festival dedicated to TV series. It moved to Lille in 2018 from Paris, its original venue. The Forum, the professional (or business) side of the Festival, began in 2013. The model has been replicated by Canneseries in Cannes (April 24-29, 2025); by Seriencamp in Cologne, Germany (June 3-5, 2025); by the Italian Global Series Festival in Riccione and Rimini (June 21 to 28, 2025); and by SerialMania in Turin (October-February 2025). The weather in Lille is not nearly as temperate as Cannes, but the Flemish-style city is conveniently located a one-hour train ride from both Paris and Brussels, and less than two hours from London, which makes it easily reachable via international air travel (the local airport mainly serves domestic flights). The marketing abilities of Series Mania’s organizers also contributed to the success of the event, giving unusual emphasis and consideration to international trade media, hiring talented PR firms active in both the U.S. and Europe, and cultivating relationships with showrunners and content distribution companies. The Series Mania Festival is open to the public, with some 350 entries screened in various venues throughout the city. This year's festival started on March 21 and ended on March 28, 2025. The Forum consists of TV conferences devoted to the development and production of international TV series (with some 55 conferences and keynotes on this year’s program), including the Co-Pro Pitching sessions, which bestowed a 50,000 euro (U.S. $54,000) prize to French/Japanese comedy-romance Tokyo Crush. The conferences had a big Hollywood studio imprint, with a panel featuring Paramount Global Content Distribution’s Lisa Kramer and Lindsey Martin from CBS Studios, but a keynote from Gerhard Zeiler of Warner Bros. Discovery had to be cancelled. Netflix — one of the event sponsors — featured an elaborate presentation previewing its upcoming offerings prior to a panel on local European productions. This year, for the first time, there was a “Buyers Upfront” held on the Forum’s opening day, March 24, at the Lille Chamber of Commerce building. The “Upfront” was an invitation-only event for some 120 buyers (mostly European) with clips from 10 series that have global appeal. This first Upfront saw Gaumont’s thriller series The Deal winning the first annual “Buyers Choice Award.” The Forum kicked off with an opening night reception at the Lille Chamber of Commerce. Forum director Francesco Capurro was on hand, together with Series Mania co-founder and general director Laurence Herszberg, to welcome delegates. March 25 opened with a record 83 exhibiting companies on four levels of the Lille Convention Center, the Lille Grand Palais. Among the highlights of the Forum’s first day was the Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, culminating with the aforementioned announcement of the winner at an awards ceremony and cocktail held at the Barriere hotel theater. Also on day one, the Matchmaking Area was dedicated to meetings with book publishers. The initiative — called “Shoot the Book!” — was organized by SCELF, the European Commission’s non-governmental Intellectual Property collecting society, and this year expanded into an IP pitching session for six titles, held on day two. Sessions and panels continued through the last day of the Forum. One of the most interesting sessions on day four was “All Eyes on Advertising Budget. What are the Impacts on Content Creation?” A number of evening festivities were held for the Forum’s Lille Dialogues, including a dinner for producers and journalists in the presence of one of the eight guests of honor at the Festival, American actor Christina Hendricks, star of the TV series Small Town, Big Story, distributed internationally by NBCUniversal and screened at the Series Mania Festival. Overall, this 2025 Forum welcomed 5,000 professionals, including 500 buyers, from 75 countries — a 20 percent increase from last year. “This edition marks a major milestone for the series industry, confirming than Series Mania Forum is now the one stop shop from content creation to international distribution,” stated an official press release. Next year’s dates are March 20-27, 2026, for the Festival, and March 24-26 for the Forum, and Series Mania organizers are said not to be thinking about moving the event to April. It’s growing every year, which shows that the end of March date works well. Just for Entertainment Distribution’s Alex Avon and Zoé Crabtree Francesco Capurro, director of Series Mania Forum Inter Medya’s Beatriz Cea Okan, Hasret Özcan, and Sinem Aliskan VIDEOAGE May 2025 Series Mania Review
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTI4OTA5