English Entertainment
Top NY producers to lead Keshet films’ div with ‘Skinny Dip’ & ‘Newburgh Sting’
MUMBAI: Keshet Studios, the LA-based subsidiary of Keshet International (KI), the global production and distribution powerhouse behind many high-profile, award-winning and critically acclaimed series, has launched Keshet Films, announced KI CEO Alon Shtruzman. The newly formed global feature development and production division will be co-headed by award-winning producers Mandy Tagger-Brockey and Adi Ezroni.
Reporting to Keshet Studios President of Scripted Peter Traugott in Los Angeles, Tagger-Brockey in New York and Ezroni in Tel Aviv will form a unit producing features budgeted between $10 million and $20 million for the US and international markets.
Keshet Films’ inaugural development slate includes a feature adaptation of the Carl Hiaasen caper novel, Skinny Dip, and Newburgh Sting, a fictional adaptation of the award-winning HBO documentary.
“KI is a premium content company that is always on the lookout for the best creative talent, and that is exactly what we have in Mandy and Adi,” said Shtruzman. “They are a perfect fit, bringing to us a distinct point of view, filmmaking savvy, a desire to create meaningful and entertaining content, as well as an outstanding track record of producing excellent films – of all budget sizes with high-quality casts, writers and directors attached.”
Traugott added, “When we launched Keshet Studios nearly two years ago, Alon and I knew our next primary objective would be to gain a foothold in the feature film business. Mandy and Adi have an incredible network of creative relationships throughout the Hollywood, New York and Israeli film communities. We are very lucky to have them join KI and are excited for them to lead this new venture.”
The producers join KI from their New York-based Spring Pictures label, where they developed, financed and produced a multitude of award-winning independent films.
“We are thrilled to set up in house at a quality-driven company like Keshet International, furthering our commitment to supporting great talent and unique storytelling,” Tagger-Brockey and Ezroni commented. “Working closely with Alon and Peter, we intend to bring KI into the film world as an active and disruptive player.”
Tagger Brockey’s and Ezroni’s arrival at Keshet Films coincides with the April 23 world premiere of Spring Pictures’ Saturday Church, written and directed by two-time WGA Award nominee Damon Cardasis, at the 16th annual Tribeca Film Festival. A rousing celebration of one boy’s search for his identity, Saturday Church marks Tagger Brockey’s and Ezroni’s return to the Tribeca film competition after their entrant last year, Dean, which earned the 2016 Festival’s prestigious Founders Award. Dean, which stars its writer and director Demitri Martin as well as Kevin Kline, Gillian Jacobs and Mary Steenburgen, is due in theaters in June.
A veteran of the New York film scene, Tagger-Brockey began her career at InDigEnt – director Gary Winick, John Sloss and IFC’s prescient experiment matching top-notch industry creative talent with shoestring budgets and crew profit sharing. While supervising production for the company, she oversaw a wide array of acclaimed films such as the award-winning, Winick-directed Tadpole, along with Richard Linklater’s Tape, Peter Hedges’ Pieces of April, Wim Wender’s Land of Plenty and Steve Buscemi’s Lonesome Jim.
Ezroni, an award-winning actress who has spent the past decade as a film producer, was a partner at Priority Films prior to teaming with Tagger-Brockey. She received the 2008 Global Hero Award from the US State Department for her work in raising awareness of human trafficking with the films Holly and Redlight. The lead actress of Keshet Broadcasting’s globally renowned TV drama Prisoners of War, the inspiration for the Showtime hit series Homeland, she also stars in HBO Europe’s When Shall We Kiss.
In 2009, the pair co-founded Spring Pictures, where they produced A Late Quartet, directed by Yaron Zilberman and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Catherine Keener; The English Teacher, directed by Craig Zisk and starring Julianne Moore, Greg Kinnear and Lily Collins; and SXSW Game Changer Award-winner Kelly & Cal, directed by Jen McGowan and starring Juliette Lewis and Jonny Weston. All Nighter, directed by Gavin Wiesen and starring JK Simmons and Emile Hirsch, premiered in March.
UK: The aerial is losing its grip. As broadband becomes the default way Britons watch television, the UK is edging towards a decisive, and divisive, question: should Freeview be switched off by 2034? The issue, highlighted in reporting by The Guardian, has exposed deep fault lines over access, affordability and the future of public service broadcasting.
For nearly 25 years, Freeview has delivered free-to-air television from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to almost every corner of the country. Even now, it remains the UK’s largest TV platform, used in more than 16m homes and on around 10m main household sets. Yet the same broadcasters that built it are now pressing for its closure within eight years.
Their case rests on a structural shift in viewing. Smart TVs, superfast broadband and the Netflix-led streaming boom have pulled audiences online. Advertising economics have followed. By 2034, the number of homes using Freeview as their main TV set is forecast to fall from a peak of almost 12m in 2012 to fewer than 2m, making digital terrestrial television, or DTT, increasingly costly to sustain.
But critics say the rush to switch off risks abandoning those least able, or least willing, to move online.
“I don’t want to be choosing apps and making new accounts,” says Lynette, 80, from Kent. “It is time-consuming and irritating trying to work out where I want to be, to remember the sequence of clicks, with hieroglyphics instead of words. If I make a mistake I have to start again.”
Lynette is among nearly 100,000 people who have signed a “save Freeview” petition launched by campaign group Silver Voices. She fears the government is about to “take [Freeview] away from me and others who either don’t like, can’t afford, or can’t use online versions”.
Official figures underline the fault lines. A report commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport estimates that by 2035, 1.8m homes will still depend on Freeview. Ofcom’s analysis shows those households are more likely to be disabled, older, living alone, female, and based in the north of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Freeview is owned by the public service broadcasters through Everyone TV, which also operates Freesat and the newer streaming platform Freely. After two years of review, DCMS is expected to set out its position soon, drawing on three options proposed by Ofcom: a costly upgrade of Freeview’s ageing technology; maintaining a bare-bones service with only core PSB channels; or a full switch-off during the 2030s.
The broadcasters have rallied behind the third option. They argue that 2034 is the logical cut-off, when transmission contracts with network operator Arqiva expire. By then, they say, the cost of broadcasting to a dwindling audience will far outweigh the returns from TV advertising.
Ofcom agrees a crunch point is approaching. In July, the regulator warned of a “tipping point” within the next few years, after which it will no longer be commercially viable for broadcasters to carry the costs of DTT.
Others see risks beyond economics. Questions remain over whether internet TV can reliably deliver emergency broadcasts, such as the daily Covid updates, in the way that universally available DTT can. The UK radio industry has also warned that an internet-only future for TV could push up distribution costs and force some radio stations off air if PSBs no longer share Arqiva’s mast network.
“It is a political hot potato,” says Dennis Reed, founder of Silver Voices, who says he has “dissociated” his organisation from the government’s stakeholder forum, which he believes is “heavily biased” towards streaming.
The Future TV Taskforce, representing the PSBs, counters that moving online could “close the digital divide once and for all”. “We want to be able to plan to ensure that no one is left behind,” a spokesperson says, adding that rising DTT costs could otherwise mean cuts to programme budgets.
The numbers show the scale of the challenge. Of the 1.8m Freeview-dependent homes projected for 2035, around 1.1m are expected to have broadband but not use it for TV. The remaining 700,000 are forecast to lack a broadband connection altogether.
Veterans of the analogue switch-off, completed in 2012 after 76 years, recall similar fears of “TV blackout chaos”. Around 6 per cent of households were labelled “digital refuseniks”, yet a targeted help scheme and a national campaign, fronted by a robot called Digit Al voiced by Matt Lucas, delivered a largely smooth transition.
This time, the BBC is less keen to foot the bill. Tim Davie, the outgoing director general, has said the corporation should not fund a comparable support programme for a Freeview switch-off.
Research for Sky by Oliver & Ohlbaum suggests that with early awareness campaigns and digital inclusion measures, only about 330,000 households would ultimately need hands-on help ahead of a 2034 shutdown.
Meanwhile, viewing habits continue to fragment. Audience body Barb says 7 per cent of UK households no longer own a TV set, choosing to watch on other devices. In December, YouTube overtook the BBC’s combined channels in total UK viewing across TVs, smartphones and tablets, albeit measured at a minimum of three minutes.
That shift may accelerate. YouTube has recently blocked Barb and its partner Kantar from accessing viewing session data, limiting transparency just as online platforms consolidate power.
“When the government chose British Satellite Broadcasting as the ‘winner’ in satellite TV it was Rupert Murdoch’s Sky instead that came out on top,” says a senior TV executive quoted by The Guardian. “There already is such an outsider ready to be the winner in the transition to internet TV; it is YouTube.”
Freeview’s future now hangs on a familiar British dilemma: modernise fast and risk exclusion, or protect universality and pay the price. Either way, the aerial’s days as king of the living room look numbered.
