The Exec Behind ‘The Studio’ on Selling Comedy, Originals & Who Gets First Looks
Lionsgate’s Scott Herbst had four bids on Seth Rogen’s series, and reveals the one word driving today’s market
I write about TV from L.A. My Summer Sellers’ Guide has revealed what ABC, Hulu & FX, Disney+, Apple TV+, Amazon, HBO & HBO Max and Peacock want to buy, and I reported on Gen X Hollywood’s career crisis and the boom in microdramas. Email me at elaine@theankler.com. As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Lesley Goldberg and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and all The Ankler publishes, including Sean McNulty’s The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.
Getting a show on the air is hard. Shopping a new series and getting not one, but four offers from all four different streamers you pitched? A unicorn in this market.
I mean, when you’re Seth Rogen (and that show winds up being Apple TV+’s The Studio), the odds are already in your favor, but Lionsgate Television exec VP and head of development Scott Herbst tells me it’s still often a crapshoot.
“When something’s good, you get a bunch of offers. Sometimes there’s something that’s just right for one place, but ultimately, that’s all you need, right?” says the longtime development exec, 43, who nurtured the American edition of Ghosts as well as Home Economics and Welcome to Flatch, and whose career includes stints at NBCU International and Lakeshore Films. “I’ve been in situations where you have multiple offers and then the show doesn’t go — and then you send that script back to the three other places, and nobody wants it.”
Where a series lands matters more than you might think, too. Take Lionsgate’s sizzling summer hit, Malin Åkerman and Brittany Snow soap The Hunting Wives, which recently charted in the top spot on Netflix. The show, about socialites and murder in East Texas, was supposed to be on Starz after getting the green light there in late 2023, but the Lionsgate-Starz split prompted Lionsgate to take back the rights to the show, instead taking it to Netflix.
The success of The Hunting Wives “shows the power of the right show and the right platform really does matter,” says Herbst, who leads a team of four creative execs. “Even The Studio and Apple — it’s like, if you’re lucky enough to be able to have multiple places, and they want to take your show, making sure you pick the right home for a show, it really can make or break your show, right?
Lionsgate’s TV studio wins come not long after its split from Starz, nearly a decade after acquiring the cabler for $4.4 billion. Starz, as my colleague Lesley Goldberg reported last week in her chat with top execs Alison Hoffman and Kathryn Busby, is now looking to own more of its own series as an indie platform.
Starting in May, Lionsgate, led by CEO Jon Feltheimer began trading under the ticker symbol LION, with a market cap of more than $1.8 billion, 30 to 40 film releases a year, a stake in 3 Arts Entertainment, and nearly 100 series both on the air and in production, including the upcoming USA Network adaptation of John Grisham’s The Rainmaker that premieres this week. (The show will stream on Peacock.)
For today, I spoke with Herbst about The Studio (you know, the show that got Marty Scorsese and Ron Howard their first acting Emmy noms — among the show’s 23 total nods), The Hunting Wives, the state of development at Lionsgate and across Hollywood — plus, his advice for writers and producers looking to sell an original comedy now.
Read our chat, lightly edited for clarity, for more about:
Herbst’s key ingredient for a successful comedy today vs. in the Friends era
His position on first-look deals, overalls and who gets them in today’s market
What made Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s pitch irresistible — and the unexpected real-life inspiration behind it
The shooting style that kept The Studio on time and on budget (for well under the rumored $10-$12M per episode, I hear)
The single most important word in the market now driving development for Herbst and his team
How original ideas compete with — and sometimes beat — IP
How Herbst has helped break new voices — and get their shows to air
His no-nonsense advice for comedy writers trying to break through now
