The Shows Amazon Wants to Buy Now
Complaints about Prime Video have quieted down post-Salke as a new world order — and buying taste — emerge
I write about TV from L.A. I interviewed a top agent-turned-manager about his take on the TV market, reported on the boom in microdramas and wrote about how L.A. sound stages are scrambling as production dwindles. Reach me at elaine@theankler.com. As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from Elaine, Lesley Goldberg and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including Sean McNulty’s The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.
Happy summer, Series Business fam — hope you all had a lovely Fourth of July.
It’s time for the second installment of my Summer Sellers’ Guide. Last week, I took a looky-loo into Apple TV+’s prestige-y tastes (read: A-list stars, always, big budgets and the genres they want and don’t), and this week, I’ve got another streamer on tap: Amazon’s Prime Video, which is home to hits like The Boys and action-adventure crowd pleasers like Reacher and has a rather different mandate.
When I checked in with agents and producers last fall, the perennial complaint was that Amazon was “disorganized,” and reps were confused about which creative execs to call with ideas, calling the company “bureaucratic and slow,” echoing what my colleague Lesley Goldberg also reported in April when she broke down the messy impact of studio chief Jen Salke’s exit.
Well, either the pleasant heat of early summer has sun-baked people into forgiveness, or the studio-slash-streamer has clarified its messaging to the market, because this time around, the sellers I talked to who work with the company have largely been quite complimentary, and TV head Vernon Sanders’ regime has made some moves that have reps encouraged.
“Amazon is one of my favorite places right now,” one senior TV agent tells me, touting the streamer’s recent comedy development efforts after a bit of a dry spell in the format.
Prime Video’s evolution has been well documented, and its programming tastes that once included quirky critical darlings Fleabag and Transparent have since evolved to target broader, more commercial, IP-driven fare that can travel. After all, as one agent put it to me, “The reality is they don’t need more U.S. subscribers. They need global subscribers.”
📺 In today’s guide to selling to Amazon:
RIGHT NOW: The genres working for Prime Video and the shows that resonate
DECISION MAKERS: How Sanders’ team operates and the two execs he consults with on greenlights
KEY EXECS: Four development pros that reps shout out for being good to work with and why
MUST-BUY: The genre that’s an “evergreen need” for Prime Video, and the projects it’s developing now in that space
PIPELINE INTEL: The latest on Tomb Raider, Mass Effect, and questions around them
BUDGETS: The plans — and price tag — for Fallout’s second season, and why Amazon’s budgets range so widely
COMEDY OUTLOOK: What Benito Skinner’s Overcompensating signals, and where Amazon is cautiously investing next in comedy
GLOBAL AMBITION: Why Amazon’s appetite for fare with “built-in audience” exceeds other streamers’
IP STRATEGY: What worked, what didn’t (Citadel), and where the streamer is doubling down with spinoffs
Series Wanted: ‘Big, Global, Commercial’
Here’s what’s working on Amazon Prime Video, according to the reps who spoke with me: