Studiocanal’s M-K Kennedy on Company’s Ambitions, ‘Apollo Has Fallen’

With only one year under her belt as Studiocanal‘s executive managing director of TV series, M-K Kennedy is leveling up the scripted ambitions of the French pay TV group’s production arm.

After spearheading Studiocanal’s first in-house international series, “Paris Has Fallen” — which broke rating records on Canal+ and topped the charts on Amazon U.K. and Hulu in the U.S. — Kennedy reveals to Variety that the highly anticipated second season of the anthology, “Apollo Has Fallen,” has started filming. Rather than taking place in a single location, the eight-part series will hop from country to country, unfolding everywhere from the Libyan coast to the streets of Madrid, with principal photography taking place across the U.K., Marta and Spain. The series is produced by Studiocanal, Urban Myth Films, Millenium and G-Base, who were also behind “Paris Has Fallen,” which sold to more than 170 territories worldwide.

“Apollo Has Fallen,” which emanates from Gerard Butler’s “Has Fallen” film franchise and expands on “Paris Has Fallen,” is once again written by series creator Howard Overman (“War of The Worlds,” “Misfits”). David Caffrey (“The Gentlemen”) is lead director alongside Alice Troughton (“Baghdad Central”).

Speaking to Variety right before Series Mania, where she chaired the jury for the Co-Pro Pitching Session, Kennedy said the new season will bring back Ritu Arya and Tewfik Jallab, a duo whom she says has “off-the-wall chemistry.” Arya stars as fearless MI6 operative Zara Taylor, while Jallab plays former close protection officer Vincent Taleb, who will this time be on a mission to stop a deadly virus threatening to decimate Europe. The cast of “Apollo Has Fallen” is completed by Jacek Koman (“Conclave”), Richard Dormer (“The Day Of The Jackal”), Charlotte Spencer (“The Gold”), Arthur Darvill (“Doctor Who”), Annabel Scholey (“The Split”) and Aylin Tezel (“Scrapper”).

Urban Myth Films is one of Studiocanal’s 19 production labels which Kennedy oversees. The Colombian-born executive, who comes off as sharp, energetic and passionate, built an impressive track record at Netflix during her seven-year tenure, having led the streamer’s production teams behind local-language shows and films such as the Oscar-winning “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “Society of the Snow” and the Omar Sy series “Lupin.”

At Studiocanal, Kennedy says that while she’s looking to build on successful franchises and IP within the group’s library, she’s also interested in exploring other material. As such, Studiocanal Stories — the banner’s newly-launched label dedicated to literary adaptations — has just secured the rights to the upcoming novel “Swept Away” by bestselling author Beth O’Leary. Kennedy says Studiocanal will adapt “Swept Away” into a live-action TV series targeting female audiences.

You’ve been globe-trotting for most of you career. You lived in Amsterdam for Netflix, in Los Angeles for Universal Television, as well as in Mexico City and Miami for Telemundo Studios. How’s been this first year in London for Studiocanal?

A lot has happened in a year! I moved country, I moved house, I changed jobs, I changed language. That’s not true. I mean, most of my work happens in English, but I’ve definitely practiced my French more in the last year than I had in the last 10.

Studiocanal is part of a French company but it’s actually pretty international, right?

Yes, we have our in-house production label, Studiocanal Series, and I’m only beginning to build a team here in London. And then I’ve got a good-sized development team, and of course, all the sales and distribution team in Paris. Then, additionally, in Munich, we have Studiocanal GMBH. But then we’ve got 19 production companies across different territories, in Spain, the U.K., Scandinavia, France, etc.

Why is it important for Studiocanal to start producing big English-language series like “Paris Has Fallen”?

Our first priority for “scale series” is to become a pipeline for high-quality English language shows for the Canal footprint and concurrent with that, we are absolutely pursuing English language premium series because really, the plan is to start to establish ourselves as a television studio with worldwide presence, worldwide ambition, addressing global audiences wherever they are. But the key to that entry at the moment is through English language series.

Do you need to have a U.S. partner on these big shows to greenlight them?

It always helps, but it depends on the series. But if you look If you look at “Paris has Fallen,” we did and had good success finding partners both in the U.K. and in the U.S.. We hope, and I think expect, that they’ll come back for a new season, but we’re in the process of those conversations now.

What’s that new season about?

It’s “Apollo Has Fallen.” We’re going back to the movies a little bit to the mission name, because with the movies, you had “Olympus Has Fallen,” and “Angel Has Fallen,” and “London Has Fallen.” But really, the mission name for this one is Apollo. Again, because it is a scale series and it’s meant first and foremost to replicate the success we had with “Paris Has Fallen” with the Canal Group, they are my commissioner. And then the further support from the English language markets gets us the rest of the way there but the the driving force behind them is Canal.

What budget are you aiming for on your big English-language series?

I would say certainly over a €3 million mark per episode is our opening position with any of these, because we’re not trying to make intimate character-study little shows. These are big pulsing action series, big thrillers with stars that can really appeal to an international audience. But “Paris Has Fallen” was more and “Apollo Has Fallen” is also more. I’m not going to give you the exact number.

You worked many years at Netflix before. How different is what you’re doing now at Studiocanal?

There are similarities. One of the things that appealed to me when I took the job, was that the ambition is absolutely global. This is not about servicing a French platform or even a European platform. This was about ‘Hey, we want to build a worldwide television business, so let’s go for it.’ This is the Canal footprint today, we expect to grow it. We’re going to grow it. We’re on every continent already. Obviously, the big difference is Netflix, when I came in, and certainly the work that I did there over the seven years, is a self-serving ecosystem, because we were producing only for one service. Here, I think the big difference that we’re serving several editorial lines and editorial interests across different territories because the Canal entities are picking up the shows for programming to Canal Polonia, Canal France, Canal Africa. That’s something that I think is much more present for me in terms of, we’ve got to take care of the audience. Is the audience going to enjoy this ride? I think I’m probably more audience sensitive than I was previously.

When you’re talking about big shows, do they all have to be in English language?

So the slate that I’m building out at the moment, certainly for, I’d say, the next 2-3 years, as we really build a reputation as a worldwide producer, global ambitions, will be English language.

What struck you when you arrived at Studiocanal?

One of the things I found when I arrived is that between our library, which is magnificent in over 9,000 titles, so there’s all of that IP to try to polish off and play with fresh But even in some of the new IP that we’re discovering, the production companies that are part of the family each have their own storytelling DNA.

You launched a division dedicated to literary adaptations, Studiocanal Stories. How has it worked?

That was really about being able to leverage the synergies from within the Vivendi family of companies, and build a tighter partnership with Hachette (the publishing group bought by Vivendi) especially, but also just with the literary community, with the publishing community in general, and not just in France, but really everywhere. Through our meeting with the various branches of the Hachette team, we had an amazing meeting with the publishers of Erin O’Leary’s novels. They handed out to us the manuscript for her next novel set to publish in April of next year, so a week from today, saying “We know you’re looking for female forward literary adaptations. This feels like it could be something you’re looking for.” And we read it and fell in love. The story is amazing. It’s totally charming. I think it has very big potential and we’re already looking for a screenwriter. Erin’s last book sold 3 million copies just in the U.K., but it was truly a global phenomenon. She’s been adapted twice for television.

It’s nice to see that even though Vivendi has listed Canal+ Group and Hachette separately at the stock market, there are still synergies happening between sister companies.

Yes, think it’s a testament, to Studiocanal’s history, because it began as a film studio, really knowing how to nurture talent and really know how to build meaningful relationships with talent. It goes beyond just a transactional relationship. I think it speaks to the power and the diversity of the companies that we’re working with and the fact that the IPO did not cut us off from that DNA.

There are so many great Studiocanal movies in your library, which ones are you interested in spinning off?

I can’t give it away yet, you will see an announcement of a very big IP that was originally a film for us. It’s a very important film, hugely important filmmaker. After a first attempt at actually just revisiting the same story, they actually discovered that they needed to invert Invert the narrative. All of a sudden, we’ve taken the core story and placed it elsewhere. All of a sudden, it feels like the most relevant zeitgeist-y thing we could have done. There is so much in the IP of the company already in the catalog. That real freedom to dive in and say, ‘Well, what if we did this upside down? And what if he was she? And what if we don’t do it in Africa and we do it in Spain? Or what if we don’t do it in Russia and we do it in Germany?’ The opportunities are huge.

The “Paris Has Fallen” franchise is pretty male-skewing. How you also looking to bringing more of a female-friendly audiences?

Absolutely. And in fact, that’s why we got so excited at the idea of the Erin O’Leary books. So we thought, ‘Oh, my God, that’s exactly who we want to be in business with.’ Female cohort, storytelling, a female author, absolutely telling each of her stories from a female point of view, still edgy, still bold characters, and great redemption stories. But yes, that’s the space that I feel like that was one of the gaps that we’ve identified in the slate, is that we had a lot of boy energy, and I want to bring some girl energy.

With the days of Peak TV over, do you feel like there is still a lot of demand for prestige TV out there?

We are a producer with European heritage, where the co-production has always been a way of life, not a terrible compromise you had to make because you just couldn’t put the money together, so it’s such a natural way for us to operate that I think we actually have a tremendous advantage over Hollywood, who are hands in the air having their, ‘What are we going to do now moment.’ We’re like, ‘We know how to operate in these tough times.’ We’ve stayed scrappy. Although ‘Paris Has Fallen’ is a big and ambitious show, we don’t need the luxuriating timelines and luxuriating producing producing environments to make it work. We’re scrappy. I think we’re actually really quite well positioned for the moment.

You have so much to dig from in your library and within the group. How open are you to projects coming from elsewhere?

When I joined we had more than 220 pieces of development that were in the door in some way. Some of those are from the library, and some of those were films that my film colleagues started to develop and then thought that the property could make sense in television. I started looking at what’s still in the zeitgeist, what makes sense, what still feels fresh. If it doesn’t, we can put back on the shelf for later. But so we’ve finished that process now. And since about the first of March, we’ve been receiving projects. And we still received stuff even when we said we weren’t, because when you’re in the business of an art form, you have to be opportunistic!