We're making a few changes in Three River Studios. Everyone is aware of the many ongoing challenges of the TV business, and equally the many new opportunities that demand a bit of rethinking of where you put your creative energies, how you do business, and how you deploy a finite set of resources.
For a small team, active across multiple genres, UK and internationally, the rational way forward is to refocus. That means really putting all our efforts behind our non-scripted production business,
Impossible Factual, the new digital opportunities offered by platforms like YouTube, and integrating the new possibilities offered by AI into how we continue to be leaders in bringing visual innovation to the screen.
To do this we have to reluctantly put our scripted efforts via Three River Fiction on hold. It's especially frustrating that even getting a successful series made, as was Dead and Buried that went out last year, hasn't made it any easier to plot a course for the future when you are a small player in an increasingly disrupted marketplace.
This means the brilliant
Benjamin McGrath is leaving us. We wish him every success for the future. He's been the heart and soul of our scripted work, and Dead and Buried came into being entirely because he identified and grabbed an opportunity, and then through dogged hard work, wrangling both the creative and the broadcasters and others who backed it, made it happen. If you need a drama exec, you should try and hire him.
Steve Maher and I, as co-Creative Directors of Three River Fiction, are leaving the door ajar rather than shutting up shop, but for the foreseeable future you will find us next door with the factual gang.
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TRS puts scripted activities on hold
Three River Fiction, the scripted arm of Three River Studios is pausing further active development of its slate. Jonathan Drake, CEO of Three River Studios, said, ‘It’s a tough time across the industry, and incredibly hard for smaller players to stay in the very long game of developing and financing original drama. Our focus going forward is to strengthen our non-scripted business, Impossible Factual, and putting new energies into our emerging digital strategy.’
As a result, Ben McGrath, Head of Drama, is leaving the company. Group Creative Director Steve Maher said, ‘Ben has done an amazing job over the years, most recently leading the creative and bringing together the financing partners for ‘Dead and Buried’, our 4 part series for BBC NI and Virgin Media Ireland written by Colin Bateman. Despite the show’s success, in this current climate we weren’t able to fund a second series, but it is testament to Ben’s work in steering the show that it has now been nominated for Best Drama in the Northern Ireland RTS awards. We will all miss working with Ben, and wish him every success for the future.’