Next we have Kevin Beggs. Kevin-
Hello.
I think we go back a long ways at this point.
Absolutely.
Kevin the Chairman and Chief Content Officer of Lionsgate and the Television Group. Thanks for joining us today, Kevin.
Thrilled to be here.
Maybe we can start off, and you can talk a little bit about what the strikes have meant for your business. I think John sized the strike impact as about $30 million of EBITDA in the last quarter. I know you have some shows that, you know, were hit quite badly by the strike. So as we get into sort of getting to back-to-work period maybe that's the first-
Sure
concept you can talk through.
Well, relative to our peers, I think we're probably the least impacted. We got very lucky in that we had a bunch of stuff stockpiled and shooting before. Some shows were kind of stuck mid-season. So we have a comedy on NBC called Extended Family. We had shot 5 of those. We just started shooting again last Friday, so we picked up pretty quickly cause we had scripts and we got a couple of waivers on shows that were, you know, third-party acquisition kinds of situations where we could act as a distributor-
or studio, but not in the traditional ways that we often do. Some of our movies got waivers, including Hunger Games, and that allowed the press to, and the cast to go market, and of course, it's been a huge, nice two-week story.
Then there are some casualties. You know, Home Economics was moving into a fourth season, but for the writer strike, that's not gonna happen at ABC. We might sell it elsewhere, but that's always tricky. We had a couple things brewing at Showtime that were... looked 90% like they were gonna go, but by the time the strikes ended, they couldn't go. And we're in the middle of acquiring eOne, as you know, and they have a giant franchise in The Rookie on ABC. Their spin-off, Rookie: Feds, starring Niecy Nash-Betts, was also probably a victim of the strike.
Because by the time the SAG strike ended, without scripts and now without enough runway, probably didn't make sense for ABC to try to just to rush to get, you know, six episodes in as opposed to a 22-episode season.
Right.
The Rookie, on the other hand, had already—they had already written a bunch, so they'll start shooting, I think, any moment now. And when that acquisition closes, then it'll be in our world. So, but in general, you know, it's bad for everybody, but it could have been far worse. You know, the ongoing costs that are attributable to the Writers Guild and SAG enhancements, and those are gonna be followed by IATSE and Teamsters, who will be up for new deals, and they're looking at their sister unions and saying, "We'd like a little.
You, you put us out of work for six months. Like, what's in it for us?" But most of those costs, you know, are manageable. We pass along many of those to the end user, and we scrimp and save in other ways. And maybe you can't afford that third lead at a price point that might have made sense before. So when we think about a series, whether it's 10 episodes or 20, it's a 10- or a 20-episode movie, and you might start big with a big premiere because you want everybody to come in, and in the middle, you might do some more efficient episodes.
We call them bottle episodes. If you've ever seen an episode of an ongoing hit series, and then, you know, they got stuck in the elevator for a whole episode, that's a bottle show. Because they never had to leave the elevator, and they shot it for half the time, and they saved, you know, $1 million, which contributed to the overage they might have had on the premiere or the finale, and that's kind of the magic of what studios and producers do. The best writer-producers know how to do that. So we're not that worried about the ongoing incremental costs.
Obviously, the one-time costs, we don't love, but far less than anything that hit us with COVID. Far less. So you know, and we've gone through multiple strikes. In my history, I've been 25 years, probably this is the third one. Usually not both unions at once, and that's was why this was particularly damaging, but relative, I think we're getting off- somewhat unscathed.
And overall, then including some of this impact that has probably taken some of your newer existing show count down Can you just kind of step back and give us a sense of how many shows you have? on network on streaming right now, and then what you have in the pipeline and maybe how that compares to how you've historically been positioned.
Well, I think in general, if you're looking for kind of what's the forecast, so the cadence right now is a rush back to production on all the shows that were kind of teed up, or as I mentioned, halfway done. There's this mad scramble for crew and locations and so on. There's gonna be a frenzy return to get stuff, particularly on broadcast, back as soon as possible. But you're seeing lots of different things that maybe had one month left of shooting and that were kind of in suspended animation. When that surge, if you will, ends, you know, I think the question you're asking or what I ask every day is, like, what's the new normal?
If we were at a, you know, an irrational, exuberant, Peak TV, everybody go all in, chase Netflix no matter what figure it out later. Obviously, those chickens have come home to roost, and there's now a lot of clarity and discipline and networks that I'm speaking to start many conversations with, "What's the budget?" Which was something they would never say during the height of Peak TV Like,
"What's the show?
And can, you know, you get a big star? and so on and so forth. So, so this is great. As a seller and a studio that's kind of in the nimble, scrappy, independent zone, the ability to ratchet up and down on budget, scale, and size per client is something we can do uniquely well because we started at the very lowest, and we have obviously done very big. It's hard once you've done only big to figre out how to do small. But for us, we have about, between our domestic originals group, which is based here in L.A., and then we have an international co-production group called Apex. Between those two, there's about 30-34 scripted series right now. That's before the eOne acquisition concludes, which would add 4 or 5 more to that.
And the unscripted side, we have about 35 shows, and when the eOne transaction concludes, that'll be in the low 50s, between those two groups. So a fair amount of volume, and many of our, I mentioned the international group, Apex, of which are some Canadian productions, Australian, Irish, and others. Those were a hedge because they stood outside of the SAG and WGA jurisdiction. So those were, those kept going. Now, those are probably lower cost. Many of them are coming into the U.S. market as acquisitions, but part of what you're trying to do in any strike, COVID, or other stoppage, is just keep going keep revenue flowing and keep some supply, because as originals start to shrink up, library starts to become more important.
And the deep library that we have becomes more valuable, and all of a sudden, people who weren't interested in that third show down on your list are calling saying, "You know, is that still available? Because we realize we're not gonna have, you know, a set of originals for nine months." So it kind of works if you have library.
Yeah, that's maybe a great segue into the library.
Sure.
I think the last quarter, trailing twelve-month was $870 million. I don't think that's broken out between what's motion picture and what's television.
Right.
I think last year you had a big comp year with Schitt's Creek which doesn't necessarily repeat in all
Yeah, TV-
Go back to that one, so.
The way TV characterizes itself compared to legacy film library, is that TV is... The irony is, in original production, movies for a studio are like this. So right now, we're on a nice Hunger Games, like this, but that lasts for as long as Hunger Games before the next movie, which may not be the Hunger Games, 'cause, you know, that's like a rare event. It might be like, you know, two or three that are a little less exciting. Profitable, but not Wildly profitable, right? Television is in the studio world kind of this in originals. It's kind of this constant engine of stuff, revenue, earnings. It's modest. In the beginning, you lose on most deficit models.
With streaming, you're already up. But your upside is a little muted because they're holding on to some rights for a long time. Then an event will happen, which is, you know, Mad Men becomes available. It comes out of license after 8 years on Netflix and it's in Jim Packer's hands, and he sells it, and there's like a whirr, like that, that year o r Schitt's Creek.
Yeah.
Which no one expected this small Canadian show to become the number one comedy in television. And the value of that, which we paid next to nothing for, became really, you know, once in a lifetime great. Whereas movie library, because you have 17,000, soon to be 23,000 or 24,000 with the eOne stuff, is just ongoing, ongoing. They sell big packages of movies from multiple windows across different platforms, from pay to free to streaming to AVOD, to FAST and whatever new acronym they're gonna come up with. You know, and it's all just accumulating. Most of that $870 is features. Probably 15%-20% is TV. We're about 25 years old as a company.
I 've been there about 25 years, and in terms of a company that owned any of its TV rights, we're probably 23 years old, because for the first 2 years, we were literally producers just going hat in hand saying, "Hey, you wanna work with us? And, we can work in Canada, and they're friendly." And, then eventually, we started controlling our own destination and our own distribution, and it takes a long time to actually accumulate episodes where you're s o if you're Warner's or Paramount or Comcast with 50, 60, 70, 80 years of television production
You know, we're like pre-teens. You know, we're thinking about getting into a movie. That's where we are.
You mentioned, just the new production part of that, that drives that eventual annuity. Have you seen any changes to either the way deficit financing is done on network? the way that cost plus is done on streaming, you know, with this more rational type of content?
I think there's gonna be more new models. I think the rigid rules around traditional streamers, with Netflix being the most prominent, the most successful and the biggest, of we have to have everything. You know, it's a cost plus, and if you, if you've sold Turkey-Turkish television rights past, will change. They all have to be more opportunistic. Netflix is as focused on cost as anybody else despite their scale and heft. The others, the contender brands, have to be even more cost conscious. I'm talking Peacock, Paramount+, Warner Bros. Discovery. Apple and Amazon, as you all know, live in a slightly different environment in which their business is fueled by other things.
These, in certain ways, are amazing marketing and branding extensions. But it's not like it's existential if they spent another $1 million on a Ted Lasso episode. That's a few iPhone crates away from, like, it's fine. So, but having said that, they're all becoming, I think, more focused on cost. The good news is, they're opening up the model. So the broadcasters are squeezed more than anybody. It began with Fox, who, without their studio arm, you know, as Fox alone, wanted to make entrepreneurial deals. We did a comedy there. We're developing a drama there.
They're looking for different price points and holding on to fewer rights than traditional networks might, or maybe there's an additional piece of revenue if you, you know, allow it to go on to Tubi. There's a lot of different ways to play. They're interested... Fox announced a joint development venture with Bell Media in Canada, somebody that we work a lot with, which tells you that they're open, which has never been the case on a broadcast level, to make a co-production with a Canadian partner. That generally only happens when there's a strike. They have nothing. It's kind of like, "What do you guys have?
But, you know, if you led with saying, "Hey, I got this great Canadian show," they kind of say "Hey, there's the door over there. You can just keep going, 'cause we're not interested." And, but now they are, and I think all the broadcasters are gonna follow suit, because I think they're being slightly de-emphasized within their models where the streamers are getting the attention. In a world in which they all get less, less is even less for them, and they have to think about pricing. Which is great for us, because we can talk about doing a really efficient drama, maybe just doing a different kind of model, in which it's not as many rights, not as long of a tail. We might charge less, find more internationally, keep it going.
The idea of something that goes 13 or 22, to my other point about library, it's great. Because 8 episodes a year for 5 seasons, which would be, like, a real success on a Netflix because they are more in the short season business, is still 40 episodes. It's not I mean, it's sellable, but it doesn't have the volume. So when you think about the Suits effect, I'm sure you're all watching or know that, you know, part of the magic of that is that they had enough episodes off of the USA Network that it's a retention vehicle in which people just, you know, lock in for three months.
And try to watch all the episodes. If it was three seasons of Suits, I don't think it would be number one. So it's a little bit of a push/pull because people wanna order fewer, but in a way for the library cycle. They want which I have to think about, they need more.
Something very calming, knowing you have many seasons left of a show that you like.
It's amazing.
Yeah, right.
And you know, like, you've got all year to keep watching,
Yeah. So you mentioned the, I think it was 34 shows, domestic and international. I imagine that over the last few years, your exposure to STARZ has continued to increase. I'd probably put them in there as one of those challenger streamers that you talked about.
Yeah, yeah. I know. Listen, we because we are under one roof we work so closely together, I think we have 9 or 10 shows together, we more than any other supplier, when you're in the same family, would be aware of cost sensitivity. So, you know, Jeff and I are every day like could we do it for a little less? And could-- what about this, this one, that one? You know, what, what are the levers we can pull to deliver super high quality, but at a price? And, and we're in that process with STARZ now across the board on kind of all the shows we have together, looking... And this is not new.
I know that Comcast and NBC did this across the board on all the Dick Wolf shows, looking for some savings across the board, which if you go show by show, by show, by show, they have nine shows. We have nine with Starz. If you just went on a percentage basis and said, "What if you cut 10% out of every show times 9 or 10 shows? A really meaningful number. So we're in that dialogue all the time. We probably are in dialogue with them more than others because we're literally in the same rooms constantly, trying to figure it out. We have visibility on what the international is, so we know if, like, we're over or underperforming in that area, and not all shows travel the same.
Some shows are giant hits domestically, don't travel foreign. Some are great internationally, not so good domestic. It's a real. You just never know. Most comedies don't travel, but Friends does. But a lot of other ones don't do anything. And they, networks in the days of output deals, would buy them and not air them. You know, there's like so many German networks just never put the U.S. comedies on, but they did want ER. Let's just say, a drama seems to travel. So we're integrally intertwined relative to the flow of shows. We have three or four kind of bona fide franchises together, Power, BMF, Serpent Queen which is moving into another season.
Two more shows just ordered, Hunting Wives, Spartacus, the reboot, which will be a sequel, one of STARZ's legacy, big successes. That's, that's been ordered and, and going into production in New Zealand later in 2024. So we're, you know, we love the book of business that we have, but like any service provider, our goal is to obviously deliver it to them in a way that makes them want to do more, right? It's no good to have an expensive show that nobody can afford to pick up or renew. Right? So we're tweaking all the time.
I think it's probably fair to say that if you weren't under one roof, your exposure to STARZ would probably be lower than
Well, I don't know that we would have as many shows as we have together. Now, the ones that we got together on, that, like Power, was one show when the companies joined. We collectively, along with the creator, showrunner, Courtney Kemp, and her team and many, many people involved on the STARZ side and the Lionsgate side, you know, engineered a path to like, let's, let's, let's turn this into a universe. I know it sounds cliché but we call it Power verse. But let's have a universe in which we spin off more shows, of which we have put three on the air and more in development. The fact is that coming together put that asset together with us, but we're always looking to find franchises that a network might say, "Hey, let's do more of these." So I mentioned we're acquiring eOne.
We're excited about that. You know, they have The Rookie that begat The Rookie: Feds. The Rookie: Feds may be a victim of the strike, but it doesn't rule out the idea of more Rookies, Rookie XYZ. They've been kicking around some ideas, but also that's a great format, the idea of, you know, somebody who later in life goes into a law, you know law enforcement is a fun, is a funny idea. You can imagine in some territories, a great actor of a certain age would be perfect for that. And, so we look for that all the time. But we're now, even when we separate, if separate, we're kind of linked by Power, BMF, and a whole bunch of other stuff that nothing will change relative to how we operate together.
Yeah, that was kind of my next question is are you concerned at all, or maybe more specifically, how does it impact your business post-separation, in terms of that relationship?
Sorry. It shouldn't really impact anything because even from the inception, it was an arm's length relationship in which the the rules of engagement that John and others set were, you can't put a show to them, they can't, you know, force you to... This has to be like the free market. ... there's far more symmetrical information because we all know each other, and we know before maybe other sellers, what they're interested in. They know before other buyers what we're taking to the market. What we've always said is we're letting you guys know before anybody else, if it's interesting, we'll bring the pitch to you. If it's never. Gonna be interesting, I don't wanna waste your time.
Of course, there's probably a built-in advantage for both sides and that we're in conversation all the time. I think just the book of business that we have, if nothing else happened beyond those franchises that would be as sizable, more than any other network that we have. I think we have five at Apple. We've had as many as five at HBO Max at a certain time, but generally, it's one or two things around. But, you know, there's something to be said for really knowing your client, the way we do and them knowing us. So it's a, it's a pretty easy flow of information, I think, wherever we sit on the side of the table.
You know, going back to when Lionsgate bought STARZ, I think some of the logic at the time was to take some of the lumpiness out of the motion picture and episodic TV production business and add this more stable subscription business to it, and obviously, a lot has changed in media since then. I get the impression that Joe and his business are now probably trying to move toward some franchise development or universe development i f possible, like John Wick and Hunger Games.
Oh, deep in it. Yeah, they're years into it.
How does that dovetail into your business? Do you see a lot of opportunity to create series around some of those motion picture franchises?
Well, I think key. Look, the group, the good news is we work very closely together. It's a kind of a hallmark of John's philosophy that, and that, I think, stemmed from his days at Sony when he was the TV guy. In most traditional studios, the TV and movie dialogue is, like, nonexistent. No one's talking to anybody. We talk and meet all the time, and it's all about when in the life cycle of an IP, let's call it John Wick or let's call it Hunger Games, let's call it any number of things, is the right time to find an extension and expansion of the universe? Where do you place that so that it doesn't damage the core franchise? I think we're all seeing the potential downside of overexploitation, of too much of a good thing.
I think everyone has to really think about that carefully, because if it just becomes a non-event on television or the big screen you've squandered something amazing, right? So in the case of John Wick, you know, we, in the TV side, saw the first movie, and immediately we're like: "Hello! If, if you don't have any other plans, we'd like to get involved." And of course, they were well off to the races for two and three, and by the time three was outperforming two, which outperformed one, everybody got excited about the potential of doing something in TV because this, this thing was just growing and growing. One of the only new IPs in the last 30 years, that wasn't a comic book from 1956 or anything else. And that's super rare, hard to do. Needle in a haystack time.
And the conversations that Joe and we had, and STARZ, who was involved early on, who was leaning in as well, about eventually The Continental wound up at Peacock and Amazon, was about what can we do that is additive but doesn't tie anyone's hands going forward? They were looking at a movie universe that can go all kinds of places and will continue to do so under the direction of the producers, and Chad's gonna stay involved, as you've read. So we started hearing takes, and the one that we got most excited about was going back in time. The Continental was how Ian McShane's character, Winston, took control of the hotel and kind of, you know, the crime-ridden 1970s New York of at least our imagination.
That was great because anything they want to do contemporarily was not, we weren't stepping on any toes, and it's worked really well for both Peacock and Amazon. Fans of the franchise, mostly from what I've heard and all what I read online, are very pretty pleased because it's not trying to, on a television budget, be something that it can't be. It's saying something else. So we hope and intend to make more of those. We'll see. Probably in the new year, we'll know more about what the appetite is, and that will go. And then there's other things that, you know, that have a natural life cycle that may end as a movie franchise. So we're developing Divergent, which we did two movies on, but they never d id quite get to the third. But there's multiple books at a high-profile streamer.
I won't say which, and I look at that and go, "There's a great TV way to tell this story." And it's a known IP, which right now is as important as anything because it's so hard to get marketing and noise out. So we look at that. But we kind of, you know, we went to features because we got an inbound from the streamer and said, "Do you mind?" And their plans at that time were not to do more, so they said, "Knock yourself out." Then you go through the contracts and everything, find out who's owed what. You know, does the writer of the movie have a first obligation? As the producers? You figure all of that out, and then you move forward, and hopefully it gets made. We've had several adaptations, you know, make the television from movie origins, including Dear White People and Blindspotting.
But of course, the world-building franchises are the most coveted. And so we kind of wait and say, like, we hope that they'll come our way.
Do you see... I mean, you didn't mention anything related to The Hunger Games or Twilight
You know, that where Hunger Games lives is, it's a flourishing franchise. The good news is this new one, if you haven't seen it, goes back 60 or 70 years in the history of Panem , and to me, that just opens the door, hopefully, for other parts of that timetable, right? That again, don't interfere. That, that one, you know, most of those really live entirely with the authors of the books and what's their appetite. We, you know, we love to present the kind of things that we've made as an interesting way to tell a more, a lengthy and fuller storytelling over a season, as opposed to potentially g etting, you know, trying to box something into 2, 2.5 hours.
And some people are interested, and other people are like: "Why would I do that? I make great movies." So it's really if they're interested, you know, we're here. We certainly make our calls and lobby to get their attention.
For many years, I think the fear was insourcing, that, you know every network or platform wanted to own all rights, so they were just gonna make everything in-house. I feel like that threat or trend has become less of a focus. There's a lot more evidence that e veryone just wants something really good.
You have to have the best.
Exactly where it comes from
Right
you know, but would love to hear your take on it.
Well, at the end of the day, you have to have the best stuff.
Yeah.
Right? Because no, you know, critics aren't writing about a P&L that like "Hey, we captured all the value of the show because, you know, network X, because we also owned it." They're writing about, you know, a great show, like This Is Us, because This Is Us is great and a great broadcast show. So I don't, I think this correction that we're in, this new era of a little more discipline, is beneficial to third-party suppliers for sure. Because you need different voices and different ways to get something made. I think everyone's realized over the last five or six years, that aligning yourself with talent, the way we acquired a majority stake in 3 Arts and are continuing to expand that, who have amazing talent, like Rob McElhenney and others, or, you know, buying into IP, whether it be books, articles, magazines, things that can stand out, podcasts are obviously a thing, gives you something that the in-house may not have.
And you might overpay, right, to option that book or to pre-negotiate a deal with a talent on screen or behind the camera, so that you are walking in the door with a differentiator
Mm-hmm
-which is like, we have X, and you don't.
Yeah.
But that's kind of the arbitrage of why you're in the game, right? You're—no one's bringing a studio in from any platform, generally, just because they want another partner. Like, in a perfect world . They would just go, "We own everything, and, you know, you just get paid a producing fee." You have to, when I think about competing with in-house studios, our stuff has to be better. We have to make it more efficiently, and we have to, on a jump ball, ours has to be significantly more appealing to outweigh the internal, favor that's gonna go to the internal player, just by virtue of... For the same reasons that I mentioned with Starz and WE, have so many conversations. I feel like I have a, you know, a preferred knowledge relationship for sure, and any in-house studio would say What do you mean? We're Universal. Of course, we're supplying Peacock.
You know, we don't need Lionsgate. You know, you guys go do your own thing." So we have to be better.
Versus the kind of Peak TV arms race of a few years ago, I mean, that was g reat for your business. Are there still—is there still some, call it, you know, irrationality from the likes of Apple and Amazon?
Well, I think-
Or has everyone really pulled back collectively?
Honestly, what in my mind, I'm kind of looking... The strike is its own set of challenges. And as I said- there's gonna be this surge right now, which should not be confused. You know, that's like a big wave, but it's not a tsunami. With like, where is the tide really gonna rest? And honestly, probably not until the end of this fiscal year when a lot of, like, that, you know, stuff gets written down and there's kind of a fresh set of books. To me, from April 1 to the next, you know, 18 months, and then putting aside what M&A may be out there, because that feels inevitable. But if there wasn't any, and it was just what will be happening, I think there will be fewer buys. They will be more specific. Things that are really, really important, people will compete for and maybe overpay, but I don't think it will be as expansive and as kind of illogical as a space where they were, which was just spend whatever, tell me later.
We'll figure it out later. I think there's definitely pressure from below and above to not get into a place of total irrational exuberance. But for something that's very compelling, with an amazing package with a big star, that for the first time is thinking about doing, you know, gonna do TV, let's just say, whoever that might be. You know, the three or four most resourced places will play.
Does that kinda move to a more rational place, extend to showrunner deals?
I think it will be coming out of the strike. The trauma of strikes is that a bunch of deals don't get renewed or they're not extended, and the strike months are kind of basically lost. And so deals that might be coming up in May, generally every year are gonna be up in February. Will they get extended? I feel like the frothiness and some of the big spending will fall out of the middle. Therefore, the big, big biggies that have, you know, you know, really reliably delivered hits year after year after year after year, and they're already in a family, they'll probably be in a family. Maybe there'll be some internal negotiating that we're not privy to, about, like, some adjustments or tweaks.
But like, that big middle, where a ton of people were getting, you know, just, you know, three-year deal, this, that we just have to tie you up, is gonna go away. There's gonna be a lot more kind of blind script deals which is far less than millions on an overall, which is like, I might overpay you against the market for one script, but I have that one script. But I'm not paying you and a production company, you know, $3 million-$4 million a year just to come up with an idea or two. That’s a very easy way for any studio or network, because, like, a Netflix has many deals to immediately cut costs. You know, the deal ends, don't renew it. And there's some pretty b ig ones that have been out there.
Yep. And do you think there's more competition or less competition from other studios like yours today? And what comes to mind is, you know, Amazon now owns MGM which I imagine is a little less competition b ut then A24 is now in the TV business. I think Legendary talked about it. Skydance is in it. Is this kind of mini major studio
Well, listen, the difference is, I put most of those in a category of competing without library. Which is a different game. I think like a Sony and we, and MGM pre-acquisition, were product, you know, studios with library, which is, you know, it completes the circle. That flexibility of that, that number that you quoted, the annual of last year, and then with MGM in the library, gives you more optionality in my area to take a few more chances, maybe do some M&A, like the eOne or other things that it's not possible unless you have that ongoing recurrent revenue. But I think, you know, for all the new ones that have been entered, and I remember when we were, sorry, they, there's others that are falling out of the business, right? That indies that are going away or just absorbing into being producer deals. You know, they're indies, but are they really? They're not really owning their own content anymore.
They've got acquired by private equity and/or, you know, somebody building together a little portfolio of mini studios, what it might be. There aren't that many that are at the table saying to ABC or anybody, "We'll deficit." We're, you know, we will write multi-million dollar checks per episode or per season to be in the game. That is, that puts you in a different c ategory. I'm happy to be in it because forever we weren't in it. We were kind of like, you know, at the kids' table, and they would, you know, patronizingly say: "We'll call you soon," and they never call.
You've mentioned eOne a few times. So what are you most excited about that comes into your portfolio?
Well, there's really three great... There's a, there's so many great things that it, for my purposes, maybe more so than motion picture, where they were becoming a little more inactive, but they were. They started as a TV entity, made TV from people that we know and have known for years, really great people, a solid U.S. originals business, a very robust Canadian business, which I'm excited to be back to. Lionsgate is a Canadian-domiciled and was in that market for a long time before we kind of became Americanized, partially. That structure will continue, so we have a lot more flexibility and optionality to do a lot of o
riginal production in Canada, which I love doing. And that creates some different levers to pull around subsidies and co-productions, which right now, in this disciplined moment, is even more attractive than ever, I think, for many U.S. buyers and global buyers. And they have a very robust, maybe, you know, 19 or 20 shows in the unscripted space that will find their way into our family, and we're figuring out what the structure of that will look like, but join the 25 or more that we have. And together, that kind of volume, which is really critical in the unscripted space, is meaningful and exciting. Work to be done to structure it in a way that there, there's value. But, anytime you wind up inheriting anything with, you know, quantity of anything i s better than none.
Yeah. Right.
I know I'm speaking for the TV side, I'm just here today, but for my whole group, really excited about it, and keen to work with a bunch of friends that we know and some people that we don't know at all, that we're getting to know better. But it's really one of the first times in TV history of Lionsgate that there's been something like that, in which there's kind of an operational overlap. Generally, it's been there's a feature acquisition, there's some library titles, there might be a TV or idea in there, or like 3 Arts, which is really a standalone management business where we have a ton of shows that we've come up with together, and they've brought us. But, you know, on day one, outside of just like, "Hey, let's figure it out," there wasn't like w e're going! immediate ongoing. It's been great, the 3 Arts partnership. I can't underscore enough how wonderful that has been, and I feel like in the next chapter of that, it's only going to get better.
Well, that's a great place to finish up. So can you talk about where we are on 3 Arts?
Sure.
Maybe just where production is getting back to?
Yeah, yeah. There will be... They and agencies and other management companies will be the initial beneficiaries of kind of the quick return, because a lot of their clients do big shows, network shows various things that have just been sitting on hold. So I think they're, you know, because they're clients, they have a lot of comedians that, you know, when they couldn't work in TV and film, went on the road. So their concert business was ongoing and probably growing during this strike. But they're a resilient group, and they have so many interesting, you know, clients that are in demand in movies and TV. We've got five shows together since we came together as, and invested in them. A couple on STARZ, a couple, one on HBO Max, and more coming, and that's been exciting. I think, you know, the next iteration of the partnership will probably yield more, because when one works, the other managers or and/or other talent look at that and say, "Hey, Mythic Quest, Rob McElhenney, sounds like.
I love the show, and I think the financial model is pretty great. Like, I want one of those. It's like: Hey, have you why don't we sit down with the Lionsgate guys? The key has been, it's been super light touch. You know, where there's synergy, great. Where it doesn't make sense, we don't push it, because their client business is huge and really important. The minute you're pushing a client into a situation in which there appears to be a conflict, you're on thin ice. The good news is, there is no conflict. You know, we get involved if it makes sense, and if it doesn't, that's fine, because they're commissioners in doing what they do. They have deals all over town with every other studio you can imagine, with many clients. But, but getting original shows that are, like, literally where they are side by side with us as a co-studio is very rare for any representation company to sit in that seat. It's been a really great ride.
Great.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you all for coming. I hope it's not boring.