Sometimes, looking back can help with what’s coming next.
That was the message from Sony Pictures Television Studios president Katherine Pope on Wednesday during a keynote interview in Rome at the Italian confab MIA, in which she addressed everything from Season 5 of The Boys to calling for gaps between seasons to shrink.
Asked to apply her experience — which includes a decade at NBCUniversal, long before joining Sony more than two years ago — she said certain principles from the broadcast system could help inform a better way to produce in the future.
“There was a sense of time and money in the U.S. broadcast system,” she said. “You really had to get shows done. You did not have a choice. We’re now seeing the hangover of the boom times, and people will say they don’t know if they can do it for this amount of money or make the schedule.”
However, she noted that “some of that rigor that was in the old system is coming back” and added: “That is actually really healthy. Creative production budgetary friction is a good thing. It always yields unexpected answers, whether that’s where you’re going to shoot, how many days you’ll take. Often in the friction comes something nobody thought of before.”
The sweet spot in the future, she predicted, would be where producers “take the best parts of that broadcast system, but take some of the artistry we’ve able to introduce to TV in the past eight years.”
SPT’s current slate includes the final season of The Boys and its spinoffs Gen V, Vought Rising and The Boys: Mexico, along with Nicholas Cage-starrer Spider Noir and For All Mankind spinoff Star City. Pope was quick to point to Sony’s independence as a key factor in remaining consistent as a pure producer in an era of market contraction, business-model failures and constant change, while also pointing to a deep in-house IP treasure trove that comes from the likes of Sony Pictures, PlayStation, Sony Music and anime unit Crunchyroll.
“It has been a super volatile time in the business, but Sony has been singularly focused and didn’t get distracted by the streaming wars,” she said. “I feel really lucky to be part of a company that is just focused on the reason we’re all here: great entertainment and stories told well.
“In a world where writers, creators, directors and filmmakers are being sent so many messages, and there is so much disruption and it feels so hard to understand what the next step is, we offer a very clear path. We are here to make TV shows, period. That has allowed us that clarity.”
Pope praised the Eric Kripke-helmed anti-superhero drama The Boys as “emblematic” of Sony’s production prowess and its growing viewership, while calling upcoming prequel spinoff Vought Rising “like Mad Men meets The Boys.”
“My holy grail has always been a show that continues to trend up as the seasons go. Season 4 was the highest viewed of any season of The Boys,” said Pope. “Within the first 30 days there were about 55 million. To do from creatively and from a viewership point of view the best we’ve ever done, it is the holy grail of series television. We’re very excited for season which will be out of control.”
Later in the wide-ranging chat at the Cinema Barberini, Pope was critical of “data-driven companies” who have slowed down the series-renewal process.
“It is absolutely untenable,” said Pope. “It’s not fair to the fans. This is something we are all over, and we come at this from being fans, first and foremost. The experience of watching eight episodes and then two years later watching the next eight is not a good fan experience.
“Some of that came from the gigantic scale of productions, but some of it also comes from data-driven companies who don’t want to pick something up until it premieres and want to wait a month. We push very hard to at least get the scripts written earlier or allow for some acceleration. There are so many more pieces than there used to be, but everyone in the business is recognizing these timelines have got to be crunched. In such a saturated world, we can’t afford to lose fans. It’s hard enough to get them.”