Penelope, the pandemic-written, independently financed and produced young-adult collection from co-creators Mark Duplass and Mel Eslyn, has landed a distributor.
Netflix acquired U.S. rights to the collection’ eight-episode first season, the duo introduced Sunday whereas showing at SeriesFest. Duplass known as the six-month technique of discovering a distributor for the present following its debut on the 2024 Sundance Movie Pageant “insane” and advised the Denver crowd that “lots of people had been very, very ” within the collection and thus “had a whole lot of completely different sorts of gives.”
“We’ve accomplished impartial movies earlier than, the place you might have a number of hundred thousand {dollars}, and we exit, make the movie and promote it. There actually isn’t a mannequin but of independently made tv the place you make the entire season and attempt to promote it,” he mentioned of the method of independently funding after which distributing Penelope. “From taking out the present and determining how we’re going to promote it or making the offers with our actors, nobody is aware of how you can do it. … So there was really this childlike enjoyable. We had been simply making up new deal buildings as we had been going alongside.”
The acquisition of the collection, which is co-written by Duplass and director Eslyn and government produced by Jay Duplass and Shuli Harel, follows the Duplass brothers’ four-picture take care of Netflix, and what Mark described as a longtime relationship with Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos. Duplass Brothers Productions plans to promote each home and worldwide rights to the indie collection by way of a “piece by piece” mannequin that may permit them to retain management over it, together with greenlighting a season two.
“We’ve principally absolved [Netflix] … of the accountability to make us their flagship present,” Duplass mentioned. “We’re saying … ‘Simply put us on the service. We’re going to signal a really quick take care of you guys, and we’re going to see the way it does. That manner at Netflix, you’re not taking an outsized, outsized danger on the present. You’re not going to be pissed off if it doesn’t work and switch round and say, “Unbiased tv is rarely going to work. We’re not doing it once more.”‘ We’ve mitigated their danger.”
Mark added that Duplass Brothers Productions will “personal the remainder of the rights” outdoors the U.S., together with “VOD rights for leases,” taking over a companion as they promote this to the remainder of the world.
“Ideally, we see how we do on Netflix. Within the occasion that it’s a blowout success, you would possibly see an even bigger scope for season two. Within the occasion that it’s a reasonable success, we’d write it for a smaller scope, however at the very least we’re within the driver’s seat now as as to whether we get to maintain making this present,” he mentioned.
“If in a number of years, if the present is a rollicking success, they get the chance to re-license it. … We’re going to personal the remainder of the rights nonetheless,” he continued. “That felt like one of the best deal for us.”
Through the panel, Mark and Eslyn spoke at size about their strategy to each distributing and financing the collection, which they emphasised was new territory, even for the indie moviemaking veterans.
“Whenever you’re doing an impartial tv present, nobody is aware of how you can strategy it,” Duplass mentioned concerning the technique of discovering a distributor. “Individuals would increase their hand and say, ‘We noticed Penelope at Sundance. We need to see the remainder of the collection.’ We might ship the hyperlinks to the remainder of the collection, and they’d say, ‘We’re on this.’ When it got here time to barter the deal and the phrases, everyone was identical to center faculty schoolyard — like, ‘You go first. I don’t know what to do.’ [Laughs.] It was so complicated.”
Mark started engaged on the collection, directed by Eslyn, through the pandemic. Forward of its premiere at this yr’s Sundance, Mark briefly recalled the present’s journey to manufacturing on Instagram, writing that he “knew after I introduced the scripts to the patrons that there could be a bidding warfare. However there wasn’t. Nobody would give us the cash to make it.”
Throughout Sunday’s panel, he expounded on these responses, and the bigger panorama of YA tv, which he described as not essentially on the lookout for one thing that’s “extra akin to what’s occurring within the Norwegian gradual TV motion than it’s to trendy tv.”
“The pantheon of young-adult tv doesn’t inform me what they’re shopping for proper now,” he mentioned. “Nonetheless, we’re Duplass Brothers Productions, and we’ve offered shit to HBO and Netflix, and we’re like, ‘Fuck it. Let’s go promote this present,’” he recalled. “We introduced it and everyone was like, ‘That is so lovely and so distinctive, so deeply related to one thing that I’ve misplaced. We will’t make this.’”
“We’re on the lookout for the subsequent Euphoria,” added Eslyn, who directs the collection.
Duplass added that they thought-about that they might “drive this down the throat of a conventional purchaser, but it surely’s going to be going by way of a whole lot of growth and a whole lot of modifications” — one thing they weren’t curious about doing with a present they had been each passionate and valuable about.
“There was a second the place I believe Mark and I mentioned, ‘Ought to we alter this for what they’re asking for?’ And that was a reasonably fast second. And we in a short time mentioned, ‘No,’ after which mentioned, ‘Ought to we go make an entire season of our personal and pay for it — simply go for it and never wait round for somebody to say sure?’” recalled Eslyn. “We did, and I believe that was for us a courageous second.”