0/5

Banijay acquires 7Wonder production arm

Seven exits its 4 year old UK-based production company, in a deal with French giant Banijay Group.

Screentime’s French parent company, Banijay, has acquired the UK-based 7Wonder.

7Wonder is a non-scripted production company founded in 2014 as a joint venture between Seven Network and former Maverick Television execs Alexandra Fraser, Liza Abbott and Simon Ellse.

Titles have included Back to the Land with Kate Humble, Tate Britain’s Great British Walks, Do You Know? and the UK adaptation of My Kitchen Rules. Upcoming projects include Channel 4’s Seven Year Switch and BBC2 documentary Heart Transplant.

Over 160 hours of 7Wonder programming will now be added to Banijay UK’s slate. Additionally, 7Wonder will look for coproduction opportunities in the UK and around the wider global Banijay Group.

“We are absolutely delighted to be joining Banijay,” said Fraser, in a statement. “With RDF and IWC, Banijay already enjoys a strong reputation for delivering high quality factual programming in the UK which we hope to build on, but we’re tremendously excited, too, by the international opportunities that will now open up to us.”

“We are thrilled that 7Wonder are to become the first non-scripted acquisition for Banijay UK,” added Peter Langenberg, COO Banijay Group said. “Alex and the 7Wonder team have an excellent track record of creating and executing successful returnable formats and authentic factual programming; they will be the perfect complement to our existing non-scripted labels RDF and IWC, and we could not have hoped to have found a better addition to the Banijay family.”

Fraser, Abbott and Ellse will continue to run the business as chief creative, CEO and CFO.

Source: Real Screen

2 Responses

  1. Looks like Seven’s global production ambitions are being shaved back due to cost cutting. Was this really a successful foray into Britain or another Bunnings UK mistep ? OK …160 hours of programming produced over 4 years. Minus the 70 hours of MKR remakes that’s 90 hours of original stuff. Divided by 4 years that’s 22.5 hours a year of fresh content, which sounds like a lot of ” soft” programming if I get the drift of “Back to the Land” and “Great British Walks”…. Hardly ground-breaking stuff, is it? And at what cost ..

Leave a Reply