The run of ever-rising drama budgets that defined Peak TV is over, and producers who wait for the old cheques will be waiting a long time. That is the message from Jane Tranter, CEO and co-founder of Bad Wolf and a veteran behind HBO’s Succession and Industry, speaking at the MIA Market in Rome.
After the boom-and-bust of Peak TV, the U.S. and British co-production market that Bad Wolf built its name on has weakened as American streamers cut drama spend. Tranter was blunt: “What we’ve found is the budgets are right for the show.”
The new baseline
For buyers and sellers in scripted television, that is the reset point. Peak TV trained the industry to expect production budgets to keep climbing. That assumption no longer holds. As Tranter framed it, you cannot expect television budgets to keep increasing while the cost of living crisis presses on everything else.
Bad Wolf, now majority-owned by Sony, is adapting by matching financing to the project instead of starting from last season’s number. The 10-part The Other Bennett Sister for BBC and BritBox is the example she gives. Tranter said the period drama has become BritBox’s biggest hit to date, even on a leaner co-production model.
Counter-programming the market
Tranter’s broader advice is to build a slate around where the market is not looking. She tells development teams to go in the opposite direction of everyone else’s traffic: “If everyone is zigging, you should zag.”
That means making the genres buyers claim are dead. Period drama? Fantasy? Her response is to find a way to make them anyway, packaged with the right budget. Location is part of the reset. Apple TV’s Berlin Noir, a co-production with Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman’s PlayTone, shot in Berlin rather than Bad Wolf’s longstanding Cardiff studio.
- Right-size each show’s budget instead of anchoring to Peak TV levels.
- Pitch the formats buyers say are oversupplied—and build a lean plan to make them.
- Use co-productions and cost-effective shoot locations to close the financing gap.
What it means for the business
For content buyers and media planners, Tranter’s comments signal that premium drama supply is being repriced. Hollywood, she said, taught her humility: it is “as tough as everyone says it is,” and someone can look ready to fund a project and pull away hours later.
The takeaway is not that quality drama disappears. It is that producers must make their own “mecca,” as Tranter put it, rather than waiting for Hollywood to provide one. For sellers, that means walking into a pitch with a financing plan, not just a creative ask.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
