{"id":160125,"date":"2025-06-05T11:51:20","date_gmt":"2025-06-05T11:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/160125\/"},"modified":"2025-06-05T11:51:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-05T11:51:20","slug":"lena-dunham-sarah-snook-shows-touted-by-nbcu-tv-labels-talk-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/160125\/","title":{"rendered":"Lena Dunham, Sarah Snook Shows Touted by NBCU TV Labels Talk Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tUpcoming Sarah Snook-starring thriller series All Her Fault<\/a> and Lena Dunham rom-com show Too Much<\/a>, as well as a planned TV take on Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s The Birds got big shout-outs during SXSW London<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey were in the spotlight as global hit series from various production labels under the Universal International<\/a> Studios umbrella took center stage at the first-ever SXSW London<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGlobal Stories: What makes compelling TV?\u201d was the question discussed by Surian Fletcher-Jones<\/a>, head of drama at\u00a0Working Title Television; Sue Gibbs, head of development at Heyday Television<\/a>, the joint venture of producer David Heyman and Universal International Studios; and Noemi Spanos, creative director at Carnival Films<\/a>. Beatrice Springborn, president, Universal International Studios and Universal Content Productions (UCP), functioned as the moderator.<\/p>\n

\n\tConfronted with a question about how TV industry cost reductions, other spending cutbacks and layoffs are affecting their work, the execs shared insight into the challenges but also opportunities.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOne is adapting,\u201d offered Gibbs. \u201cHeyday as a company, historically, we\u2019ve always worked with IP. David\u2019s known for it with Harry Potter and Paddington. So we will always be looking for IP. I think we\u2019re probably looking less to the new books that are coming out because it\u2019s so super competitive. They\u2019re so expensive. So, we\u2019re looking at classic books, old TV shows, articles, etc. So I think it\u2019s adapting in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGibbs also mentioned that Heyday has often commissioned scripts with writers and then taken them out to the market to buyers. \u201cWe\u2019re slightly changing that now and trying to be more fleet of foot,\u201d she explained. \u201cPerhaps you just go out with a pitch so you can be faster. Or we\u2019re trying to set up more projects with buyers. [In the past], we would have perhaps taken them out to a number of buyers at the same time. Now, we are trying to get in with a buyer straight off, which is a financial incentive, but it\u2019s really more about the emotional incentive. If the buyer is emotionally invested in your project from the off, they can be more likely to try and help make it work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn terms of upcoming shows they are excited for, Spanos touted psychological thriller All Her Fault for Peacock. \u201cSarah Snook\u2019s character knocks on a door to pick up a kid from a play date, and the older woman who opens the door has never heard of her, her kid has no idea what she\u2019s talking about,\u201d she explained. \u201cThat kicks off that sort of thriller engine, but also it turns into a sort of bigger Big Little Lies kind of mystery about all the secrets and lies between these different families and relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tConcluded Spanos: \u201cWhat I liked coming into it, reading it fresh and watching it fresh was that there\u2019s quite a thematic feminist messaging underneath it all, because it\u2019s called All Her Fault, and it\u2019s all really about how the mother is treated very differently from the father in that circumstances by the police, by the community, by everyone, really.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAbout the series planned on The Birds, Spanos shared: \u201cThis is obviously a Universal film title, the iconic Hitchcock movie. We\u2019re not adapting that. We\u2019re going back to the source material, the Daphne du Maurier novella and using that as inspiration. And at its heart, it\u2019s looking at when nature turns on you. Obviously, with climate change that is very timely, and we just attached an exciting U.S. showrunner who\u2019s very experienced in genre.\u201d She didn\u2019t mention their name.<\/p>\n

\n\tFletcher-Jones, meanwhile, touted Too Much and how it explores the differences between the U.S. and U.K. in lovable ways. <\/p>\n

\n\tAnd she said that Working Title and the BBC are developing a TV adaptation of E.M. Forster\u2019s popular 1924 novel\u00a0A Passage to India, which is set against the backdrop of the\u00a0Indian independence movement\u00a0against the British Empire and has previously received the film treatment. The companies are collaborating with Canadian director and writer Richie Mehta on the five-part series. \u201cRichie is Indian by heritage, so it is completely turning that novel on its head and doing it from the Indian point of view,\u201d shared Fletcher-Jones. \u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful piece he\u2019s writing and directing it all.\u201d She also called it a take that will \u201creclaim colonial history, which feels really sort of Soul Food-y.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Wednesday<\/a>, SXSW London sessions featured appearances by the likes of Idris Elba<\/a>,\u00a0ABBA\u2019s Bj\u00f6rn Ulvaeus<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Letitia Wright<\/a>, among others.<\/p>\n

\n\tSXSW London, which not only features panel discussions, but also film screenings<\/a> and live music events, among other things, runs through June 7. Penske Media, the parent company of\u00a0The Hollywood Reporter,\u00a0is the majority stakeholder of SXSW.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Upcoming Sarah Snook-starring thriller series All Her Fault and Lena Dunham rom-com show Too Much, as well as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,67572,393,4884,67573,522,257,61089,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-160125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-carnival-films","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-heyday-television","13":"tag-international","14":"tag-london","15":"tag-nbcuniversal","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114630615612818323","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}