{"id":51120,"date":"2025-07-09T10:13:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T10:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/51120\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T10:13:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T10:13:10","slug":"news-uk-expands-article-ip-beyond-fox-with-14-projects-in-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/51120\/","title":{"rendered":"News UK Expands Article IP Beyond Fox With 14 Projects In Development"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: <\/strong>Rupert Murdoch\u2019s News UK<\/a> is co-developing more than a dozen licensed TV projects based on its original journalism.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Times, Sunday Times and The Sun owner launched a partnership last year to mine its vast archive for scripted projects that could work on U.S. stablemate Fox<\/a>. Richard Halliwell<\/a>, who runs film and TV IP development for News UK, said in recent months this has expanded well beyond Fox and beyond the scripted genre. <\/p>\n

\n\tNews UK\u2019s first big project under Halliwell, Channel 4<\/a> documentary Poisoned: Killer in the Post, launches tonight, and the executive revealed that News UK licensing has a further 14 projects in various stages of development on a \u201cvery deep slate,\u201d around half of which are for Fox and half are with UK producers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe have a vast treasure trove of content [at News UK],\u201d Halliwell told Deadline. \u201cThere are a bunch of projects with writers and a bunch sat here with UK indies. Poisoned: Killer in the Post will be the first but not the last show with our masthead. We have a scale of ambition that we can service over the next three to five years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Halliwell joined News UK last year, he said a \u201cgrown up conversation between us and the execs at Fox\u201d found that the pair \u201cshould formalize what we are doing more between businesses, using the well of IP coming out of this building and the massive studio operation in L.A.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tBut while Fox has something of a first-look deal in place on licensed News UK articles, the News UK team is now open to talking to all and sundry. \u201cWe quickly realized that we don\u2019t need to limit to a single genre and the other obvious realization was that the content coming out this building is vast, so what happens when Fox doesn\u2019t want to take something forward?,\u201d explained Halliwell. \u201cPoisoned: Killer in the Post was never going to find a scripted outlet at Fox but was perfect for Chanel 4. So the role is serving Fox but then recycling IP or finding homes for projects that aren\u2019t suitable for a U.S. studio.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHalliwell and the team were initially seeking a development exec to mine its newspaper portfolio for scripted TV projects, but this job has effectively been filled by Halliwell, a former TV distribution exec who ran DRG and Nent Studios out of the UK and is an EP on upcoming James Norton-starrer King and Conqueror.<\/p>\n

\n\tHalliwell pointed out that News UK already has three business units producing original shows ranging from podcasts to YouTube series, including a recent Madeleine McCann doc in partnership with ITN and Channel 4. Yet it is licensing that is \u201copening a new door to working with production companies to develop original programming around our peerless archive of award-winning journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe were attracting brilliantly talented programme makers [for the development exec role] who wanted to grow flowers but what we really needed was someone to plant seeds,\u201d he explained. \u201cThe breadth of experience I have allows me to see commercial opportunities and understand how producers work. We wanted to follow a licensing model, not a production model.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat being said, Poisoned: Killer in the Post, which launches tonight and is distributed by ITV Studios, is far more than a licensing deal, according to Halliwell.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe series produced by David Abraham\u2019s Wonderhood Studios is hosted by The Times journalist James Beal, who wrote the original Times investigation and made a podcast on the subject. The doc spotlights the barely believable story of how a Canadian chef was accused of sending more than 1,000 packages of poison<\/a> to suicidal young people across the globe, leading to hundreds of deaths worldwide.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNot everything we do will be a massively commercial project but on this one we are not licensing a headline and walking away,\u201d added Halliwell. \u201cWe are not trying to be programme makers but want to earn our seat at the table in other ways. There are 400 journalists sat around me researching and digging into stories, a resource that no production company will have.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe move is reflective of how the TV industry has leaned heavily into IP over the past few years, according to Halliwell, who said this has now gone way beyond just adapting novels.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt has become a much more important part of the commissioning process and perhaps we have focused too much on the book publishing market and not enough on the newspaper and journalism business,\u201d he added. \u201cWe have been licensing articles to producers who want to go and make a show but have never leaned into that process. I think we are just being more proactive now and one of the reasons I am doing the job rather than a programme maker is that I have this network I can reach out to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMore info about the 14 projects in development is coming in due course, Halliwell added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Rupert Murdoch\u2019s News UK is co-developing more than a dozen licensed TV projects based on its original…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":51121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[38387,171,623,38388,38389,38390,173,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-51120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-channel-4","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-fox","11":"tag-news-uk","12":"tag-poison","13":"tag-richard-halliwell","14":"tag-tv","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}