Posted 10 Feb. 2023 at 12:41Updated Feb 10. 2023 at 15:26
“The Dropout” on Hulu (Disney), “WeCrashed” on Apple TV+, “Gaslit” on Starzplay… In 2022, adaptations of podcasts into series flourished on American platforms. And the first projects of this type are now seeing the light of day in France.
Following the well-established pattern of literary adaptations or adaptations of articles (from “Saturday Night Fever” to “The Bling Ring”), some of the biggest “hits” of American podcasts have been adapted for the screen, a movement which amplified during the pandemic. The advantage for audio studios? Diversify their sources of income.
Diversify income
Although budgets are usually confidential, producing a season of a high-end podcast in the United States would cost around half a million dollars. A drop of water compared to the cost of developing a series that goes on a major video-on-demand platform.
What naturally stir the appetite of audiovisual producers and broadcasters, especially since they can do their shopping on the basis of audiences recorded by the podcast. To meet this demand, some large audio studios like Gimlet (Spotify) have had a video department for several years.
“Exponential popularity”
“The popularity of native audio series has been exponential in recent years and constitutes a new source of inspiration for producers of on-screen series”, confirms Laurence Herszberg, general manager of the Series Mania festival in Lille. This unmissable fiction event will organize “matchmaking” sessions in March for the second year to offer podcasts to series producers.
Among the first audio studios in France to embark on screen adaptation projects was Paradiso Media, the company founded by Lorenzo Benedetti, a former Canal+ employee. This month, he starts filming a feature film from the podcast “In thongs at the foot of the Himalayas”, a societal opus about a mother who discovers that her son has autism spectrum disorder, co-produced with Cinéfrance .
Omnichannel approach
Mediawan is developing a series adapted from a Paradiso Media podcast, “I hold you”, a psychological thriller with singer Camélia Jordana. And the French studio has also teamed up with Folimage to adapt the adventures of the witch Cornebidouille into a feature film.
With a risk of diluting the audio too much in the model of a studio like Paradiso Media? Lorenzo Benedetti sees the podcast as a source of multiple adaptations, also on other media, in an “omnichannel” approach. Paradiso Media, as well as Spotify, France Culture and Arte, are also very active in adapting podcasts in printed formats (books, graphic novels, etc.), or on stage, for the French market.
