EXCLUSIVE: Vital Content material, the manufacturing firm behind Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia and Sylvester Stallone documentary Sly, is at a crossroads.
Deadline understands that the corporate has put quite a few its tv employees on furlough. Some workers have been largely out of labor for the reason that finish of March however the firm has been providing just a few paid hours to “sustain appearances”, one supply stated.
Vital Content material, which can also be behind NBC’s Superstar Recreation Face, Discovery’s Survive The Raft and MTV’s Catfish, will not be the primary unscripted-focused firm to “rightsize” its enterprise in a difficult surroundings and insiders on the firm stated the hope was that it will have the ability to carry again these workers.
There was discuss inside the unscripted TV business that Vital’s guardian firm SK World, the movie financier behind Loopy Wealthy Asians, has been contemplating promoting the enterprise.
However the firm denied that there was any “gross sales course of” occurring. “Vital Content material is a confirmed chief in premium unscripted storytelling. It’s a cornerstone of our various funding portfolio, and we intend to maintain it that means. We aren’t in a gross sales course of. We’re absolutely dedicated to fueling its subsequent chapter—increasing its inventive edge, scaling its attain, and solidifying its place because the go-to studio for daring, culture-shaping content material,” an SK World spokesman advised Deadline.
This information comes after Jenny Daly, who was President of Vital Content material, joined A. Smith & Co. Productions as its President. Daly is ready to bolster the Tinopolis-owned firm’s progress into the codecs world and worldwide enterprise.
Daly has spent a lot of the previous twelve months rising Vital’s international enterprise, hanging a slew of worldwide offers with the likes of Australia’s Warner Bros. Worldwide Tv Manufacturing Australia, Korea’s One thing Particular, Singapore’s Refinery Media, Dubai’s Blue Engine Studios, Belgium’s Be-Leisure and France’s ITV Studios France.
Vital Content material can also be behind sequence resembling, Oxygen’s Lethal Waters with Captain Lee and A&E’s New Home, No Debt in addition to Netflix’s Get Organized with The Residence Edit, which was produced with Reese Witherspoon and Emily Sims.
SK World can also be behind Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell rom-com Anybody However You, Jeff Bridges’ Hell or Excessive Water and Brad Pitt’s Moneyball. In January, it promoted former CFO Matt Aragachi to President with Beth Bednarski coming in as chief monetary officer. It additionally promoted Chloe Dan to EVP, Tv, and as Deadline revealed, employed former Participant exec Elizabeth Haggard as SVP, Characteristic Movie reporting to Head of Options Mark O’Connor.
It purchased Vital Content material in January 2022 from Anchorage Capital Group. In September 2022, SK World, which was shaped by a merger between Sidney Kimmel Leisure and Ivanhoe Photos, offered a majority stake to non-public fairness agency Centricus.
In November, SK World endured layoffs with round 20 workers in numerous divisions impacted.
