France’s Studio TF1 has hired Julia Stuart, the former director of original Film at Sky, on a consultancy basis, and appointed Warner Bros. France exec Cristina Batlle as the head of its budding theatrical distribution operation.

The hires follow the rebranding in January of Newen Studios to Studio TF1, followed by an internal restructuring in March, and an announcement that the Paris-based pan-European production and distribution group would be expanding its cinema activities in France and getting behind more ambitious international co-productions.

The strategy is being spearheaded by Pierre Branco, who joined Studio TF1 (then Newen Studios) as CEO in March 2024, after 17 years at Warner Bros. France, where he rose to the position of General Manager France, Benelux and Africa.

Originally acquired by commercial TV giant the TF1 Group in 2015, the rebranded Studio TF1 group encompasses 50 production and distributions labels in 12 territories in Europe and predominantly focuses on audiovisual content.

However, under plans first announced by Branco in January, it will expand its cinema activities in France, to double the number of films it produces there each year to 10 to 12 titles by 2027 and enter the theatrical distribution business in the territory.

Batlle, who previously worked with Branco as director of sales for theatrical distribution at Warner Bros. France, will oversee the creation of Studio TF1’s new theatrical distribution arm, including hiring a team.

Branco made the appointment with double hatted Nathalie Toulza Madar, who is CEO of TF1 Group’s TF1 Films Production and CEO Cinema at Studio TF1.

“She was an obvious choice for us because of her expertise, her commercial talent, her passion, and her energy. She is highly respected by exhibitors, and we are convinced that she is the ideal candidate to embark on this exciting and ambitious new adventure,” says Branco of Batlle.

Talking about his cinema drive, Branco explains it is part of his larger remit as CEO of Studio TF1.

“I joined the group a year ago with the aim to build the next stage of what was then Newen Studios (now Studio TF1). I was convinced this next stage of development had to be about being bigger internationally, but also about being in more stages of the value chain than,” he says.

Cinema ticks both the value chain and the international boxes, he suggests.

News of Batlle’s appointment comes just days after it was announced that TF1 Studio had boarded upcoming French-language biopic Moulin, as a co-producer and taken French theatrical rights to the film in its first announced acquisition for its new theatrical slate.

Lead produced by Alain Goldman (La Vie En Rose) and written by Olivier Demangel (Class Act), the movie stars Gilles Lellouche as World War Two resistance fighter Jean Moulin, opposite Lars Eidinger as Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief, who came to be known as the “Butcher of Lyon”.  Oscar-winning filmmaker László Nemes (Son of Saul) is attached to direct.

Patrick Wachsberger and Legendary’s JV 193 are handling international sales and have just launched the project at the Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du Film.

Other productions in the works for the theatrical slate, being overseen by Toulza Madar, include an adaptation of comic book series Les Gendarmes, which will be released next year.

Branco suggests it has the same potential as the popular Les Profs movie franchise, which is also based on a comic book. The group is also developing projects with a number of directors, such as comedy actor and director Frédéric Quiring (Sales Gosses, Our Tiny Little Wedding).

He adds there is no set genre for the slate but that its titles will be mainstream, and French audience-focused.

On the move into theatrical distribution, Branco says there are multiple reasons for the decision.

“We feel that being a theatrical distributor is fundamental for us, even if it’s a risky business… the first window of exploitation of a movie is the most critical one in terms of building the future value of the title. This is when, if you do it well, you build the initial awareness, the appetite and excitement,” he says.

Secondly, he adds, the group’s current strategy of releasing its films through third parties such as Pathé, Studiocanal and Warner Bros. would be difficult to manage with the increased volume of productions.

“We’ve been working on a title-by-title basis to find the right deal and that has worked very well with very good partners until now,” he explains.

“The more movies you do, the more challenging this becomes, because obviously we’re all fighting for the same dates. If you have a movie that you own 100% and a movie that you own 50%, your interest is clearly going to be in the first movie.”

“The final reason is that we’ve realized that by owning this relationship and the theatrical release window, you’re also able to access talent and projects that won’t don’t necessarily come to you otherwise. People often want a one-stop shop, where they can go to a company that says this is the amount of money we can put on the table, we believe in your project and we will make sure it’s a big success,” he continues.

The other key pole of Branco’s Studio TF1 cinema drive involves a move into bigger budget international co-productions, which will be overseen by Rodolphe Buet, Chief Distribution Officer of Studio TF1.

“It is driven by the same idea that we feel there’s a space for us in terms of building value through the co-production and distribution of titles that have IP at their core. In this case, I would say this one will be very mainstream and commercial,” says Branco.

“It will led by Rodolphe Buet, who’s ex Studiocanal, and in charge of TV, SVOD and international sales for the group. We’re also hiring, as a consultant for now, Julia Stuart, who used to lead original film at Sky. She left Sky recently, and she’s going to help us source projects with IP at their core and expand our networks of producers and distributors.”

Stuart announced her departure from Sky in March, Under her six-year tenure as head of original film there, she brought in movies such as Lee, Ferrari, May December, and The Beekeeper.

“The projects we’re looking at here are between $20m and $50m movies, English speaking and very commercial. IP and cast will be key. This is a space where the TF1 group has been present in the past and now makes sense again,” says Branco. “In terms of genres, it’s quite broad at this stage, but obviously action and spy thrillers are genres that probably feel the most interesting to look at, but we’re still at early stage.”

The group is in talks with a number of producers in that space, many of them in the U.S.

“Having Julia on board will be a way to accelerate that. There are no announcements at this stage, but it’s worth mentioning because it connects to what I was saying initially about wanting to grow internationally,” says Branco.

Branco points to Studio TF1’s historical connections to cinema via parent company the TF1 Group, which in turn is a subsidiary of Paris-based conglomerate Bouygues.

The latter’s founder Francis Bouygues, who led a consortium to acquire and privatize TF1 in 1987, launched film finance and sales company Ciby 2000 in 1990.

It was briefly one of Europe’s most influential film companies, co-producing Palme d’Or winners Jane Campion’s The Piano, Emir Kusturica’s Underground, Mike Leigh’s Secret and Lies and Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry as well as Pedro Almodovar’s High Heels and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little Buddha among others.

The company closed in 1998, in the wake of Bouygues’s death in 1993, and his son Martin Bouygues’ decision to refocus the group’s activities on the telecoms sector. Most of Ciby 2000’s films were acquired by the TF1 Group and are now part of its catalog, spanning more than 1,000 titles.

Bouygues’s successor as CEO at TF1, Patrick Le Lay pursued a strategy of building a European mini-major, striking partnerships with Sony Pictures Classics, Merchant Ivory Productions and Miramax and also acquiring a 49% stake in successful Life Is A Long Quiet River producer Etienne Chatilliez’s company Téléma in 2000.

A few years later, Patrick Binet would spearhead another cinema drive, through a tie-in with UGC, which saw the company get behind a number of high-profile feature films, notably Olivier Dahan’s La vie en rose (La Mome), for which Marion Cotillard won a Best Actress Academy Award in 2008. The title is also in the TF1 library.

More recently, films to come out of the independent French labels within the Studio TF1 fold have included The Quiet Son (Felicita Films), animated feature Blue Eye Samurai (Blue Spirit Studios), Des Jours Meilleurs and Natacha (Daï Daï Films).

Branco says Studio TF1’s fresh cinema push will spin-off the TF1 cinema legacy, build on its current feature film output and take advantage of the fact that its parent group, the TF1 Group, is home to France’s top TF1 channel.

“We’re already producing between five and six movies a year. We have within the group, France’s number one channel, and the number one AVOD platform broadcasting and showing movies. That’s obviously an asset,” he said.  “We were already there, but not 100%, now the idea is to go 100% and double the number of movies we’ll produce and be a theatrical distributor in France, because we feel that doing all of that will create more value for us. We feel that cinema more than audiovisual production creates long term value.

“For a group like ours has been there for a long time and is owned by another group Bouygues, which has this industrial approach of saying we’re here for the long game, the idea is to say, let’s reconnect with our cinema past, rebuild on that and go full speed.”

Branco adds his strategy is partly born out of his near 20 years at Warner Bros., for which the library is one of its most valuable assets.

“What I learned is that in cinema, there’s this long-term value, this resilience. Cinema is like a treasure. You know its value doesn’t go down over time and it may even go up.”