Could The Doctor come calling at Prime Video?
Oliver Jones, Senior Commissioner for UK Scripted at the Amazon-owned streamer, set tongues wagging at the Edinburgh TV Festival when questioned if Prime Video could become the new international home for Doctor Who.
“I love Doctor Who, and we welcome any conversations around IP,” said Jones, as he and Nicole Clemens, Amazon MGM Studios’ London-based VP of International Originals, spoke about a plan to significantly increase spend on UK content. While there’s no indication Prime Video is exploring a deal for the show, many at the festival later remarked the idea had not been dismissed out of hand.
Disney+ was the previous international home for The Doctor, but it exited its deal with BBC Studios after two seasons of the show and spin-off The War Between Land and Sea. This came amid extremely high per-episode costs and the disappointing ratings for the second Disney-backed run.
For Prime Video, the chatter came amid a busy week in which it has announced several UK originals, including docu-series on Lando Norris, and Peter Crouch and Abby Clancy and Stephen King drama series Crouch End, along with casting for Season 3 of LOL: Last One Laughing UK.
Clemens revealed yesterday that investment in British content was increasing “across the board,” effectively sending a come-and-talk call to the UK production community. She made clear commissioning power was in London, adding further fuel to the fire.
“The UK budget now sits in the UK, and the decision-making sits with me,” said Clemens. “I wanted to let people know that we’re open for business.” Cash will be made available for scripted and unscripted programs.
Jones, the former Apple exec who recently re-joined Amazon, padded out the programming wish list. “We want broadly commercial shows, but they still need to have a sense of authorship, originality, with deep, multi-faceted characters and a real sense of lean and propulsion.
“We’re a local UK team, we’re programming for UK audiences, and we’re programming across all of the regions,” said Jones. “Ideally, they also have universal themes, universal subject matters, which mean that they could travel and get bigger audiences.”
Clemens added: “If it doesn’t work in the UK, it won’t travel.”
