Sony’s TV Chief Wants to Make the Show You’re Scared to Write
SCOOP: Katherine Pope reveals three new overall deals, and how her indie (‘The Last of Us’, ‘The Boys’) wins on risk: ‘No show ever succeeded on a business model’
I cover TV from L.A. I wrote about USA Network’s return to scripted originals and Starz’s post-Lionsgate plans and interviewed the directors of Netflix’s megahit KPop Demon Hunters. Email me at lesley.goldberg@theankler.com
In the three years since Katherine Pope returned to running a studio, the former head of Universal Television has learned to embrace Sony TV’s status as a true independent. Rather than developing shows for a network or streaming counterpart — as she did during her NBC days with such hits as Friday Night Lights and The Office — Pope now has the tall task of setting up shop across the TV landscape as as a pure independent. Overseeing a slate of platform-defining fare including franchises for Amazon (The Boys), Starz (Outlander), Apple (For All Mankind) as well as HBO (Sony PlayStation’s The Last of Us), Pope now wants to follow the sage words she quotes from another former indie studio TV chief, Warner Bros. TV’s Peter Roth, by being “every buyer’s second-favorite studio.”
To do so, Pope has solidified Sony’s roster of overall deals and — as I can exclusively report — signed new multiple-year pacts with The Boys boss Eric Kripke and Platonic co-creator Nick Stoller. The president of Sony Pictures TV Studios also has recruited Wicked producer Dana Fox to the studio, likewise with a multi-year overall, after the duo worked together on Fox’s New Girl. “I’m looking for people who aren’t black-and-white genre people who only do one thing,” Pope, 52, told me in our wide-ranging interview this week. “In today’s world, I don't think any of us can say, ‘No, this is all I do.’ I want to know that you’re interested in flexing your muscles in different ways and for people who have stories to tell in multiple genres and in multiple ways.”
As the television landscape continues to shift, Sony’s TV business has proved a sturdy buttress for the larger media titan. Across all global TV production units — including the U.S. scripted division Pope oversees — TV revenues were up 39 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of the year, according the company’s Aug. 6 earnings report, thanks in part to an increase in series pickups.
Pope, who also re-teamed with New Girl creator Liz Meriwether as a producer on Hulu’s The Dropout and FX’s Dying for Sex, wants to see more shows in the vein of Warner Bros. TV’s The Pitt, a character-driven drama that features a broadcast-like annual cadence and 15 episodes per season. She’s got a similar show in her portfolio with Fox’s Doc, which will grow to 22 episodes when it returns for its second season Sept. 23. The former head of originals at Spectrum (she steered the cable provider into originals with L.A.’s Finest) and TV boss at Peter Chernin’s production company says the streaming model of eight-episode seasons that return every two years is bad for the whole ecosystem, from viewers to the studios and platforms. Instead, she hopes to connect with passionate creators who deliver risky scripts, and she believes that Sony’s creator-first approach and focus on selling the right show to the platform — the one that “has to have it” — will continue to improve her studio’s batting average.
Coming quickly down the pike for Sony are Boots for Netflix, a coming-of-age dramedy via the late Norman Lear’s Act III Productions that’s set in the brutal world of the 1990s Marine Corps (premiering Oct. 9), and Vince Gilligan’s highly anticipated Pluribus for Apple TV+ that stars Better Call Saul standout Rhea Seehorn (Nov. 7).
“TV used to be all risk. I liked putting my gut on the line. When you get to a place where everything is a double, you’re never going to lose. But you’re also never going to hit a home run. And I want to hit some home runs here!” Pope says, also adding, “All I’m ever looking for in this world is buyers who have a gut and taste and are willing to go for things.”
Before we go deeper on my conversation with Pope, a programming note: Series Business recently partnered with the Directors Guild of America and Letterboxd to curate conversations with seven Emmy-nominated directors — Shannon Murphy, who worked on Dying for Sex, Zero Day director Lesli Linka Glatter, Severance’s Jessica Lee Gagné, Andor’s Janus Metz, Sirens’ Nicole Kassell and two The Pitt bosses, Amanda Marsalis and the legendary John Wells. In conversations moderated by my colleagues Elaine Low and Christopher Rosen, they talked about the creative challenges and common misconceptions around directing for TV, and they also shared some of their hard-earned wisdom with Letterboxd, captured in two snappy videos.
You can follow The Ankler and Letterboxd on social for more with the directors next week, but until then, let’s turn back to the main character of my newsletter today: the no-holds-barred straight shooter, Sony TV chief Katherine Pope.
From my conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, paid subscribers can learn:
How she picked her latest overall deals and what writers can do to grab her attention
Why she’s doubling down on comedy just as everyone else calls it dead
Why Cindy Holland’s return to Hollywood atop Paramount+ is “a gift” for the industry
The one change Pope says could fix TV’s broken system
Her compelling pitch to top creatives, and why she doesn’t flinch when someone like Shawn Ryan (The Night Agent) is poached (by Netflix, natch)
Buyers, take note: “If you as a platform are not 100 percent behind a show, please don’t pick it up”
What’s coming: more from the “Miyagi-verse” post-Cobra Kai and how Sony TV could capitalize on KPop Demon Hunters
What really happened with Silk: Spider Society at Amazon and the future of Sony’s Marvel slate
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