Sellers’ Guide: Peter Friedlander’s Amazon MGM Reset — and What He Wants Now

You never know when and how a story can make it to the big leagues. That was my takeaway from the Banff World Media Festival, where I spent much of last week up in the Canadian Rockies moderating panels featuring everyone from Warner Bros. TV’s president, Brett Paul, to Roku head of content Lisa Holme.

During my third and last panel of the trip, where the power of fandom took center stage, Webtoon Productions head of global entertainment David Madden dug into how he finds gems of stories amid a myriad of fanfic titles. 

If a Wattpad story gets read 100,000 times, he says, then he knows it has traction. One title, Chasing Red, got more than a billion reads. Now? It’s in development as an Amazon MGM movie. 

So it’s apt that I’m now closing out my Spring Sellers’ Guide with a look at Amazon MGM and its streamer Prime Video. And ICYMI, don’t forget to read previous editions that cover Apple TV to Paramount+/HBO Max. (If this series has been helpful or informative, I’d love to hear it — and what you’d like to read more of. Talk to me at elaine@theankler.com.) 

Amazon MGM is still in the midst of a leadership transition after the departure of studio chief Jen Salke last March and the arrival in October of OG Netflixer Peter Friedlander, who in his eight months at the studio/streamer has not yet publicly anointed a second in command. 

What exactly the new regime is looking for can’t be conveyed in a few keywords, sources tell me.

“All they’re saying is that they are wide open for business, which is true,” says one high-level TV lit agent. “We brought several things out into the marketplace, which they bid on in a healthy way. And it’s been a little bit of everything: grounded genre and some YA shows and straight-down-the-middle dramas in general. So they are wide open just to working with high-end, good creators. That’s what Peter’s done his entire career. But they’re not signaling yet, ‘We’re looking for X, Y or Z.’” 

So in today’s Series Business, I’ll give you a look at: 

• Who’s hearing pitches now in comedy, drama, YA and genre there
• The key exec reps value for her passion in pushing projects she loves — and her clarity when saying no
• Friedlander’s new structure and more upgrades from the “reactive” Salke era where “things got lost in the ether”
• Good and bad news about YA — it’s in demand, but “the bar is higher” than ever, and I’ll tell you why
• The mandate now: fewer keywords, copycats and “our version of” someone else’s hit, more focus on the total package
• Which Salke-era projects Friedlander is killing, reworking or rescuing from the reject pile
• Why reps trust in Friedlander’s plan despite the slow pace