Known for his creative flair and business acumen as much as for his talent for throwing the best parties, French entrepreneur and producer Pascal Breton is celebrating a milestone in the 11-year history of his Paris-based Federation Studios. That is the launch of “The Agency,” the anticipated U.S. remake of “Le Bureau des Legendes” starring Michael Fassbender, which Federation executive produced alongside George Clooney and is co-distributing internationally with Paramount Global Content Distribution.
Federation Studios previously sold Eric Rochant’s smash hit spy series “Le Bureau des Legendes” widely, but retained the IP, allowing the outfit to make a lucrative deal with Paramount for the remake and remain in the picture as co-distributor and executive producer.
A disruptor at heart, Breton was vying for a career in academics after getting a PhD in political science with a prophetic thesis about how television has changed the rules of political life. After a stint teaching at Paris’ prestigious Sciences Po, he got into politics, campaigning for socialist presidential candidate Francois Mitterand in the early 1980s, and eventually co-created (with Olivier Bremond) the TV production company Marathon Entertainment in 1990. There, he hit the ground running, delivering French scripted sensations such as the Saint Tropez-set soap “Sous le Soleil,” whose 480 episodes have traveled the world, and the limited series “Dolmen” which broke all-time ratings records on TF1.
In 2013, after selling Marathon to Zodiak Media, Breton created a new breed of European super-indie TV studio with Federation Entertainment (which later became Federation Studios), where he formed an ensemble leadership with a new generation of film and television producers and showrunners. This included Rochant and Lionel Uzan, who became co-founder and managing director, followed by fellow Marathon alumn David Michel.
Aside from “Le Bureau des Legendes,” Federation is behind a raft of successful shows, including “Around the World in 80 Days,” an adventure limited series starring David Tennant; “In Treatment,” the French adaptation of Israeli series “BeTipul,” directed by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano (“Intouchables”) for Arte; coming-of-age “Baby” for Netflix; “Bardot,” the biopic series about French icon Brigitte Bardot for France Televisions and Netflix; epic series “Britannia”; high-voltage cop show “The Squad” starring Jean Reno for Prime Video; thrillers “BRI” for Canal+ and “Furies” for Netflix; as well as the teen sci-fi fantasy dramedy “Find Me in Paris” and animated series “Simon Super Rabbit.”
“We started Federation 10 years ago with an almost artisanal approach, with very little capital. We set up this huge thing that wasn’t planned at the outset, but we did one series, and another, and then we hired producers,” Breton tells Variety at his chic Haussmannian headquarters on Rue Royale in Paris, where he comes in every day and remains involved in virtually every project. “After that, we started doing a lot in France, and we got busy in the United States, then in Italy. And then it worked and we reinvested again and again.”
Breton launched Federation mostly with private investment. A couple of years later, French investment institutions BNP Paribas and Bpifrance started backing the banner. The company welcomed its first major shareholder, Montefiore Investment, in 2021.
Today, Federation has created a network of 30 labels and outposts — in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, the U.K., U.S. and Israel — and a portfolio consisting of roughly 1,064 titles (produced and/or acquired), representing roughly 2,000 hours of programming that is primarily premium fiction, with some youth programming and animation.
“Montefiore gave us financial fuel to expand in 2021 and we’re now ready to accelerate further Federation’s growth,” says Breton, who also plans to “open up a little more capital, either to raise money or to support growth, and maybe even replace Montefiore.”
“The market is rather flat but Federation has a lot of potential because we meet a need, i.e. the small producer can’t do it alone and the small broadcaster can’t do it alone either,” he says, pointing out that the company is “having a 25% growth each year.” He also forecasts a 25% growth in terms of annual revenues and profit in 2025 and 2026, with 40 series and 31 films that will be delivered in 2025. The company’s valuation was reported to be at roughly €500,000 last year by Reuters, and Breton says it’s now closer to €600,000. Federation Entertainment is part of a vibrant eco-system of France-based production and distribution groups led by entrepreneurs, along with bigger companies such as Mediawan and Banijay.
As he envisions the next phase of Federation’s evolution, Breton says he looks to ramp up their English-language output, aiming for a target of 10 series per year through remakes, original productions and collaborations with U.K. and U.S. partners. Recent efforts in that space include the British series “I, Jack Wright,” produced by Federation Stories and Polly Williams and created by Chris Lang, which is slated to screen at Content London. In terms of external growth, Breton aims for Federation to “create two to three companies per year in the next three years, including in Italy, Spain, Scandinavia and Germany.”
Breton benefited from auspicious timing when he launched Federation as streamers were preparing to bow in France, kicking off with Netflix, which rolled out in 2014 and revolutionized the local TV landscape. This created a large demand for scripted content, followed by the debuts of Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV+, among others.
“In the last 10 years, there’s been a passion for French fiction that we didn’t have before. In the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, American series were completely dominating the French market,” he says. Apart from a few exceptions, French and international series were considered “very niche,” he says, and even “Sous le Soleil” and “Dolmen” were viewed as “marginal hits.”
It all changed “when the big wave of streaming and demand for fiction exploded, and we were ideally positioned to surf on it,” Breton says. “Although I had 20 years of experience as a producer, the fact that our company was new on the block helped us because we were very agile. I was working with showrunners and producers who were younger, many of whom had worked in film via their companies, including Cheyenne Federation, Empreinte Digitale, Robin&Co and Bonne Pioche.” To dive into the U.S., Breton joined forces with Patrick Wachsberger, the well-respected former Lionsgate boss behind Oscar-winning “CODA,” “Lalaland” and “Hunger Games,” to form Picture Perfect Federation.
Right off the bat, Federation made headlines in France after news came out that it was producing Netflix’s first ever French original series, “Marseille,” a couple of years before it launched in the country in 2014. Federation scored again with “Le Bureau des Legendes,” which broke away from the typical French cop shows and procedurals and introduced a new kind sophisticated espionage thriller that clicked with local audiences and became an international hit.
The momentum was also ripe because at the time, the French market wasn’t as consolidated as it is today and Federation was able to enlist some of the best talent, such as Rochant and indie producers, whom he helped navigate dealmaking. The arrival of streamers made this much more complex, and gave these producers enough leverage to negotiate in their best interests.
“Our motto has always been to give talent the vision, the ambition and of course the means, and distribute what they create,” he says. “Producers know how to develop good scripts, find the cast, sell to TV channels, but they’re seldom good at finding the rest of the financing, the co-production partners, the pre-sales and minimum guarantees.”
Years before streaming services moved away from aggressive rights grabs and embraced a more flexible approach to licensing, Federation was ahead of the curve because they pioneered a “hybrid” financing model on series, securing funding from both broadcasters and platforms such as Netflix.
“Since we started the company, we did 14 original series with Netflix and 13 series that were co-productions with Netflix, and what we see happening more and more is that platforms prefer to pay less and leave a lot of rights available, even a window to a TV channel, so that changes the dynamic of relationships with streaming services,” he says, adding that in the 14 original sales, some are Netflix buy-outs, and other belong to Federation.
Breton says French TV channels, such as TF1 and France Televisions, work regularly with Federation on their big-budget TV series “because they don’t know how to finance them alone.” “We even get calls from them for series that are developed by other producers, and they ask her, ‘What can you do for me if I bring a third or 40% of the financing?’ says Breton. “Sometimes we say, ‘That’s going to be tough, but other times, if we have a streamer and one or two pre-sales and a big minimum guarantee, we can get it off the ground.”
In the TV scene, Federation’s skill to raise the global financing for a series with less than half of the budget covered by the commissioner is “pretty rare in Europe,” argues Breton. While the company will keep its focus on making long-running TV series that provide recurrent revenues, it has also started opening up to movies in recent years, notably with the launch of a film distribution unit spearheaded by Sabine Chemaly.
Breton says he still feels like “a small producer who enjoys what he does” and became an entrepreneur to take his business to the next level. “When what you do becomes a success, you have to become an entrepreneur,” he says. “And then you have to understand the logic of business, understand the value of what you’re doing. Obviously, the value comes from keeping the rights and from distributing all over the world, and a lot of producers aren’t wired to deal with that. They’re good about making series.”
On “The Bureau des Légendes,” produced by Alex Berger and Rochant via their banner TOP, Federation played a pivotal role in the financing, dealmaking and distributing.
“Other producers would have handed out rights to Canal+ and if we had done so, we wouldn’t have been able to sell the remake rights to Paramount and produce the U.S. remake today,” says Breton, adding that Federation had to put €2 million on the table to retain the rights when they first made the show for Canal+.
Speaking of the pact with Paramount, Breton says, “It’s a very good deal because Federation is a producer and even has a portion of the rights and we kept some territories that we are selling for Paramount, including France and Poland (where Canal+ bought the show).”
Aside from dealmaking, spotting talent and turning them into entrepreneurs has been at the core of Federation’s strategy from the onset. Rochant, whom Breton has known for over 35 years, was one of the first to join Federation and got Breton on board “Le Bureau des Legendes” after a simple pitch. “Eric started talking to me about his idea for the series and I said, ‘Stop right there, I’ve seen ‘Les Patriotes’ and I know exactly what you’re going to do. You’re right, it’s the right time for it and we’ll do it together,” Breton reminisces.
“Today, it’s a huge adventure and Eric Rochant is now a partner in Federation,” he says. “He became an entrepreneur even if it’s not his nature, because his nature is to be French filmmaker and a writer. And now he’s producing series and director.”
Breton is also on the lookout for emerging talent. One of the company’s youngest recruita, Leo Becker, was previously an intern doing script coverage and is now part of the acquisition team and developing some of the banner’s most ambitious English-language projects.
“He was so talented that we told him, ‘If you want to create series, go ahead!’ And he did. He’s finding great English-language projects. He wrote a contemporary version of ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ we’re developing with Vertigo, and then he said, ‘I want to adapt Charles Dickens’ ‘A Tales of Two Cities’ and attached some huge talent,’” says Breton, who admits he reads roughly five books per week to scout for potential adaptations.
In an ultra-competitive market saturated with content, Breton says the way to go is to chase “the biggest IPs, brands and projects that are potentially highly visible.”
To that effect, the company’s latest invention is Federation IP360, an in-house hub dedicated to scouting, acquiring and selling IP which is also meant to encourage synergies within the group.
“We realized that in the slate of each producer, in France and abroad, there are two or three ideas that could interest others, and with good ideas you can save a lot of time and you can even uncover gems,” says Breton. One of these is “Toulouse-Lautrec,” the critically lauded series created by Fanny Riedberger, inspired by her own experience studying with disabled students in an inclusive high school.
“When she started making that series, we told ourselves, ‘This is really, really good.’ So we started selling to the U.S. where we have development deal with a big U.S group, and we proposed it to our Italian company which sold it to RAI and they’re producing for RAI,” he says. “We’re now advanced talks to adapt it in Germany, too!”
At the end of the day, Breton says, “Federation is a lot about sharing.”
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