Banijay leadership frames the All3Media merger as a non-event for creativity, insisting that quality content will always find its audience despite market contraction.
Insiders whisper that Carolina Bang’s 'impossible to sell' narrative is a convenient rewrite of history, masking how executives ignored a guaranteed hit while chasing safer, generic projects.
Carolina Bang stated she 'spent three years trying to sell Culpables' with 'nobody wanting it' initially; Prime Video confirmed the trilogy has been watched by over 100 million viewers.
The Culpables success story proves that ignoring trendsetters is expensive, but don't expect Banijay to admit their initial blindness to the YA goldmine.
If you thought the current obsession with young adult dramas was just a lucky break for Hollywood, think again. Carolina Bang, the CEO of Pokeepsie and the mastermind behind the massive *Culpables* trilogy, recently dropped some serious receipts on the industry’s collective amnesia. Speaking at the IberSeries industry conference in Madrid, Bang revealed that getting the *Culpables* movies—*Culpa Mia*, *Culpa Tuya*, and *Culpa Nuestra*—off the ground wasn’t just difficult; it was nearly impossible.
She recalled pitching the concept when YA was considered dead on arrival by buyers, admitting, “I spent three years trying to sell Culpables. Nobody wanted it at the very beginning, trust me.” It is a stunning admission given that the films, adapted from Mercedes Ron’s bestselling books and starring Nicole Wallace and Gabriel Guevara, have now been watched by over 100 million viewers on Prime Video. The drama doesn’t stop at Bang’s personal struggle for validation; it extends to the corporate machinations of her parent company, Banijay Entertainment.
Steve Matthews, Head of Scripted, Creative at Banijay, took the stage alongside Bang to address the elephant in the room: the recent mega-merger with All3Media. With industry watchers predicting a homogenization of content and a loss of creative spark, Matthews offered a defiant rebuttal. When asked if such a massive consolidation could negatively impact creativity, he was blunt: “The answer is no.
I don’t have any concerns at all about this at Banijay because I don’t think anything changes.” He emphasized that the UK label landscape remains a “busy place” for work, attempting to soothe fears that the merger would stifle the very innovation that made projects like *Culpables* viable in the first place. While Matthews projects confidence, the market reality he described paints a harsher picture for creators who don’t have Bang’s patience or vision.
He acknowledged the “contraction” in the scripted TV business, noting there is “a lot less work to go around.” However, he spun this downturn as a quality filter, arguing that the current landscape is “forcing quality up.” His advice to producers was stark: “Good shows will get made. Shows that are manufactured to be commercial will not, so love your show.” It is a convenient narrative that suggests the industry is self-correcting, even as Bang’s experience proves that executives often miss the boat on the next big thing because they are too busy manufacturing safe, forgettable content.
The ripple effects of the *Culpables* success are already visible, with Spain emerging as a hotspot for YA content and Pokeepsie’s latest release, *Drawn Together* (*Enfrentados*), shooting straight to the top of Prime Video’s charts. Yet, despite the franchise’s dominance, there remains a tantalizing lack of clarity on the future. Bang offered no update on whether a fourth movie is in the works, even though author Mercedes Ron published a fourth installment earlier this year.
This silence from a producer who once fought for three years just to get a yes on the first film is telling. It suggests that while the door is open, the industry’s hunger for the next YA blockbuster is tempered by the very caution that nearly killed *Culpables* in the first place.
