Ilkka Rahkonen and Ilkka Hynninen
Ilkkas' Creative Studio (ICS), the new Tampere-based creative hub that launched in September last year, has announced a landmark pact that will see Finland’s publishing group WSOY enter into an alliance designed to rethink the development of Finnish scripted content for international audiences. The deal was signed today at Series Mania in Lille by ICS’ CEO, Ilkka Rahkonen, creative director Ilkka Hynninen, and WSOY CEO, Timo Julkunen.
The WSOY group, which includes the Tammi, Readme, Bazar, Docendo, Crime Time, Johnny Kniga, Minerva and Kosmos imprints, will initially work on several key projects with the producer including inviting the authors to have a stake in the development of the stories for screen. This collaborative approach aims to internationalize and renew development and production methods hand in hand with authors.
"ICS' way of structuring the international market situation with knowledge-based management and its vision of cooperation that extends beyond individual works fits well with WSOY's strategy of generating added value for the writers as a publisher," Timo Julkunen commented.
The agreement forms part of ICS' goal to renew industry practices and replace the traditionally long, slow and expensive operating methods of the audiovisual industry with agile development methods in a rapidly changing market.
“The goal of this agreement ultimately is to maximize the success of Finnish stories and take them around the world. Together with the management of WSOY, instead of optioning individual books, we want to build a strategic view around the current and future works and plan how to conceptualize and squeeze the best possible content out of them," Ilkka Hynninen explained.
Last year, ICS launched its ambitions to take inspiring stories to screen and put commercial ideas into action through collaborations with BBC Studios Nordic, and David Zucker and Pat Proft, for the series “Nordic Police Force,” a dark comedy spoof currently in production in the spirit of Nordic Noir.