The creative initiative SERIESMAKERS, led by the TV festival Series Mania and supported by European content powerhouse Beta Group, in collaboration with HFF München (University of Television and Film Munich), has opened submissions for its third edition. SERIESMAKERS is targeted at feature film directors who venture into the world of series. Deadline for submission is June 20, 2024.
For this edition, there will be one main award of €50,000 entitled the Beta | Kirch Foundation Award. The program will be open this year to filmmakers who have at least one commercially released feature film and/or have been selected for an official film festival. As before, the eligible directors can submit in teams of either director-producer or director-writer.
The creative initiative is headed by Laurence Herszberg, General Director of Series Mania, and Koby Gal Raday, Chief Content Officer of Beta Group.
Koby Gal Raday, Chief Content Officer, Beta Group, said: “Beta has always been a haven for independent filmmakers with a bold and ambitious artistic vision. Collaborating with esteemed partners such as Series Mania, HFF, and Kirch Foundation, we’re proud to announce the third edition of our creative initiative, SERIESMAKERS, which not only uniquely supports A- List filmmakers venturing into series but also helps to redefine the way series can be developed and packaged.”
Laurence Herszberg, General Director of Series Mania, added: "Our past two editions of SERIESMAKERS have shown that there is indeed a real demand from the film industry to move into the world of television series as evidenced by our impressive winners for 2023 including Juho Kuosmanen and César Díaz, with Erik Matti, Kevin MacDonald and Barbara Albert winning for 2024. This past year we had submissions from several new countries and expect even more new countries for 2025. I can’t wait to start seeing the new projects.”
SERIESMAKERS’ objective is to support talents working on a new scripted series to develop a complete pitch deck, guided by A- List directors, showrunners, writers, and producers. Ten teams with an idea for a scripted TV series will be selected to participate in this tailor-made training program. The winning team will be announced during the 2025 Series Mania Forum in Lille, France, and will develop a pilot script and a bible for the awarded project with further creative support from Beta’s Content Division.