Succession star Matthew Macfadyen’s new dramedy, BBC Studios explaining the secrets of success on YouTube, and a warning to the TV industry to embrace GenAI or lose out were among the highlights from day one of MIPCOM CANNES. The opportunities in micro-dramas and a joyous Women in Global Entertainment lunch were also standout moments as this year’s market swung into gear.
Macfadyen’s next move: ‘I was talking to lots of little crosses on the carpet…’
Dramedy series The Miniature Wife is no shrinking violet at this year’s market
MIPCOM CANNES attendees are being treated this week to an exclusive preview screening of The Miniature Wife, Sony Pictures Television’s new dramedy series starring Matthew Macfadyen, Elizabeth Banks, O-T Fagbenle and Sian Clifford.
The high-concept series sees Macfadyen’s character Les accidentally (or not) miniaturising his wife Lindy to the size of a coffee cup. As the story unfolds, she takes her revenge in various ways.
“When I read the script, Elizabeth was already attached, which was huge draw. And I thought it was just a fabulous thing to read. It’s just a brilliant idea and it was instantly exciting and interesting,” Macfadyen told MIPCOM Daily News ahead of the screening.
Sadly for him, he did not get to spend as much time on set with Banks as he had hoped, due to the miniaturisation storyline. “I was just talking to lots of little crosses on the carpet, or whispering manically to tiny little things, and Elizabeth was in a green screen studio, shouting,” he said.
The show is likely to have global appeal, particularly for anyone who has ever been in a testing relationship, as Fagbenle explained. “It’s about couples who are trying to navigate their love through time, through their ambition, through infidelity, through lies and betrayal,” he said. “Anybody who’s experienced anything like that will probably love the show.”
The Miniature Wife will premiere in the US on Peacock in 2026, with Sony Pictures Television distributing the Media Res production internationally. It’s certainly making a big splash at MIPCOM CANNES.
BBC Studios hails YouTube as the platform ‘where the fandom grows’
And hiring creators may be the path to platform success for traditional TV companies
Did you think YouTubers were just individual creators building their audiences on the world’s biggest online-video platform? Think again.
““Everyone could be a YouTuber. BBC Studios is one of our best YouTubers!” said Pedro Pina, vice-president, head of YouTube EMEA during his MIPCOM CANNES Headliners ‘Studios, Broadcasters & YouTube’ session.
YouTube is a big presence at this year’s market, with Pina saying that the company’s goal is “to reach out to everyone. Our platform is open to collaborate with you… We would like to do much, much more.”
Pina’s mention of BBC Studios was no accident: its senior vice president, digital Jasmine Dawson was also part of the session, talking about how her company has grown its YouTube audience while also reaching more people through traditional channels.
“It’s not a mutually exclusive game. We’re not sacrificing anything. It is incremental, and that is a really powerful conversation to have with some of our distribution partners,” Dawson said. “They understand that this [YouTube] is where the fandom grows, and it drives that incrementality.”
How can companies from the legacy TV industry make the most of YouTube? Pina and Dawson offered one striking piece of advice: hire more YouTubers to bring their expertise in-house.
The session was moderated by Evan Shapiro, who suggested that the dominance of YouTube by individual creators may be seeing its own disruption in the coming years.
“I believe that the biggest part of growth in the creator economy over the next five years is going to come from big studios and brands leaning in, bringing the wave – the tsunami – of content that they’ve been holding back,” he said.
Lahens’ warning to delegates: ‘embrace GenAI or lose out’
And Infinite Studios CEO thinks AI is redefining what it means to be a studio
A fully AI-generated short-form drama series called Nine-Tail Fox Demon Falls For Me may sound like niche entertainment. Not in China though. The micro-drama generated more than 200m views in the first month after its release this year.
It was one of the examples cited by Adrienne Lahens, CEO of Infinite Studios, in her MIPCOM CANNES talk about how GenAI is shaking up the television industry already.
“The micro-drama market in China pulls in $7bn annually. It’s already bigger than their domestic box office,” Lahens said. “Some of the most outrageous, over-the-top, low-production-value concepts can generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue.”
Lahens’ talk was a call to arms for the legacy media industries, but also a warning about the disruption they face.
“AI isn’t replacing creativity. It’s not replacing creators. It’s expanding what’s possible. You can try to resist it, and get left behind, or you can lean in and really think about how to make these tools work for you,” she said.
Lahens also took aim at criticism of “AI slop”, pointing out that while Hollywood produces 15,000 hours of content every year, 300m hours of content are uploaded to YouTube annually.
“But this is all just AI slop, right? Let’s say you’re right and 99.99% is AI slop. Let’s say 0.01% is approaching Hollywood-level quality. That’s still two times Hollywood’s annual output. This wave is coming.”
Fox invests in Holywater with plans for a slate of 200 micro-dramas
Ukrainian startup tells MIPCOM CANNES how its subscription apps reach 60 million viewers
Micro-dramas were also a hot talking point in an intriguing panel involving executives from Fox Entertainment and Ukrainian tech startup Holywater in the MIP Creative Hub.
Fox recently made an equity investment in Holywater, and will be creating a slate of more than 200 micro-dramas over the next two years, starting with titles including Billionaire Blackmail and Bound By Obsession.
Julian Franco, president of operations and strategy, Fox Entertainment said that his company was impressed by what Holywater’s co-founders Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov have achieved since launching in 2020. He added that micro-dramas are “not directly competitive to the forms of content we already work with. I would say it’s an alternative to social media doomscrolling.”
During the session, Nesvit explained that Holywater has four apps which collectively reach 60 million users. These include My Drama, an app streaming micro-dramas, and My Muse, a platform for series produced using GenAI technologies. The primary way these apps make money is through subscriptions, although viewers can also access shows for free by watching ads.
Holywater’s founders said that the Fox partnership will help them to explore a wider range of genres, and also to create micro-dramas that tap into the US studio’s rich array of talent relationships.
Women in Global Entertainment lunch: friendships, priorities and resilience
And takeaway advice that had nothing to do with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle…
Day one of MIPCOM CANNES also saw the annual Women in Global Entertainment lunch return for its 14th year, co-sponsored by A+E Global Media and The Hollywood Reporter.
A panel of industry veterans offered anecdotes and advice to the packed room, starting with Kate Philips, who was appointed as BBC chief content officer this summer. Her tip was to “value your friendships” in a year that she admitted had been a tough one personally.
“I’ve been working in telly for over thirty years now and the friendships and power of these women and they just drop everything at a moment’s notice to be with you. I could not have got through the last year without them,” she said.
Justine Ryst, managing director of France and Southern Europe for YouTube, talked about when to prioritise things outside work. “Listen to me. I just took a three month break to accompany my kids in an important moment in each of their lives. It’s the best decision I’ve ever made,” she said.
Lauren Tempest, general manager of Hulu, said that success is “not about making all the moments right and perfect and avoiding the hard, but it’s about the resilience. How quickly can you respond to the hard and move on? That’s a big challenge: to not constantly search for perfection, and how quickly can you pull yourself back up?”
Moderator Cally Beaton, a comedian, author and former ITV director, would up the panel with a famous quote from Michaelangelo – not the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, as she joked, but the Italian artist. “The greatest danger for most of us is not our aim is too high and miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”
