European Audiovisual Observatory 'Writers and directors of cinematographic and television fiction/SVOD - Figures 2015-2023'

The European Audiovisual Observatory, which is part of the Council of Europe, has just published a new edition of the report “Writers and directors of TV/SVOD fiction – Figures 2015-2023”.The report analyses almost 36,000 writers and directors involved in European drama films and TV/SVOD fiction produced in Europe between 2015 and 2023.

This new report reports, among others, that:

The majority of European films are written and directed by the same professional.

More than 40% of TV/SVOD fiction directors also directed a theatrical film.

Unlike their TV/SVOD fiction counterparts, theatrical film writers and directors are subject to high turnover, partly due to the high proportion of debut films produced each year.

TV/SVOD fiction writers and directors therefore work more frequently.

Persistence of the auteur (theatrical)

Film model 77% of European theatrical films feature a writer who also directs the film. This means, on the one hand, that 48% of screenwriters between 2015 and 2023 only wrote one or more films that they also directed and, on the other, that only 55% of screenwriting jobs are assigned to screenwriters who are not also directors.

In contrast, in TV/SVOD fiction, the roles of writer and director are almost always different: only 11% of professionals who have made at least one TV/SVOD fiction film or an episode of a series only made one fiction film that they both wrote and co-directed.

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