Amazon’s Prime Video will be increasing its UK content spend “across the board”, Nicole Clemens, the streamer’s head of international originals has pledged.
Speaking during the Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios Spotlight session at the Edinburgh TV Festival yesterday (August 27), Clemens made it clear the streamer was on the hunt for UK originals.
She said the company would be “ramping up across the board” in terms of spend, and while she said she could not give an exact breakdown of the split between scripted and unscripted, it would be a “significant” investment across both genres.
“I wanted to let people know that we’re open for business,” she said, adding the commissioning team had very “clean lines” and clear communication between execs.
“The UK budget now sits in the UK, and the decision-making sits with me,” she said, and the team is “really open to shows at any stage”.
“If it’s a writer we want to be in business with, we will hear ideas, maybe build from the ground up, develop with them,” she added.
In scripted, she said, Amazon was searching for “lean-forward, propulsive, populist literature”.
Clemens joined Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios in 2025, and oversees the development and production of films and series across more than 20 territories worldwide.
Oliver Jones, senior commissioner for unscripted, making his first public appearance representing the streamer since taking up his role in May, expanded on the scripted wish-list.
“We want broadly commercial shows, but with that […], they still need to have a sense of authorship, of originality, to have deep, multi-faceted characters and a real sense of lean and propulsion,” he said.
The team was “genre-agnostic” he said, and told producers: “Don’t be afraid. We want [projects] to be commercial, but don’t be afraid to bring things out a little bit of edge.”
The most important factor, he said, was that content “has to work in the UK”.
“We’re a local UK team, we’re programming for UK audiences, and we’re programming across all of the regions,” he said. “Ideally, they also have universal themes, universal subject matters, which mean that they could travel and get bigger audiences.”
Clemens agreed, adding: “If it doesn’t work in the UK, it won’t travel.”
Fozia Khan, head of unscripted originals, said she was looking for ideas that would sit well alongside the streamer’s smash hit Last One Laughing, that are “real-world”, lightly formatted and feature talent prominently.
Jones also hinted he could be up for becoming the international distribution partner for Doctor Who, after Disney declined to renew its agreement with the BBC earlier this year.
“I love Doctor Who, and we welcome any conversations around IP,” he said.
A version of this story first appeared on Screen’s sister site, Broadcast.
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