Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) has struck a deal with news organisation Guardian Media Group for exclusive first rights to The Guardian’s journalism with the aim of developing film, TV and documentary projects.
The collaboration spans SPE’s feature film division, which includes labels such as 3000 Pictures, Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures and Screen Gems, as well as SPE’s TV production groups in the US and internationally, including UK scripted companies Left Bank Pictures, Bad Wolf and Eleven.
Under the deal, SPE will have access to the Guardian’s current and developing news stories, and to the Guardian’s 200-year-old archive.
The Guardian picked up the Academy Award for best documentary short for the film Colette in 2021, following a nomination in the same category for the film Black Sheep in 2019. It has a slate of projects in development in the UK and US, and three option deals with SPE that will launch the new collaboration and will be announced soon.
The agreement, brokered by London agency group Curtis Brown, will be overseen by a new executive team appointed by SPE and The Guardian.
Wayne Garvie, president of international production at Sony Pictures Television, said: “To be able to draw on The Guardian’s extraordinary journalism, past, present and future, to create a new generation of dramas, documentaries and movies, is an incredibly exciting opportunity for us at Sony Pictures.”
Elizabeth Gabler, president of 3000 Pictures, said: “The scope for this collaboration across feature film as well as television really speaks to the huge breadth of potential and reach of this deal.”
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