Ivi video service has signed a two-year deal with Sergey Minaev, editor-in-chief of Esquire magazine. Under its terms, Mr. Minaev will write four feature series for ivi in the next two years and become a showrunner for these projects. In doing so, he will continue to make documentaries for Premier. This is ivi’s seventh deal with series producers in the past six months.
A representative of the ivi platform told Kommersant that the company had signed an exclusive two-year contract with businessman and writer Sergei Minaev. Under its terms, Mr. Minaev will write for the online cinema two scenarios of new projects per year, each of which is designed for at least eight hourly episodes. The writer will work as both author and showrunner, controlling the creative side of each project.
Sergei Minaev told Kommersant that from the moment of the transaction, all his new works as a scriptwriter for feature series will be for ivi. He will do documentaries for Premier.
The company “Line Up” Mr. Minaev and producer Danila Sharapov signed a first look deal format (for the priority selection of serial projects) with the Premier platform, it concerns documentary projects (see Kommersant, September 28). In addition, Mr. Minaev has ongoing projects for the Mediaslovo company, Danila Sharapov and Petr Anurov, which has a first look with Sberbank’s Okko.
Sergey Minaev has been managing Esquire magazine for the last five years, developing his own media projects and writing scripts. Previously, he was a partner of the wine importer, MDG, but left this business a few years ago, he told Kommersant.
Among the writer’s screenplays are the full-length film adaptation of his own book “Duhless”, the documentary series “The Nineties”, the series “Spoiler”, which is preparing to be released on “Kinopoisk”, and “The Heifers” based on his other book, which is being screened on more.tv … As Sergey Minaev shared in an interview with the RTVI channel in April, the fees for one episode of his script start at 1 million rubles, and the revenue of the YouTube project “Minaev Live” is 3-4 million rubles. per month.
ivi is a large online video platform. In 2019, the company decided to release a line of original projects, investing 1.5 billion rubles in this, hired producer David Kocharov and later acquired 25% in Carbon Production of Mr. Kocharov and Tina Kandelaki. In March 2021, the parties abruptly terminated cooperation, and in October ivi withdrew from the studio’s capital. As explained in an interview with Kommersant ivi CEO Oleg Tumanov, the company changed its approach to production and decided to cooperate with a wide range of manufacturers.
In May, the platform raised $ 250 million from VTB Capital, Roman Abramovich and other investors and began to look for creative personnel for content production. Since then, the company has entered into a three-year exclusive deal with Alexander Tsekalo’s Sreda, followed by a first look deal with Ilya Stewart’s Hype Film, producer Vladimir Maslov, screenwriters Andrey Zolotarev and Alexey Kazakov, as well as a partnership with Star Media.
It’s not uncommon in the market for producers to bargain with multiple platforms.
For example, the Non-Stop Production company of Alexander Rodnyansky and Sergey Melkumov concluded deals with Yandex, Apple, Okko and is still working with TV channels; Ruben Dishdishyan’s Mars Media Entertainment and National Media Group set up a joint venture to produce TV series in 2020, and in 2021, Mr. Dishdishyan’s Lampa company entered into a partnership with Okko.
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