French brand Thema enters 2018 with a whole new structure in Asia and expanded ambitions for the region. Vanita Kohli-Khandekar talks to Asia Pacific managing director, Alexandre Bac.

Canal Plus-owned Thema splits its Asia operations in January 2018, opening its first India office in Mumbai to manage the South Asia business and maintaining its base for Southeast Asia, including Korea, and the rest of the region in Singapore.

Seven years after the brand debuted in Asia, Thema’s Asia Pacific managing director Alexandre Bac says for Thema to grow, “we need to have a bigger channel portfolio and need to cover all of Asia Pacific”.

The company currently has more than 60 carriage deals across Asia for its 17 channels. Bac says the number of channels and the value he is presenting to platforms have driven the company’s expectations way higher than previously possible. “The market still has huge potential for content like ours,” he says, without disclosing distribution forecasts.

Thema’s expanded portfolio of 17 channels will be the same across Asia with the exception of kids service Gulli, which will not be available in India. The portfolio for Asia currently covers a range of genres, including kids, documentary and music.

Gulli, created by French publisher Lagardere, rolls out across Asia in the first quarter of 2018, targeting kids between three and 12 years old and their families with a cross-platform offering of linear, SVOD and catch up. The initial focus will be Southeast Asia, where the channel will be customised as much as possible, Bac says.

The Gulli line up is a mix of international and local titles, including pre-school series Origanimals (Malaysia), Xiaolin Chronicles (Canada/U.S.), King Food (China), Power Rangers Dino Super Charge (U.S./Japan) and First Time (Philippines).

Customisation on the other channels varies, Bac says. International French-language channel, Canal Plus, for instance, will not be localised. Documentary channel Insight, currently available in Korea (linear and SVOD on SK Broadband, fully subtitled in Korean) and India (Reliance Jio in English).

Each of the 17 channels – including two 4K channels – is sold individually, rather than bundled into an all-or-nothing bouquet.

Current carriage deals are mostly linear, with the exception of China, where Thema has a SVOD tie-up with the Shanghai Media Group, and Korea, where SVOD rights run alongside the linear service.

A key objective is to expand the 4K footprint beyond the current two channels – Festival 4K, which is about music festivals and orchestras in 4K; and Now 4K, which offers music videos.

Thema’s short-form ambitions in Asia are for now anchored in Vivendi’s Studio Plus, which launched in France and South America last year.

Studio Plus has so far made 25 series, each with 10 x 10-minute episodes. Bac says these will be distributed in Asia either embedded into an OTT app or licensing the series individually.

“Eventually,” he says, “the objective is to do local production with operators in local languages”.

This article was originally published in the October 2017 print issue for MIPCOM 2017 in Cannes