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DRG Announces Partnership with Wildseed Studios

DRG to spearhead distribution for content and talent incubation company Wildseed Studios, providing funding for a fresh round of new pilots planned for the first quarter of 2017.

Leading distributor DRG has secured a major new partnership with Wildseed Studios, the innovative, BAFTA-winning content and talent incubation company founded by Miles Bullough and Jesse Cleverly in 2013.

Wildseed Studios was established to find new content creators and pilot original ideas specifically designed to work across the growing number of digital services. The business is focused on finding scripted content with brilliant characters that appeal to millennial audiences, with comedy, genre fiction and kids 6-11 being key areas of focus.

Typically, Wildseed Studios looks to make initial investments of up to £10,000 in an idea or creator with potential and then seeks to either grow the franchise themselves post-pilot, or connect with premium platform partners to develop and grow the project further. Since opening its submissions portal in 2014, Wildseed received more than 3,000 project proposals, has picked up 30, published 20, and has enjoyed a 60 percent pickup rate from premium platform partners.

The new partnership sees DRG providing funding for a fresh round of new pilots in Q1 2017. The investment is uncapped and will continue to flow as exciting new ideas continue to be discovered by Wildseed. DRG will also become the distributor for Wildseed’s content, using its expertise and extensive market knowledge to help the incubator evolve into a business that is fully connected with the international content industry.

“We are constantly looking for exciting opportunities that both provide us with a new pipeline of content and that encourage us to look at different ways of working in our changing world,” said Richard Halliwell, DRG’s managing director.

“Our new relationship with Wildseed is ripping up the ‘distributor rulebook’; we are investing in creators with no ‘mainstream’ experience and no access to market -- who are amazingly talented and just need some seed investment to gain momentum. DRG is evolving to become more inventive and creative, and less risk-adverse, in order to take full advantage of the fast-moving developments in the digital space. Miles and Jesse are pioneers in this evolving business and we are fascinated to be a part of the ride and see where this joint journey takes us both.”

“We have had a very busy and successful four years, introducing some fantastic new talent and ideas to the world, gaining commissions and winning awards,” commented Miles Bullough from Wildseed Studios. “But we felt the time was right to go up a gear and this partnership with DRG is effectively allowing us to launch phase two of our business, and to reload the Wildseed incubator, wild.sd/submissions. Not only do we have extra investment, but also DRG’s team of experts at our disposal, who will help us meet new buyers and platforms and share developments in the international marketplace.

“We met a number of potential partners over the past few months but absolutely loved DRG’s buccaneering and enterprising attitude, its enthusiasm for what we are trying to achieve – and its genuine passion for searching for brilliant new talent. We are extremely excited about Wildseed’s future and can’t wait for new submissions to start rolling in.”

Wildseed Studio’s current incubator successes include the 2016 Children’s BAFTA-winning short Good as Goaled/Lottie Bearshout, made for Disney XD, the Children’s BAFTA-nominated Counterfeit Cat, also for Disney XD and Teletoon Canada, Tales of the Serengeti an anarchic animation made for BBC3, Wolf Jenkins, an 8 bit animated comedy also for BBC3, an unnamed pilot for Channel 4 from creator of Wildseed pilot Shambles and Philip Human, a horror web series picked up by Fullscreen, the US SVOD service.