Piv Bernth, CEO, Creative & Executive Producer, Apple Tree Productions: "It's Harder Than Ever to Get Financing"
Piv Bernth is behind some of the biggest Danish TV series successes in the past 15 years. She worked as a producer at DR and received international recognition - an iEMMY for Nikolaj and Julie, the Golden Nymph as Best European Producer for The Killing II, BAFTA for The Killing I, and three iEMMY nominations for The Killing I and II. She also received numerous Danish awards for the series she produced. Moreover, Piv was an executive producer of the original version of The Bridge. In 2012, she was appointed Head of Drama and commissioned Borgen, Ride Upon The Storm and Liberty, and various others. In December 2017, Piv left DR and started Apple Tree Productions with Lars Hermann, a producer. The company is part of the ITV Studios group. Series such as Equinox and Baby Fever for Netflix, Blackwater for SVT, Chorus Girls for TV 2 DK, and One of the Boys for Viaplay are produced by their company.
Piv Bernth, CEO, Creative & Executive Producer, Apple Tree Productions
Bernth was a member of the Fiction Jury during the 63rd Monte-Carlo Television Festival which took part in June this year. The executive talked to TVBIZZ and Variety during the Festival, discussing the current situation of the TV and film industry in Denmark, Scandinavia and abroad and also revealed details about some of the latest projects coming from Apple Tree Productions.
Regarding the type of content Apple Tree Productions focuses on, Bernth noted that "we are looking for all kinds of genres but we always look for stories that stand out a little bit. We are trying not to do too generic things because there is so much of that, it's a hard sort of area to compete in. We are trying to do things that stand out a bit - even though it's a comedy, it can have a lot of emotions and seriousness in it. We did Chorus Girls, something about MeToo but we set it in 1975 and tell another story at the same time and put a perspective to it... We did Blackwater, the Swedish series - that is a crime story, but it's much more than that. And the crime engine in the bottom of the story is, it's something that you use to get it going but it's (also) characters, it's the small city - we try to find things that are a crime story, but then a little more, try to find that extra thing. If we get a project from a writer, we discuss it - could we open it up a bit, make it a little bigger, have a bigger perspective, or a deeper perspective? So we're always looking for that." Talking about Blackwater, Berth elaborated that "the series is a book, and the story is based on the book, very close to the book. But the book's structure is ten pages of the 90s, 500 pages in the 70s, and a new 20 pages in the 90s. And then Marguerite Kane broke down the book and made the first script. She broke it into sequences which followed each other and mirrored each other, which was really a good job and when it works like that, it's really nice. And we had two actors in each character, they had to look alike. The casting process was amazing, it started out, actually, with Pernilla August and her two daughters because Asta, her elder daughter, looks totally like Pernilla. So if she played the old Annie and she did the young Annie, then we have some sort of idea here. Taking an actor in the 40s and make them 20 years old and then make them 50 years old, that's heavy makeup and stuff."
Discussing the Nordic Noir trend that Bernth played a leading role in when working at DR and if there will be a new trend coming out of Scandinavia, the exec noted that "when we made The Killing at DR, we didn't know that we were making a trend. We made a story, which was for the first time a story in many, many episodes, everything else was episode and episode. We tried to break this storytelling, the structure of the storytelling... And so everyone would like to find something and we are discussing it a lot but because we all look so hard for it, I think it's hard to find. Suddenly someone will just do it. And we always say 'whoa, that is wonderful' so I don't think you can think your way to it, it has to come from somewhere unconscious... At the moment Scandinavia is doing quite good, apart from Denmark, because we had this crisis in 2022, which stopped everything for 10 months, production and development. And there was a setback, an enormous setback, after COVID, we just recovered from COVID and then this crisis came. But Sweden is really blowing, I think, and Norway too. The thing is now, when we came out with The Killing, with The Bridge and all that it was 'whoa, what's happening there?' But now we're just part of the gang. There's so much out there and so many projects out there but less money and it's a hard fight to get your projects financed, that's everywhere."
Talking about new projects, Bernth shared that the company has a Danish-American co-production with ITV Studios America, with a Danish director, Mikkel Norgaard, who has done a lot in the U.S and American writer - Eric Devlin Taylor. "We have been shopping it around after the strike but we haven't been able to sell it, it's a really good show. In a year maybe we will look at it again and see what we can do to it. I think when you get rejected, you always have to put it away for a while and then take it up again... The story is a natural American Danish co-production because the main character, the perpetrator, is a Danish assassin, he's assassinating people for money." At the moment Apple Tree has three original series and two books in development as well. When asked by TVBIZZ whether the prod co prefers to adapt books or work with original stories, Pernth commented that "if you add something to a book, for instance, you can give it another perspective; if you just do the book as it is, it's like 'yeah, right, I can read it". Regarding the popular true crime genre, Pernth admitted that "for true crime fiction stories sometimes I'd rather see a documentary. If you don't add something to it, it's true crime. You find out something, you research something which we didn't know before. But if you just copy reality, then reality is more interesting. Sometimes when I see a (project) based on a true crime or true story, I think, I've read that book, and I prefer the book or I prefer the documentary, and I've seen it as a documentary because, especially if people still live, they can tell their story and then you can add all kinds of material to it. Copying the real world is too lazy".
Pernth noted that one of Apple Tree's popular series: Chorus Girls is based on true characters and "we interviewed a lot of young dancers, now old dancers, but they were young in the 70s. And they told their stories, and they said 'you can use them if you like'. But of course we mixed them up a bit, we gave some characteristics from one to another. For instance one of them told about her marriage with this man who abused her - we never thought about putting domestic violence into the story, that was not our thing. But when she told the story, we were like, it could be a part of how life was in those days... During the story they realize that if they share their secrets, inner secrets, If they open up and talk about it, they can help each other. And the big message is, you are stronger together."
Bernth also shared that two of the actresses from Chorus Girls are not working on a new show for them which is in development and takes place in a shopping mall. The working title is Feelings and Things and is a contemporary story set in Denmark. The two actresses who are currently shooting a feature film will write and direct the series, with TV2 Denmark also on board. They will also play small parts in the new project which is going into production next year.
Bernth also shared some details about Apple Tree Productions' relationship with ITV Studios: "we work a lot with ITV, we have a very, very good relationship with them. When we got ITV on as a partner, it really lifted the whole company. It's like being in a better league than before. We have one project, which is four parts- an intellectual, small series. And they said, 'we have no customers for it, so go and find someone else'. And then they pointed out someone we should talk to and now it is in development, by a Danish writer, female writer - Tove Ditlevsen - she wrote a book about her four marriages called Gift (which means both 'marriage' and 'poison' in Danish). And we, together with Nordic Film, are doing this project. ITVS supports enormously that we do but they said "we can't help you here because our customers are not the customers that would buy this but then they help us find someone else - it's called Dependency. She's a wonderful writer, she is extremely famous in Denmark and in Scandinavia. And she killed herself in 1976 at the age of 58 because she thought 'I have no more to give life, life has no more to give me'. It is her story and her book and we are then interpreting a bit on it, elaborating a little more, adding things to it, more psychology, trying to make her husbands and herself more understandable. And it's played by four different girls., in different periods, in different ages. Trine Dyrholm is doing the old Tove, because she's in her fifties... It is a female story about trying to find your place in life and trying all kinds of different things out."
When asked by TVBIZZ if Apple Tree is looking into coproductions with territories outside of Scandinavia, Bernth said they do but the situation is hard right now. "The money is not so fast spent as it used to be. And I think it's the fight to keep the audience's attention is enormous and if it doesn't feel like it hooks in right away, they're reluctant to go into anything. I think it's harder than ever to get financing, get co-productions, get soft money and everything. It is a tough period at the moment because the world is so shaky at the moment. We're all sort of, what's going to happen here and what happened during last year with inflation and recession and all? Everyone had to cut down, the big cuts everywhere in public service and streamers, in commercial television, ads are disappearing from them and income is disappearing. In the last two or three years, the world has changed a lot. And I think everyone is now looking to the US in November and keeping their breath back. What's going to happen now if Donald Trump is re-elected? I read an article last night about how you never know what mood he's in. And the mood he's in is what decides what he thinks and he says. It's scary... I wouldn't do a TV series about Donald Trump but I could maybe take some characteristics from Mr. Trump and put it with someone else".
Bernth shared that her company is not planning to expand into documentary productions - "we don't have the skills. And we have one feature film in development at the moment but it's not our core business - it's TV series. And we don't have the skills either for feature films, I think we can learn it because we know so much about all the practical stuff. Now we're trying to, sort of, with one small feature film and see what happens. And we have sent it to Netflix and they're interested and we keep working on it now, we have to develop it further. But I love documentaries, I think it's always so interesting - and scary sometimes, and entertaining."
When commenting on the latest developments with Viaplay, the exec noted that "Viaplay went from 40 (projects) a year to mabe five or six and that is really a big impact in the market in Scandinavia... They overspent, they went to the U.K., they went to the U.S. but the timing was bad. Then they changed the CEO and they changed the strategy completely, it sort of imploded and now we're all waiting for what's going to happen, they focus on reality stuff and sport... They sold out the whole back catalog they had to SkyShowtime and to Amazon in the Nordics, they had a lot on the shelves and Netflix bought Astrid Lindgren's story, Ronja, Robber's Daughter. It was sad to lose that sort of big client. They disappeared, HBO disappeared and we don't know what's going to happen - how much Amazon, SkyShowtime and Disney will do other productions. We don't know yet because they have been under pressure from their US 'motherships' because they have been scaling down and saving money and doing cuts... We are doing a project with DR now for the first time since we left and that's really nice. And they decide if it's going to be New8 (a partnership between 8 broadcasters in Europe: ZDF (Germany), NPO (The Netherlands), VRT (Belgium), SVT (Sweden), DR (Denmark), YLE (Finland), RÚV (Iceland) and NRK (Norway), ed.) or it's going to be N12 (N12 is a yearly package of 12 Nordic drama series with 12-month rights in the Nordic region, ed.) because they have both relations. And our project is in the N12, meaning it's a Nordic collaboration between the Nordic broadcasters, public service broadcasters.We are developing the project but so far, I think we will only get notes from DR. Then you have this co-production support from all the Nordic broadcasters. And then we can go to Europe, because they don't use New8. Then we can go to Europe to try to get a co-production partner or at least some money in pre-buy or something."
Regarding the type of content Apple Tree Productions focuses on, Bernth noted that "we are looking for all kinds of genres but we always look for stories that stand out a little bit. We are trying not to do too generic things because there is so much of that, it's a hard sort of area to compete in. We are trying to do things that stand out a bit - even though it's a comedy, it can have a lot of emotions and seriousness in it. We did Chorus Girls, something about MeToo but we set it in 1975 and tell another story at the same time and put a perspective to it... We did Blackwater, the Swedish series - that is a crime story, but it's much more than that. And the crime engine in the bottom of the story is, it's something that you use to get it going but it's (also) characters, it's the small city - we try to find things that are a crime story, but then a little more, try to find that extra thing. If we get a project from a writer, we discuss it - could we open it up a bit, make it a little bigger, have a bigger perspective, or a deeper perspective? So we're always looking for that." Talking about Blackwater, Berth elaborated that "the series is a book, and the story is based on the book, very close to the book. But the book's structure is ten pages of the 90s, 500 pages in the 70s, and a new 20 pages in the 90s. And then Marguerite Kane broke down the book and made the first script. She broke it into sequences which followed each other and mirrored each other, which was really a good job and when it works like that, it's really nice. And we had two actors in each character, they had to look alike. The casting process was amazing, it started out, actually, with Pernilla August and her two daughters because Asta, her elder daughter, looks totally like Pernilla. So if she played the old Annie and she did the young Annie, then we have some sort of idea here. Taking an actor in the 40s and make them 20 years old and then make them 50 years old, that's heavy makeup and stuff."
Discussing the Nordic Noir trend that Bernth played a leading role in when working at DR and if there will be a new trend coming out of Scandinavia, the exec noted that "when we made The Killing at DR, we didn't know that we were making a trend. We made a story, which was for the first time a story in many, many episodes, everything else was episode and episode. We tried to break this storytelling, the structure of the storytelling... And so everyone would like to find something and we are discussing it a lot but because we all look so hard for it, I think it's hard to find. Suddenly someone will just do it. And we always say 'whoa, that is wonderful' so I don't think you can think your way to it, it has to come from somewhere unconscious... At the moment Scandinavia is doing quite good, apart from Denmark, because we had this crisis in 2022, which stopped everything for 10 months, production and development. And there was a setback, an enormous setback, after COVID, we just recovered from COVID and then this crisis came. But Sweden is really blowing, I think, and Norway too. The thing is now, when we came out with The Killing, with The Bridge and all that it was 'whoa, what's happening there?' But now we're just part of the gang. There's so much out there and so many projects out there but less money and it's a hard fight to get your projects financed, that's everywhere."
Talking about new projects, Bernth shared that the company has a Danish-American co-production with ITV Studios America, with a Danish director, Mikkel Norgaard, who has done a lot in the U.S and American writer - Eric Devlin Taylor. "We have been shopping it around after the strike but we haven't been able to sell it, it's a really good show. In a year maybe we will look at it again and see what we can do to it. I think when you get rejected, you always have to put it away for a while and then take it up again... The story is a natural American Danish co-production because the main character, the perpetrator, is a Danish assassin, he's assassinating people for money." At the moment Apple Tree has three original series and two books in development as well. When asked by TVBIZZ whether the prod co prefers to adapt books or work with original stories, Pernth commented that "if you add something to a book, for instance, you can give it another perspective; if you just do the book as it is, it's like 'yeah, right, I can read it". Regarding the popular true crime genre, Pernth admitted that "for true crime fiction stories sometimes I'd rather see a documentary. If you don't add something to it, it's true crime. You find out something, you research something which we didn't know before. But if you just copy reality, then reality is more interesting. Sometimes when I see a (project) based on a true crime or true story, I think, I've read that book, and I prefer the book or I prefer the documentary, and I've seen it as a documentary because, especially if people still live, they can tell their story and then you can add all kinds of material to it. Copying the real world is too lazy".
Pernth noted that one of Apple Tree's popular series: Chorus Girls is based on true characters and "we interviewed a lot of young dancers, now old dancers, but they were young in the 70s. And they told their stories, and they said 'you can use them if you like'. But of course we mixed them up a bit, we gave some characteristics from one to another. For instance one of them told about her marriage with this man who abused her - we never thought about putting domestic violence into the story, that was not our thing. But when she told the story, we were like, it could be a part of how life was in those days... During the story they realize that if they share their secrets, inner secrets, If they open up and talk about it, they can help each other. And the big message is, you are stronger together."
Bernth also shared that two of the actresses from Chorus Girls are not working on a new show for them which is in development and takes place in a shopping mall. The working title is Feelings and Things and is a contemporary story set in Denmark. The two actresses who are currently shooting a feature film will write and direct the series, with TV2 Denmark also on board. They will also play small parts in the new project which is going into production next year.
Chorus Girls
Bernth also shared some details about Apple Tree Productions' relationship with ITV Studios: "we work a lot with ITV, we have a very, very good relationship with them. When we got ITV on as a partner, it really lifted the whole company. It's like being in a better league than before. We have one project, which is four parts- an intellectual, small series. And they said, 'we have no customers for it, so go and find someone else'. And then they pointed out someone we should talk to and now it is in development, by a Danish writer, female writer - Tove Ditlevsen - she wrote a book about her four marriages called Gift (which means both 'marriage' and 'poison' in Danish). And we, together with Nordic Film, are doing this project. ITVS supports enormously that we do but they said "we can't help you here because our customers are not the customers that would buy this but then they help us find someone else - it's called Dependency. She's a wonderful writer, she is extremely famous in Denmark and in Scandinavia. And she killed herself in 1976 at the age of 58 because she thought 'I have no more to give life, life has no more to give me'. It is her story and her book and we are then interpreting a bit on it, elaborating a little more, adding things to it, more psychology, trying to make her husbands and herself more understandable. And it's played by four different girls., in different periods, in different ages. Trine Dyrholm is doing the old Tove, because she's in her fifties... It is a female story about trying to find your place in life and trying all kinds of different things out."
When asked by TVBIZZ if Apple Tree is looking into coproductions with territories outside of Scandinavia, Bernth said they do but the situation is hard right now. "The money is not so fast spent as it used to be. And I think it's the fight to keep the audience's attention is enormous and if it doesn't feel like it hooks in right away, they're reluctant to go into anything. I think it's harder than ever to get financing, get co-productions, get soft money and everything. It is a tough period at the moment because the world is so shaky at the moment. We're all sort of, what's going to happen here and what happened during last year with inflation and recession and all? Everyone had to cut down, the big cuts everywhere in public service and streamers, in commercial television, ads are disappearing from them and income is disappearing. In the last two or three years, the world has changed a lot. And I think everyone is now looking to the US in November and keeping their breath back. What's going to happen now if Donald Trump is re-elected? I read an article last night about how you never know what mood he's in. And the mood he's in is what decides what he thinks and he says. It's scary... I wouldn't do a TV series about Donald Trump but I could maybe take some characteristics from Mr. Trump and put it with someone else".
Bernth shared that her company is not planning to expand into documentary productions - "we don't have the skills. And we have one feature film in development at the moment but it's not our core business - it's TV series. And we don't have the skills either for feature films, I think we can learn it because we know so much about all the practical stuff. Now we're trying to, sort of, with one small feature film and see what happens. And we have sent it to Netflix and they're interested and we keep working on it now, we have to develop it further. But I love documentaries, I think it's always so interesting - and scary sometimes, and entertaining."
When commenting on the latest developments with Viaplay, the exec noted that "Viaplay went from 40 (projects) a year to mabe five or six and that is really a big impact in the market in Scandinavia... They overspent, they went to the U.K., they went to the U.S. but the timing was bad. Then they changed the CEO and they changed the strategy completely, it sort of imploded and now we're all waiting for what's going to happen, they focus on reality stuff and sport... They sold out the whole back catalog they had to SkyShowtime and to Amazon in the Nordics, they had a lot on the shelves and Netflix bought Astrid Lindgren's story, Ronja, Robber's Daughter. It was sad to lose that sort of big client. They disappeared, HBO disappeared and we don't know what's going to happen - how much Amazon, SkyShowtime and Disney will do other productions. We don't know yet because they have been under pressure from their US 'motherships' because they have been scaling down and saving money and doing cuts... We are doing a project with DR now for the first time since we left and that's really nice. And they decide if it's going to be New8 (a partnership between 8 broadcasters in Europe: ZDF (Germany), NPO (The Netherlands), VRT (Belgium), SVT (Sweden), DR (Denmark), YLE (Finland), RÚV (Iceland) and NRK (Norway), ed.) or it's going to be N12 (N12 is a yearly package of 12 Nordic drama series with 12-month rights in the Nordic region, ed.) because they have both relations. And our project is in the N12, meaning it's a Nordic collaboration between the Nordic broadcasters, public service broadcasters.We are developing the project but so far, I think we will only get notes from DR. Then you have this co-production support from all the Nordic broadcasters. And then we can go to Europe, because they don't use New8. Then we can go to Europe to try to get a co-production partner or at least some money in pre-buy or something."
