Jeff Zucker, Marco Bassetti Are Bullish

In the three years since Jeff Zucker joined RedBird IMI, the former CNN chief has orchestrated a blizzard of deals after being handed a $1 billion war chest from Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital and International Media Investments, an Abu Dhabi-based private investment fund.

While some of those media deals have been scuttled (see: a bid for U.K. institution The Telegraph) and others are small bets that have been interesting to follow (see: investments in Morning Show studio Media Res, media outlet Front Office Sports), none have the scale or the impact on Hollywood production than the one unveiled on Tuesday.

After months of serious talks, the Marco Bassetti-led Banijay, the producer of hit reality staples like Big Brother, MasterChef and Survivor, inked a deal with the Jane Turton-run All3Media, which backs shows like The Traitors and movies like Hamnet and 1917, in a deal valued at $8 billion.

That merger was ushered in by All3’s owner, Redbird IMI, which had acquired the production company for $1.45 billion in 2024 and which paid €625 million ($725 million) to Banijay as part of the new agreement. Each company will hold a 50 percent stake in the new entity, which will take the name of Banijay.

A Banijay-All3Media merger will bring together 170 creative production banners across 25 countries and produce 20,000 hours of content annually. That’s a lot of reality TV programming — but, increasingly, there’s more scripted projects in the mix as well. While the company will be a global giant, nearly 80 percent of All3Media’s production revenues are from English-language content and the goal is to use its scale as leverage with streaming and network buyers.

The megadeal is expected to close this fall and, if it does, Zucker will be installed as chairman of the board of the combined entity. Bassetti, who has run Banijay since 2013, will operate the firm as CEO. The duo spoke with The Hollywood Reporter right as the ink dried on the merger agreement.

Where do you see the estimated $58 million in cost synergies coming from in this deal?

ZUCKER This is a really exciting day for both companies because it brings together two exceptional companies to create the world’s largest independent media content company, with world-class IP from The Traitors to MasterChef to Big Brother to Survivor to great scripted programs like Peaky Blinders and films like Hamnet. So the opportunity to bring these two companies together with an enterprise value of $8 billion U.S. dollars, it’s just a very unique opportunity and one that we’re all incredibly excited about. We’re excited to have Marco at the helm and lead this venture.

When you do something like this, there will be some cost synergies that come from the obvious areas like real estate and procurement and things like that. But we also think that there’s revenue opportunities through this that will really allow for growth. And we really see this as a growth opportunity, and that includes better monetization of the huge catalog that comes together here, especially through All3’s Little Dot Digital Studio. We think that there’s huge growth opportunities in the live event space led by Banajay’s Balich company.

It seems like half of all the small and medium-sized unscripted producers are in this deal, what’s the vision for growth and the next step given the size of the combined company?

BASSETTI The next step is to arrive to the closing, sooner than later. And then we could start to work on this. So we need to, first of all, bring the best of the two cultures of these two companies together and create value for the people that actually are working for us because we are not making any synergy on the creative side that’s most, that’s very important.

Our goal will be to attract talent because we can give them something that nobody else can give to them to work with, to work together with many other talent to give them money to invest in creativity for new pilots, buying IP.

You have some big scripted shows, but it’s not the bulk of your business. Do you see yourselves doing more now that the biggest seller in Warner Bros. is being sold?

ZUCKER What I would say, regardless of what else is going on out there, this combined company will have about 70 percent unscripted, 30 percent scripted. And scripted has been one of the things that we have prioritized at All3 in the less than two years that we’ve owned All3, and we’re incredibly bullish on that. That’ll be for Marco to decide going forward what the right mix is.

It’s about 25 countries that the combined company operates in. Given you’re such a large production giant, how do you think about where you physically produce your projects and could you talk about that across your portfolio?

BASSETTI Today we live in a global industry and we see that there is a lot of production companies using different territories in order to be more efficient with tax credits, with the cost of labor, with many other stuff, and then there is some quota that has to be filled (especially in European countries), and we will do the same that we are doing now.

We have a very efficient internal service that gives us all the data in order to produce at the best cost, in the best territory and with the best crew that we could find. To be honest with you, just to go a little bit deeper, generally speaking, let’s say unscripted is produced in a country that it is going to be exploited [in] while scripted can travel much more and produce in some other country.

Could you speak more about the IP ownership aspect of the deal and how you look to monetize that?

BASSETTI I don’t know exactly the number, but we are going to launch 110 scripted shows per year and 235 unscripted shows per year. We have a huge number of FAST channels, we have a significant number also of YouTube channels. The rationale for the deal is also having strong leverage and having so many strong IP. That’s the reason why we believe scale is an asset, it’s not a threat today.

It feels like a couple of years ago, content suppliers were booming because there was a huge amount of money being spent on major streaming platforms. Then there was a little bit of pullback. Where do you see the landscape now given you’re such a huge supplier?

BASSETTI Well, let’s see, because as you can see, the landscape is changing rapidly and now with the new deal, apparently, that it will be closed quite soon between Paramount and Warner maybe the landscape will change again. For us, it’s important to have a very competitive landscape locally speaking and globally speaking, and we are there to serve this. But look at all this consolidation on the other side of the fence because we are not a distributor, we are a media production company. For us to have this scale it’s extremely important to maintain our role to grow.

Given you have so many different banners — some of which might be similar on both sides — as part of the merger process are any of those banners likely to be sunsetted or shuttered or reconfigured?

BASSETTI As I said before, we just signed, the closing is not yet done, so far we will stay as we are. The most important thing is not really the number of companies, it’s the number of talent that they’re working on this company. So if there are some of this talent that they prefer to work together, maybe we will do something, but so far there is no plan on this end.

And are there any areas where you’d rather buy more rather than build via investments?

BASSETTI I think that, on the production side we feel comfortable with what we have. If you look, let’s say a business like Banijay of what we have now in live, and what I mean live, I mean immersive social and with this kind of thing, I think that we have an opportunity to grow and maybe we could grow organic or not organic. I think that we are looking also very deeply into the digital space. Assuming that the deal will be closed in 6 to 7 months, we have plenty of time to discuss about this and maybe could change strategy.

Do you see a landscape with fewer buyers, especially maybe in the U.S. given the Warner-Paramount consolidation?

ZUCKER There may be, you know, one or two fewer buyers from the traditional legacy world. But I think that the growth in global streaming platforms and in new platforms that we don’t even know about yet is something that I think is very exciting for us.

The reality is people are consuming more content than ever. They may not be doing it through the traditional ways that they’ve done it for the last 50 years or the last 25 years, but the reality is, whether it’s their phone or their laptop or their big screen TV or whatever it is, or whatever comes next, the demand for content — scripted, unscripted, digital — has never been greater and if you have world-class IP, you’re gonna be in great shape, and that’s what we have.

Given you’re such a huge production giant, how do you think about incorporating AI techniques or tools into your physical production process?

BASSETTI That’s exactly one of the reasons that we are doing this because, you know, AI is very, very much scalable, and we have a good tool that AI can be, and you have such a big number of companies, you can create a lot of value. That’s exactly right.

This interview has been edited for clarity.