Patience Priso is a Media & Entertainment entrepreneur, producer, and founder of Frenchywood with over 25 years of experience across French and international audiovisual industries. A former Netflix executive who has also collaborated with Groupe Canal+, she advises studios, platforms, producers, and talents on project development, positioning, and market distribution. As President of Creative Océan Bleu and founder of Frenchywood, she develops ecosystems combining professional networks, media, and studio operations dedicated to new narrative formats, vertical drama, and branded entertainment. Her work explores opportunities within the creator economy, vertical economy, cultural industries, and Francophone markets. A member of the advisory board at TOG, she also directs the ESRA Talents program and acts as an industry expert.
In this interview conducted at the Festival Séries Asie, Patience Priso shares her perspective on local greenlighting, European media alliances, and capturing younger audiences across evolving digital platforms.
With your career spanning production, talent mentoring, and major media strategies, how do you perceive the evolution of global demand for content with strong cultural roots?
As a producer and former Netflix executive, having worked on the broadcaster side showed me the importance and success of working at a local level. For me, the future lies in not depending on just a single industry. It allows us to boost the local economy and create on the ground, but also—as we saw with The Polygamist or Squid Game—the more authentic and culturally rooted a story is, the higher its chances of performing internationally.
Today, this is the recipe for the future: having local teams who know how to greenlight locally and nurture talent. At Netflix, within the Grow Creative team, a core part of my role in series was ensuring that talents and teams had the right blueprint and upskilling required to produce for various platforms. Today, we have a wealth of opportunities, and that is how we view the future.
Through initiatives focused on emerging narratives and diverse creative profiles, what methods should be prioritized to help creators structure internationally competitive projects?
The first piece of advice I would give emerging creators to be competitive is to speak English, conduct extensive trend monitoring, and perform strategic analysis across different territories and markets. Most importantly, they must know their audience and the fanbases they can reach worldwide. Today, the key to pitching and developing projects is understanding the audience and demonstrating that a fanbase or community already exists.
Next comes mastering the pitch, upskilling, practicing, and receiving plenty of feedback—that is key for me. What we lack in France are incubators like the one I ran at Netflix or on-the-job training programs where creators learn by doing in the field alongside seasoned professionals. In the United States, almost every studio offers incubator or talent development programs, which serve as great entry points. Even without traditional film school training, creators can access writers’ rooms, production programs, or post-production tracks.
It is also crucial for creatives and technicians to understand the business side, market needs, and financial dynamics to gain a foothold.
Faced with the market power of South Korean or Anglo-Saxon industries, what are the key levers that European continental production must invest in to strengthen its global reach?
At the European continental level, the key skill lies in mindset—specifically shifting how power is distributed. To succeed today, we must play as a team rather than remaining in closed circles. We need to welcome a broader array of stories, remain agile, and build European alliances.
Instead of focusing on what we might be losing, we must focus on how we can create and grow together by sharing best practices, mutualizing resources, and operating with transparency rather than protecting individual turf.
Between budget constraints, fast turnaround demands, and high visual quality expectations, how should content producers reinvent their business models?
Reinventing business models is my core focus as a producer—this is my fourth production company. I closed previous businesses because they lacked agility or operated on the wrong business model. Today, agility comes from hybridization. I love drawing inspiration from industries outside my immediate field. While I work heavily in fiction, I borrow methods from unscripted content because those teams move faster and are highly audience-driven.
There are two main content approaches: targeting a market directly where an audience already exists—entering with a fresh angle or a unique cultural twist—or blending elements from brand content, advertising, and music videos. Younger audiences expect highly aesthetic visuals, even on social media. The producer’s challenge today is to understand the codes of every platform commanding audience attention, rather than remaining confined to traditional industry models.
Content consumption habits are evolving rapidly among younger generations. What advice would you give producers to capture the attention of a global audience without sacrificing story depth?
To reach young audiences, you must hire young people. When projects struggle, it is often because the writers’ room lacks representation from those specific generations. When traditional broadcasters combine the expertise of experienced professionals with young creators who understand the codes of YouTube and social media, the results improve significantly.
Producers need to remain curious and non-judgmental. I do not consider any trend “dumb”—certain content may simply not be aimed at my age demographic. When necessary, producers should consult with young content creators and emerging producers from platforms like Twitch, Snapchat, or YouTube. YouTube directly competes with traditional platforms for viewer attention. Producers must include these voices in the room to make informed decisions.
Elisa Cutullè