Sipur Opens London Office, Boards Olivier Dahan's 'Nana'

Sipur, the Israeli film and TV studio chaired by Shari Redstone after her 2024 sale of Paramount Global to Skydance, has opened a London office and boarded Olivier Dahan's new period drama "Nana," an adaptation of Émile Zola's novel.

Co-founder Emilio Schenker announced the London expansion in his first joint interview with the company's new president, Ludovic Attal, who joins from Amazon MGM Studios. Marvelous Productions co-produces "Nana" with ARP Sélection, which will also handle French distribution.

"Bringing Shari Redstone on board was a game-changer," Schenker told Variety. He met Redstone two years ago when Paramount picked up the rights to Sipur's October 7 documentary "We Will Dance Again," and now calls her a "dear friend" as well as business partner. He co-founded the company with investor Gideon Tadmor seven years ago.

What changes with the London office?

Attal frames the move as a scaling exercise rather than a strategic turn. "I will not say that it's a pivot for Sipur because Sipur has always done co-production," he said. "But what changes now is potentially the language and the scale. We've now got a very ambitious slate in development."

London, he argued, is "the capital of co-production" for high-end television. Sipur will stay deliberately small in output: "We'd rather have six shows per year that we would fight for than 30 shows that we would apologize for," Attal said.

What is 'Nana' about?

Attal described Dahan's return to the grand period drama in expansive terms. "'Nana' is a story about fame, about desire, about the ruin of powerful men," he said. "She's the Kim Kardashian of the belle epoque, and this film feels very relevant today." Dahan previously directed "La Vie en Rose."

The film joins a slate that includes:

• "Oh, Canada" from Paul Schrader
• "Dead Man's Wire" from Gus Van Sant
• "Nuremberg" from James Vanderbilt
• "Buddy" from Casper Kelly
• "Chasing Summer" from Josephine Decker
• "Our Loves" from Avi Nesher, just presented at TIFF
• Yariv Mozer's documentary "Blood Brothers," about rival Iranian and Israeli Olympic judoka, produced with Fox Entertainment Studio and Fulwell

Why is Shari Redstone's backing significant?

Attal pointed to the retreat of the cost-plus model, in which platforms pay 100% of a budget plus a premium, in favor of deficit financing and shared windows. That shift, he said, hurts producers who can only sell services but rewards studios able to put their own money on the table.

"We invest sometimes very significantly in order to keep our rights," Attal said. "And this is exactly why being backed by someone like Shari Redstone changes the conversation. We can take positions that an independent maybe can't."

Schenker stressed what Redstone's arrival means for the company's reach: "Having her — with all the relationships and all the knowledge and experience and connections — it's something that would take us a hundred years to get to this place."

Is Sipur looking to be acquired?

No. Attal said Sipur is bidding rather than seeking buyers. "We are laser-focused on multiple M&A initiatives in order to create commercially-valuable partnerships with established production companies and also creators and writers," he said. "We don't have the ambition to become a Banijay or a Mediawan, we want to remain a boutique studio, but we want to grow."

What is Sipur bringing to Mipcom?

The studio arrives in Cannes with "Mirame Asi, El Camino de Noa," an Argentinian-Israeli co-production starring Noa Kirel. Produced on spec, it has already sold to Prime Video in Latin America; Sipur is now offering it to English-speaking territories, Europe, Asia and Australia. Attal emphasized that Sipur is not a traditional distributor: "Our focus is not so much about selling a show to TF1 or to Prime Video or to Mediaset. It's to set up our shows that will be sold in the future by us or by others."

Schenker is also targeting under-resourced creative communities beyond Israel. Argentina, his country of origin, fits the model. Sipur has secured rights to "Pimpinela," about the brother-sister band he calls "the Abba of the Latin world," after years of negotiations in which other producers failed to land the IP for a "Mamma Mia!"-style film.

On cost discipline, Schenker cited a Netflix executive producer friend whose top show costs $30 million per episode. "This is not our game," he said. "If we can, for $500,000 per episode, create IP that can last for one hundred years and create revenues for a hundred years — this is the game that we try to play." Attal added that the company will not replace directors, writers and actors with technology to cut costs.

With new London partners to be announced soon and an M&A push under way in Europe, Sipur is positioning itself as a boutique alternative in a consolidating market.