Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
In a potentially historic week for British newspapers, the Guardian and Sony Pictures Entertainment signed a first look deal for the studio to exploit every article in the Guardian’s past, present or future to develop films, TV and documentaries. The three-year deal will give Sony first refusal on any intellectual property in the paper’s 200-year archive of articles, blogs and columns as well as in current and developing news stories.
Speaking at a London conference, Sony’s Chairman of Global Television Studios Ravi Ahuja said the studio was seeking “new forms of IP” in everything from gaming, music and newspapers. UK papers are still undergoing a difficult digital transition. Print circulation for national titles fell below three million in 2023, according to Enders Analysis, down from 21.2 million in 2000. While most papers managed to turn a profit last year thanks to cost cutting and digital subscriptions, the Guardian – which remains free online – reported a £21 million loss in its last results and only saw revenue growth in digital readership and “other revenues” including content licensing.
While movies like Dog Day Afternoon, Top Gun, Brokeback Mountain and Hustlers were based on magazine or newspaper articles, the New Journalism tradition that inspired the storytelling style of such articles is less firmly rooted in UK newspapers.
“It’s a great deal for the Guardian, mostly,” said one producer at the Content London conference. “It’s serious ancillary revenue for a paper that’s on its knees. Sony paying to develop its content could be a lucrative deal depending on what stories the Guardian still has the rights for.”
Yesterday, Twitter/X users gleefully plundered the paper’s least filmic content, picking out famously banal Adrian Chiles columns that they hoped to see on the big screen – including those with the headlines “The dog has a cough and I’m £80 poorer”, “We can go to the moon – so why can’t we stop my glasses sliding down my nose?” and the trilogy-inducing “I thought it was weird to have a favourite spoon. Then I realised I wasn’t alone…”
Chiles issued a statement “I’d been hoping to get a bidding war going for the option on my first full-length feature – working title: ‘The Urinal’ – but now I suppose I’ll have to go with Sony.”
