Netflix Gets Rights to Mark Duplass and Mel Eslyn’s Show ‘Penelope’ 

Penelope, the pandemic-written, independently financed and produced young-adult collection from co-creators Mark Duplass and Mel Eslyn, has landed a distributor. 

Netflix acquired U.S. rights to the collection’ eight-episode first season, the duo introduced Sunday whereas showing at SeriesFest. Duplass known as the six-month means of discovering a distributor for the present following its debut on the 2024 Sundance Movie Competition “insane” and informed the Denver crowd that “lots of people had been very, very ” within the collection and thus “had loads of completely different sorts of presents.” 

“We’ve accomplished unbiased movies earlier than, the place you may have just a few hundred thousand {dollars}, and we exit, make the movie and promote it. There actually isn’t a mannequin but of independently made tv the place you make the entire season and attempt to promote it,” he mentioned of the method of independently funding after which distributing Penelope. “From taking out the present and determining how we’re going to promote it or making the offers with our actors, nobody is aware of the best way to do it. … So there was really this childlike enjoyable. We had been simply making up new deal buildings as we had been going alongside.”

The acquisition of the collection, which is co-written by Duplass and director Eslyn and government produced by Jay Duplass and Shuli Harel, follows the Duplass brothers’ four-picture cope with Netflix, and what Mark described as a longtime relationship with Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos. Duplass Brothers Productions plans to promote each home and worldwide rights to the indie collection by way of a “piece by piece” mannequin that can enable them to retain management over it, together with greenlighting a season two. 

“We’ve principally absolved [Netflix] … of the accountability to make us their flagship present,” Duplass mentioned. “We’re saying … ‘Simply put us on the service. We’re going to signal a really quick cope with you guys, and we’re going to see the way it does. That manner at Netflix, you’re not taking an outsized, outsized threat on the present. You’re not going to be pissed off if it doesn’t work and switch round and say, “Impartial tv isn’t going to work. We’re not doing it once more.”‘ We’ve mitigated their threat.”

Mark added that Duplass Brothers Productions will “personal the remainder of the rights” exterior the U.S., together with “VOD rights for leases,” taking up a associate as they promote this to the remainder of the world.

“Ideally, we see how we do on Netflix. Within the occasion that it’s a blowout success, you would possibly see an even bigger scope for season two. Within the occasion that it’s a reasonable success, we would write it for a smaller scope, however at the least we’re within the driver’s seat now as as to if we get to maintain making this present,” he mentioned.

“If in just a few years, if the present is a rollicking success, they get the chance to re-license it. … We’re going to personal the remainder of the rights nonetheless,” he continued. “That felt like one of the best deal for us.”

Throughout the panel, Mark and Eslyn spoke at size about their method to each distributing and financing the collection, which they emphasised was new territory, even for the indie moviemaking veterans. 

“Once you’re doing an unbiased tv present, nobody is aware of the best way to method it,” Duplass mentioned in regards to the means of discovering a distributor. “Individuals would elevate their hand and say, ‘We noticed Penelope at Sundance. We need to see the remainder of the collection.’ We might ship the hyperlinks to the remainder of the collection, and they’d say, ‘We’re on this.’ When it got here time to barter the deal and the phrases, everyone was identical to center college schoolyard — like, ‘You go first. I don’t know what to do.’ [Laughs.] It was so complicated.”

Mark started engaged on the collection, directed by Eslyn, throughout the pandemic. Forward of its premiere at this 12 months’s Sundance, Mark briefly recalled the present’s journey to manufacturing on Instagram, writing that he “knew after I introduced the scripts to the patrons that there could be a bidding battle. However there wasn’t. Nobody would give us the cash to make it.”

Throughout Sunday’s panel, he expounded on these responses, and the bigger panorama of YA tv, which he described as not essentially searching for one thing that’s “extra akin to what’s occurring within the Norwegian sluggish TV motion than it’s to fashionable tv.”

“The pantheon of young-adult tv doesn’t inform me what they’re shopping for proper now,” he mentioned. “Nonetheless, we’re Duplass Brothers Productions, and we’ve bought shit to HBO and Netflix, and we’re like, ‘Fuck it. Let’s go promote this present,’” he recalled. “We introduced it and everyone was like, ‘That is so stunning and so distinctive, so deeply related to one thing that I’ve misplaced. We will’t make this.’”

“We’re searching for the following Euphoria,” added Eslyn, who directs the collection. 

Duplass added that they thought-about that they may “power this down the throat of a conventional purchaser, but it surely’s going to be going by way of loads of improvement and loads of modifications” — one thing they weren’t eager about doing with a present they had been each passionate and treasured about. 

“There was a second the place I believe Mark and I mentioned, ‘Ought to we alter this for what they’re asking for?’ And that was a fairly fast second. And we in a short time mentioned, ‘No,’ after which mentioned, ‘Ought to we go make a complete season of our personal and pay for it — simply go for it and never wait round for somebody to say sure?’” recalled Eslyn. “We did, and I believe that was for us a courageous second.”