BossaNova, the content creation, funding and distribution company, has unveiled details of its second Development Day event to be held on the 11th/12th January 2022 with an open call to indies who wish to be considered to participate.

The two-day hybrid event is masterminded by BossaNova marketing head Jasmin Joseph and Olivia Morgan who was recently appointed as BossaNova’s first acquisitions and co-production executive. It comprises of two dedicated strands, mixing in-person and virtual pitches and buyer participation with an innovation to accommodate a dedicated true crime strand to sit in parallel with the wider genre of factual pitches.

The live element will take place in a Soho based screening suite, where interactive voting will be used to collect data from buyers and provide the ground for greenlighting projects on the basis of the strength of the editorial and its international potential. Each day will see select pitches from indies presented to a host of global factual buyers and commissioners. 

The Development Day is a pitching concept created by founder Paul Heaney, who successfully pioneered the idea at TCB Media Rights to bring together buyers and sellers, and fast-track the creation of stand-out factual projects.

The first BossaNova Development Day took place in January of this year, connecting 55 buyers with 29 producers, who pitched some 77 new projects with 20% of those projects now in production or advanced funded development. These include the recently announced Extreme Tow Truckers from long-term collaborators Fredbird Entertainment, Hidden Histories of WWII from UK regional producer Bright Button and Secrets of the Lost Liners from Content Kings.

Morgan said: ‘Our Development Day is the backbone for our upcoming slate of projects we will be championing next year. We’re aiming to bridge the commissioning gap by putting the right projects in front of key factual buyers, and - using the responses gathered to provide us with clear data for investment criteria - create a slate based on this forensic data. After all, producers just want to produce great TV, and our aim with the Development Days is to streamline the often-bumpy road to a greenlight. With the explosion in interest in true crime, we wanted to concentrate the efforts of our producers and buyers and so we have a day focused purely on the genre to address the growing demand.’

The event offers indies an intimate platform from which to launch their ideas to key buyers, with a view of securing the pre-sales needed to fund those projects, while giving buyers early access to fresh, original ideas from some of the best factual producers in the business. The Development Day also addresses BossaNova’s launch pledge to leverage its global network of buyer relationships, built up over 35 years in the media and distribution industries to create opportunities for ambitious producers looking to grow their businesses.