Mediawan CEO Pierre-Antoine Capton Celebrated With Variety’s Intl. Visionary Award at Cannes Event

Elsa Keslassy
·5 min read
Mediawan CEO Pierre-Antoine Capton Celebrated With Variety’s Intl. Visionary Award at Cannes Event

Reflecting the breadth of Mediawan CEO Pierre-Antoine Capton’s vast network and friendships, an impressive roster of film industry players flocked to celebrate him as he received Variety‘s International Visionary Award at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday.

Attendees included CAA’s co-chairman and CEO Bryan Lourd, who said a few words about Capton on stage, as well as AGC Studios’ Stuart Ford, SPC’s Tom Bernard, Netflix’s Larry Tanz and Pauline Dauvin, and Mediawan executives including Elisabeth d’Arvieu and Justine Planchon. The event also gathered star producers within Mediawan’s galaxy, from Hugo Selignac (Chi-Fou-Mi) to Dimitri Rassam (Chapter 2), Matthias Weber (2425 Films) and Federica Sainte-Rose (Blue Morning Pictures), and entertainment attorney Elsa Huisman. There were also leaders from the various streamers, such as Sahar Baghery and Thomas Dubois from Amazon Prime Video in France and Anne-Gabrielle Dauba-Pantanacce from Netflix, among others.

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The Variety award coincides with a busy period for Mediawan, having just bought German production-distribution company Leonine Group, as well as a stake in Brad Pitt’s Plan B. Mediawan is now worth more than €2 billion ($2.1 billion) and boasts an estimated annual revenue of $1.3 billion, encompassing more than 80 production labels around the world.

Upon receiving Variety‘s International Visionary Award, Capton said he and Mediawan’s co-founding partners Xavier Niel and Mathieu Pigasse came up with the idea for the company about 10 years ago, “(they) imagined that there would be a growing demand for content throughout the world, but we never imagined it would be what it has become.”

Capton, who started his career as an indie producer and launched the production company Troisième Œil Productions in 2001 with a modest office, said all three partners observed that France boasted “great names in luxury goods” such as Chanel and Dior, as well as playwrights like Florian Zeller, and prestigious animation schools like Les Gobelins. “We thought, ‘well, why can’t we trust ourselves and do the same thing with content and bring together the best talent we’ve got in all areas, in animation, in documentary, in TV series, in cinema, in television in general?’ And so that’s how we came up with Mediawan,” he said, citing some of Mediawan’s biggest IP, from “Miraculous Ladybug” to “Call My Agent,” “3 Body Problem” (which was just renewed for a second season by Netflix), “HIP” and “Rhythm & Flow.”

The acquisition of Plan B in December 2022 marked a turning point for Mediawan’s international expansion and established the group’s presence in the U.S. Capton reminisced on the feedback he received when the deal was announced. “People said, ‘You’re going to get it wrong.’ But it’s thanks to all the talent we’ve got, we’ve been able to do this and with the teams that we’ve got in the implantation we’ve got over in the States that we’ve managed to get where we are today.”

“It’s fantastic to have Brad Pitt on board with Dede and Jeremy to as partners and work on ambitious movies and series, and to prove that we can do stuff over there as well,” Capton continued. The producer also singled out Lourd whom he said has taken him under his wing. “He’s the most important person in Hollywood. And just thinking about talking to him, I was shaking in my boots,” Capton said looking at Lourd. “You’re not just a partner, you’re also a friend, and you’ve been a guide for me during this whole adventure over there. You’re a fantastic person. You’re so important to me.”

Lourd then joined the stage and said that “one of the things that inspired (me) about (Capton) and his team was their energy and their commitment to independent production.”

“And in the world that we’re in right now with these huge corporations and these ideas about how these companies should be organized, they’ve forgotten that what makes these companies work is an individual and an idea and storytelling,” Lourd noted.

The CAA boss, who notably works with Mediawan through his client Plan B, observed that Mediawan stands out for their “commitment to that very simple idea that what we make is what matters.”

“Pierre-Antoine, I believe, had a vision a long time ago, not just about that, but he had the intelligence to assemble this great group of backers who are incredibly smart and very financially astute, to set up a company that is stable and has a long-term vision of what matters in the entertainment business and storytelling.”

Mediawan has six productions world premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, Gilles Lellouche’s “Beating Hearts” (from Selignac and Alain Attal), and Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Limonov: The Ballad” (from Rassam) which are competing for a Palme d’Or. Mediawan also boasts Cannes’ opening night film “The Second Act,” out of competition title “The Count of Monte Cristo” and feature debut “Le Royaume,” which screens in Un Certain Regard, along with Leonardo Van Dijl’s Critics Week title “Julie Keeps Quiet,” which is executive produced by Blue Morning Pictures, the L.A.-based banner founded by Zeller and Federica Sainte-Rose in partnership with Mediawan.

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