Emporium secures yacht disaster doc with ITV
Broadcast, Heather Fallon • 12th September 2024
Silverlining Rights ties up commission across eight international broadcasters
ITV is one of eight international funding partners to commission a documentary exploring the recent sinking of the superyacht Bayesian.
The Sinking of A Superyacht: How Safe is Your Voyage? explores the events leading up to the yacht sinking last month and killing seven people including tech tycoon Mike Lynch. It also explores the implications for passengers taking a charter voyage or cruise in the future.
The hour-long documentary is produced by Emporium Productions and was secured in a deal from production finance broker and distributor Silverlining Rights.
ITV has led in the funding of the documentary, which features interviews with people involved in the disaster such as rescuers, investigators and yacht designers.
Alongside ITV, the seven other funding and co-production partners include TV4 in Sweden, DPG in Belgium, TV2 in Denmark, VMTV in Ireland, CNN in Portugal, HOT8 in Israel and TVNZ.
Silverlining Rights is also in further discussions with broadcasters in other territories worldwide, with the documentary expected to be delivered later this month.
Emporium Productions founder and managing director Emma Read said that the doc has “secured privileged access to the people who were witness to the Bayesian tragedy and world leading experts to tell this compelling story of an extreme event.”
Emporium Productions had previously been behind fast turnaround doc Turbulence: How Safe is Your Flight, which also secured a greenlight via international funding and was boarded by ITV as an acquisition. Read added that the team is “thrilled that they’ve repeated this successful approach, [with Silverlining Rights] pulling together the financing we need in just five days”.
Bethan Corney, managing director of Silverlining Rights, said that the group was “able to pull together financing to greenlight a timely, revealing film which has huge international potential.”
Silverlining distributes a catalogue of over 1500 hours of content with UK producers such as Yeti, Knickerbocker Glory and Blink Films as well as generating its own content in partnership with producers and international broadcasters.
