Federation Entertainment acquires ‘March Of The Penguins’ firm Bonne Pioche

L-R: Yves Darondeau, Lionel Uzan, Emmanuel Priou & Pascal Breton

French scripted producer Federation Entertainment has acquired a majority stake in local firm Bonne Pioche.

The Around The World In 80 Days prodco has taken 51% of the company, which is behind the shows Poly and We Are Family, as well as acclaimed documentaries March Of The Penguins and The Bastard King.

Bonne Pioche, which was founded in 1993 by Yves Darondeau and Emmanuel Priou, will retain “full editorial freedom”. The deal covers all production activities, from development to delivery, as well as back office and international sales and will allow the two firms “to share their complementary expertise in production and distribution.”

Its current team of 36 permanent staff members will remain unchanged and will continue to operate from their Paris offices.

Around The World In 80 Days

The acquisition is the latest move in Federation Entertainment’s global expansion plans, with the company, founded by Pascal Breton and Lionel Uzan in 2015, securing a €50m ($60m) investment fund from Montefiore in June 2021.

The deal was part of the prodco’s strategy to expand its operations around the world to allow it to “accelerate” its growth both in France and internationally.

Since then, Federation Entertainment has formed a joint venture drama outfit with Mr Robot outfit Anonymous Content, launched a new UK-based scripted arm and founded Animal Federation, a new LA-based management and production company with a focus on representing diverse, multi-hyphenate and multilingual talent.

“Bonne Pioche is defined by our team on one hand and the great diversity of our productions of documentaries, comedies, genre films and shows on the other hand,” said Darondeau and Priou.

“Our complicity with Pascal and Lionel and the complementarity of their teams will allow us to give even more ambition to our projects, to offer wide audiences unique programs in line with our humanistic values.”

Breton and Uzan, meanwhile added that the”artisan adventurer” approach of Darondeau and Priou is “essential for us and responds to the current desire of networks and platforms to share great documentaries, series and cinema films that are increasingly original and ambitious.”