All’s well that ends well on The Kennedys drama.
So says Michael Prupas, president and CEO of Muse Entertainment, after enduring a month of high anxiety as his politically-charged mini-series went from cancellation on the U.S. History channel to a new stateside home with Reelzchannel.
In the end, Muse and mini-series co-producer Asylum Entertainment suffered no financial loss.
“Our contract contains no allegation on the part of anyone that there has been of breach of contract. History is respecting their contractual obligations to us,” Prupas told Playback Daily.
If anything, History, while off-loading the U.S. broadcast rights to Reelzchannel, still retains the U.S. DVD rights to the Toronto-shot eight one hour series set to bow on History Television from April 10 as a four-parter.
History also held onto the Latin American TV rights, and is part of a joint venture that has a first TV window in the British market before The Kennedys airs on the BBC.
Finding a new U.S. broadcast home for The Kennedys called for some fancy footwork, Prupas recalls.
The series exec producer was first alerted during a January 6 phone call with History that the U.S. network intended to walk away from the series, but would arrange for the show to be placed on another network in the U.S.
“They were quite confident that would happen soon,” Prupas recalled.
But History execs had a stipulation: they needed to announce the cancellation before they closed a deal with a rival network, in effect to control the messaging.
“They didn’t want any other network who might get a wind of this [cancellation], and who for whatever reason would announce they’d been approached and would make the announcement to the American public,” he recounted.
The Muse exec spent much of January not only helping History sell The Kennedys onto to another American broadcaster, but keep onside around 30 international broadcasters.
“It’s been quite intense lately. It’s meant that we needed to pick up the pieces, and make sure that, particularly for me who’s been most involved in making the international sales, that all of our foreign broadcasters remained supportive of the show,” Prupas said.
“For the most part, that remained true,” he added with gratitude.