FilmRise has acquired the FAST (free, ad-supported streaming) rights to Vancouver-based Thunderbird Entertainment’s Kim’s Convenience.

The New York-based film and television studio and streaming network says the agreement gives FilmRise exclusive, multi-territory FAST rights to the lauded Canadian comedy, which ended its run on CBC last April and became an international hit on Netflix.

The deal includes rights to all five seasons of the show, which FilmRise plans to program across its existing FAST Channels on IMDb TV, Pluto, The Roku Channel, Samsung TV+ and the FilmRise Streaming Network, among others. The company also plans to create dedicated marathon FAST channels of the series across the U.S., Latin America, German-speaking Europe, French-speaking Europe, Italy and Spain.

The deal was brokered by Michael L. Smith of Warbun Consulting Inc. and negotiated by Max Einhorn, SVP of acquisitions and co-productions at FilmRise and Richard Goldsmith, president of global distribution and consumer products at Thunderbird Entertainment and Atomic Cartoons. Thunderbird formed its distribution division in early 2021 and Goldsmith posted on LinkedIn that this is the “first major distribution deal” to come from that.

Based on Ins Choi’s award-winning Canadian play of the same name, Kim’s Convenience stars Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Jean Yoon, Simu Liu and Andrea Bang as a Korean-Canadian family who run a corner store in downtown Toronto. The show has won multiple Canadian Screen Awards, including Best Comedy Series.

FilmRise has already had traction in Canada. Last October, for instance, the company inked a deal with Toronto-based 9 Story Distribution International to add three kids shows to its AVOD platform in North America. The company has also acquired U.S. distribution rights to Tracey Deer’s Canadian film Beans (EMAFilms) and the U.S. AVOD distribution rights to the long-running drama Heartland, produced by Calgary’s SEVEN24 Films and Dynamo films. Last February FilmRise also struck a distribution agreement with Montreal-headquartered Reel One Entertainment to secure 15 originally produced rom-com films and license 100 titles spanning made-for-TV movies and TV series.

The Kim’s Convenience deal comes as FilmRise appoints Emilia Nuccio in the newly created position of VP of international sales. Nuccio’s duties will include overseeing all international deals and sellling the FilmRise catalogue as well as new releases and FilmRise co-productions into the international marketplace.

Photo credit: CBC