First Generation Films founder Christina Piovesan is at a crossroads, deciding what the next iteration of her company looks like amid the success of its first TV projects.

Piovesan (pictured right) started developing TV shows five years ago while continuing to produce star-studded indie films under her own banner, which over the years have included The Whistleblower, Regression, Mouthpiece, Amreeka, Paper Year and American Woman.

Since 2016 she’s also had a partnership at Elevation Pictures as head of production, working on features such as 2020’s French Exit, 2022 Toronto International Film Festival world premiere Alice, Darling and the upcoming A Good Person and recent Sundance world premiere Infinity Pool.

Those TV projects have started coming to fruition: In April 2022, Apple TV+ premiered the first eight episodes of kids and family animated TV series Pinecone & Pony, also produced by DreamWorks Animation (the next eight will premiere in early 2023), and CBC and First Generation wrapped filming on and are preparing to premiere the rural Ontario-set limited family drama series Essex County (pictured above), based on the graphic novel by Canadian comic book writer Jeff Lemire, with ITV Studios and Media Musketeers as international distributors.

Meanwhile, HBO Max picked up live-action, music-filled tween series Home Sweet Rome, created by Michael Poryes (Hannah Montana) and coproduced by First Generation along with Italy’s Red Monk Studio and France’s Superprod. That series is now looking for a new home, after HBO Max announced it was shifting away from kids content, but Piovesan says it’s fully financed and the broadcast shift won’t affect production.

“I think developing great material is the same across TV and movies, even financing it is similar,” says Piovesan. “But there’s a stamina you have to have across multiple hours of TV that you don’t have to have in film. You can just go out and make a movie and worry about everything else later, but you can’t do that with TV.”

Piovesan has that stamina and is not slowing down her TV efforts anytime soon, with First Generation now adapting Canadian writer Scaachi Koul’s memoir One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter and the CBC podcast Someone Knows Something.

After spending years developing successful indie films, Piovesan wasn’t actively looking to get into TV, but a series of industry connections took her on a new course.

Piovesan says former First Generation Films VP of scripted programming Julie Di Cresce introduced her to Lemire and Kate Beaton, who wrote children’s book The Princess and the Pony (which was turned into Pinecone & Pony). While working with DreamWorks on that, Piovesan met Doug Schwalbe (now president of Superprod US), who introduced her to Home Sweet Rome.

After Di Cresce left the company in 2016, Mackenzie Lush joined as VP of development and production for scripted TV from 2017 to 2020 and introduced Piovesan to Koul’s book and the CBC podcast. Now, Piovesan finds herself continually drawn into TV’s collaborative nature and the ability to work with different people.

“Unlike feature films, in TV, you can work with a broadcaster or another stakeholder and they are engaged in the process,” says Piovesan. “Whereas in independent feature filmmaking you’re often developing in a vacuum.”

Piovesan is enjoying a diverse slate, but such a prolific output has her mulling over the future for her company. She’s now deciding whether she wants to raise capital and grow her company’s team and slate, or find another company to partner with and turn First Generation Films into a co-venture.

Ultimately, the company can’t continue as it has been, says Piovesan, noting she loves making TV and doesn’t plan to stop at any point. She wants to keep developing a diverse slate, but won’t be able to keep doing so without some changes and more financial help.

“I’ve been very fortunate to develop a slate that has engaged the marketplace, but I’m trying to figure out what’s next – and what’s First Gen 2.0,” she says. “I’m at a transition point and I probably won’t be operating this same way for much longer.”

This story originally appeared in Playback‘s Winter 2022 issue