A ren Prupas is taking the helm of Montreal-headquartered Muse Entertainment as the company looks to find projects with commercial appeal and continue leaning into its strengths of partnerships and coproductions.

Prupas has been appointed president and CEO after Michael Prupas, his father who founded the Emmy Award-winning film and television prodco in June 1998, stepped down on Jan. 1 and became executive chairman of the board.

Aren Prupas, who has been the company’s COO for the last three years, tells Playback Daily that his father was “effectively looking to step back from day-to-day management of the organization” and felt that this year was the right time to do so while his son took a step forward.

“That’s pretty much the long and the short of it. There’s nothing more complicated than that. This wasn’t a push by shareholders or a push to change the strategic direction of the company,” says Prupas.

“I’m very humbled by the opportunity and the confidence placed in me by the board and the other stakeholders in the organization. It’s a tall task, but I hope I’m up to the challenge.”

A lawyer by training, Aren Prupas has a master of laws from Fordham University and is a member of the bar in Quebec and the state of New York. He joined Muse in 2013 and has overseen the day-to-day operations of the organization, strategic planning initiatives and the business and legal affairs teams.

Michael Prupas is a 40-year veteran of the film and television industries and a former entertainment attorney. He’ll “maintain an active presence in the company, as both an ambassador for Muse in its relationships with the international industry and in public affairs within Canada, as well as a leading supporter of the entire team at the company,” according to a news release issued Monday (Jan. 30).

“This change represents Muse’s commitment to building a company for a future that is as successful as Muse has been over the past 25 years, with a new generation of leadership that is very attuned to the contemporary industry environment,” Michael Prupas said in a statement.

“Aren has proven himself to be a strong leader during his 10 years in business and legal affairs at Muse and subsequently as its COO. We are supremely confident that with his experience and business know-how, he is well positioned to boldly navigate the challenging and exciting new world of audiovisual entertainment.”

With offices in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Los Angeles, Muse Entertainment has made waves internationally in the dramatic scripted space with projects such as the 2011 Emmy-winning miniseries The Kennedys (History, Reelz), produced in association with Asylum Entertainment; CBC and CW’s Coroner, produced by Muse, Back Alley Films and Cineflix Studios; and Prime Video’s Three Pines, on which Muse provided production services for U.K. prodco Left Bank Pictures.

Muse also produces unscripted projects and has a distribution arm, Montreal-headquartered Muse Distribution International, which launched in 2000.

Aren Prupas says the company’s “bread and butter” for about the last decade has been producing romantic, holiday and mystery movies for Hallmark, Lifetime and, most recently, Netflix. The company is an expert in producing that type of feel-good, happy ending-style content and wants to continue doing so, he adds.

“We think that’s going to be a growing area going forward,” says Prupas. “There’s still certainly a market for close-ended storytelling over two-hour lengths that people like to watch. With less people going to theatres, that sort of feature film that appears on a streamer has high demand, and we think our type of content is marketable.”

Muse wants to diversify its production genres so it’s not tied to only producing series, movies or documentaries, he adds. It also wants to build on its existing strength in service production and develop scripted projects that have “aren’t too narrow in niche” and “will appeal to as broad an audience as possible and in an inclusive way.”

“Over the last five or six years there’s been, because of the amount of demand, more content that’s produced for more niche audiences,” he says. “I suspect that going forward, networks are going to be looking for stuff that can appeal to broader audiences so their rate of return make sense.”

The Muse team also includes Irene Litinsky, president of production, Canada; Joel Rice, president of Muse USA; Jesse Prupas, SVP scripted; Shawn Rosengarten, SVP distribution; Evan Tussman, VP post production; and Jonas Prupas, managing director, Muse Ontario.

“We really believe in our people; I believe this is a people business first, you’re only as good as your staff and who you partner with,” says Aren Prupas. “So building them out, investing in our personnel — be it through training, continuing education, coaching, employee benefits, etc. — it’s something that’s very top of mind for us.”

The company’s team of 35 feels sufficiently staffed to manage demands, but would look to build out the infrastructure a little more if an outsized number of projects are greenlit this year, he adds.

“What we’d be looking to do more is finding ways to partner with more independent producers or studios on co-venture, coproduction-style arrangements and/or with established showrunners, directors, performers who we could look to do overall deals or first-look deals with.”

Collaboration and partnerships — with major networks and studios in the U.S., global film companies, and Canadian creatives and producers on interprovincial copros — have been a big part of Muse’s history and will continue to be going forward, says Prupas.

Recent partnerships include the one announced in February 2022 with Sydney-based prodco Pop Fiction Entertainment, a division of Pop Family Entertainment, to develop the Madison Knight detective novels.

Muse’s current 2023 production slate (ownership and service) includes False Prophet – the Gwen Shamblin Story (Lifetime, CTV); A Tourist’s Guide to Love (Netflix); Family History Mysteries: Buried Past (Hallmark); Alert (Sony Pictures); The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh (Sony Pictures); and The Venery of Samantha Bird (Lionsgate, Starz).

Prupas says Muse also has some other projects in development in the true crime space with Amazon’s Prime Video, with which it’s also worked on the 2022 docu-series The Unsolved Murder of Beverly Lynn Smith, produced by Amazon Studios in association with Muse.

“The true-crime space is definitely a strength of our non-scripted division and we’re leaning into that, there’s definitely a strong demand for that type of content,” he says.

Image courtesy of Muse Entertainment