Fred Kogel Talks Ambitions To Build Leonine Into European Studio

It’s been four years since ex-Constantin exec Fred Kogel established Leonine Studios in Germany and in that short time it’s become one of the country’s biggest powerhouses, releasing between 20 and 25 films per year. It has since aligned itself with sister company Mediawan in France which, says Kogel, makes the companies a “perfect European studio.”

Stepping into Deadline’s Zurich Summit Studio, Kogel outlined the greater ambitions for the company. “If there will be a consolidation game in Germany going forward, we want to be part of it,” he said, adding that “the possibilities are much higher if we work across the border.”

“There will be, in my opinion for Leonine, a two-way strategy – always strengthening the home market and expanding further into Europe.”

In the last year the company brought in documentary powerhouse Gebruder Beetz and before that also added animation to its portfolio with the latter seeing its School of Magical Animals 2 become the biggest hit to date for the company with more than 2.8 million admissions.

“We left out animation intentionally at the beginning because we wanted to focus on the basic things,” he said. “The basic things for us were high-end fiction production maybe theatrical or streamer series and linear television fiction or non-fiction program shows. You have to have a huge non-fiction production in Germany if you want to survive because it makes almost all of the programming schedules. For us these were the basics.”

He added, “I always said without documentaries, high-end international documentaries we are simply not complete and the same goes for animation.”

These were, he said, “natural steps to build up the business.”

“It’s an international business, it’s not dependent on any kind of things except that you have to execute animation well to have great storylines, great stories and great IP and that is of course a field we want to be in.”

The distribution market in Germany has dramatically changed since Covid and the exec reflected on the types of films that are clicking with German audiences right now. “There are only two kinds of movies that really do perform well. These are the four-quadrant feature films with huge IP that everybody wants to see. The ‘must sees’ really do perform well with great casts. The ‘nice to sees’ only do perform with the younger target groups and the films that are not at least ‘nice to see’ don’t perform at all. It’s very difficult for the medium kind of program – you at least have to be kind of an event film for certain target groups.”

Kogel is being honored in Zurich with the festival’s Game Changer Award this weekend.

Check out the video above.