AGC Studios CEO Stuart Ford has offered a stark assessment of the television funding model, arguing that the days of fat fees from networks and streamers are over.

AGC Studios has backed film and television projects, including Jude Law’s The Order and the upcoming BBC Beatles biopic Hamburg Days, meaning LA-based Ford has worked across both worlds.

Speaking at the Creative Cities Convention in his home city of Liverpool, Ford said: “There’s a slight nanny mentality to a lot of TV production, which is: Let’s wait for a broadcaster or streamer to give us the money to make the show, and then when they do, we will take a nice fee, and it’s their product to do what they will with.”

He added that there is now more caution in the market. This is being felt keenly by UK drama producers, who can secure a greenlight from a UK network, but need to raise money from other partners to get a series into production. AGC is increasingly active in this space, particularly when it comes to bridging financing gaps in the U.S.

“I think the opportunity with us is we’re willing to take risks against U.S. sales, which most European companies are super gun-shy about, maybe with good reason,” Ford said. “I can go to sleep at night whilst carrying lots of risk. That’s what we do. That’s where we fit in. That’s why, you know, I’ve been really lucky to work with really major filmmakers.”

Ford, who joked that his wife refers to him as an “intellectual property arms dealer,” stressed that independent film production remains more challenging than television.

“Independent film has always had to be much more scrappy and entrepreneurial, which I think makes for more imaginative opportunities economically. But frankly, it’s also a brutally tough business,” he continued.

“As someone who’s financed a lot of independent films and is regularly asked to speak about them, I find it hard to be a huge optimist or a huge standard bearer, because there are a lot of systemic problems right now that aren’t going to be fixed soon.

“They may evolve. Cinema has always evolved commercially, at whatever watershed moment. And there are all sorts of reasons to be optimistic creatively about independent film, but if you’re talking about the business model and the business of financing movies — very tough.”