EXCLUSIVE: For Zai Bennett, 2026 is “the year of delivery.”
The BBC Studios production chief, who has a new job title (more on that anon), has been in post for just over 12 months and while it’s been something of a rocky ride, he certainly can’t be accused of twiddling his thumbs. Now, with one final piece to his BBC Studios jigsaw soon falling into place, Bennett is trying to free up his key lieutenants to birth the next generation of hits, nurture the current ones and invest in a new wave of talent.
“I look around my top table and I’m pretty happy,” the executive tells Deadline in his first interview since joining BBC Studios from Sky. “So now it’s about delivery. This is the year of getting our nose to the grindstone, getting some commissions and converting those developments into orders.”
BBC Studios is the commercial arm of the BBC, a production and distribution powerhouse that beams Strictly Come Dancing, Doctor Who, Bluey, Baby Reindeer and Blue Planet to the world. It holds a unique place in the British TV landscape, being able to operate and think with a “ruthlessly commercial” hat on, according to Bennett, and yet ultimately putting funds back into the public service BBC, its “one shareholder,” which has of course fallen on somehwat tricky inancial times in recent years.
When Bennett took over from his predecessor Ralph Lee, he felt there was a part of this story that BBC Studios was failing to tell. “We were not vocal and proud about the totality of what we do,” he explains. “We would be individually proud about certain shows but we didn’t come together and say, ‘You are part of a collective studio that has creative experience you can learn and share from.’ We’re a huge distributor and the most awarded producer in the UK, but we’re not always mentioned first.”
Telling that holistic story is what Bennett, an affable executive who appears younger than his fifty-something years, is laser-focused on doing. After spending his first six months getting the lie of the land, he clicked into gear at the start of 2025, merging factual with entertainment under Kate Ward, bringing in former Channel 4 youth boss Karl Warner to focus on formats, reforming global productions under Matt Forde and revamping scripted, with the hire of Gangs of London EP Jamie Hall to run drama out of the UK and veteran executive Mark Linsey shifting to focus solely on L.A. He even hired an artificial intelligence supremo from Disney, Alice Taylor, who is probing interesting areas like drama reconstruction in documentaries and using AI functionality in formats.
Merging production and sales
Bennett’s final play for now, Deadline can reveal, is a merger of production and sales under what is now called BBC Studios Global Content. Bennett, a former BBC and Sky commissioner whose past credits include Chernobyl and Patrick Melrose, has a new title: CEO and Chief Creative Officer, BBC Studios Global Content. Once he finds a replacement for departing U.S.-based content sales chief Janet Brown, that role will relocate to London and the sales team will operate in lockstep with production, aiding Bennett with his ultimate goal.
“It all just gives us a view of the end-to-end monetization of the business,” he adds. “So I can talk to Jamie [Hall] or Kate [Ward] and ask what we are concentrating on, what we are developing and how can we monetize and exploit things? The creative bones in this place are awesome. I want to make sure we have the same drive and energy in the commercialism.”
Bennett wants to shout from the rooftops about the success of the labels that BBC Studios owns. He is even tinkering with individual labels’ branding. Where outfits such as Baby Reindeer maker Clerkenwell Films, Steve Coogan’s Baby Cow and Conclave indie House Productions don’t have BBC Studios in their name, they have now added ‘part of BBC Studios’ to their logos and end slates.
“When Clerkenwell won Emmys for Baby Reindeer, we were suddenly hot, and we needed to capitalize on that,” he adds. “We’ve got individual labels and creatives who are brilliant and my job is to make that feel more than the sum of its parts.”
He leans on the example of Clerkenwell, which is making Netflix surfing drama Breakers and has “moved into the ‘really mainstream'” with Channel 4 thriller Deadpoint, according to Bennett, which will comprise a cornerstone of the BBC Studios Showcase catalog later this month. Bennett likens the thriller starring It’s a Sin breakout Callum Scott Howells to Sylvester Stallone’s 1993 movie Cliffhanger, if it was set in Wales.
Where talent and Clerkenwell is concerned, however, things haven’t all gone BBC Studios’ way. Half Man, the highly-anticipated next project from Baby Reindeer creator Richard Gadd, a BBC-HBO series about estranged brothers starring Gadd and Jamie Bell, comes from Banijay label Mam Tor, with Banijay Rights distributing. “You have long and interesting creative relationships and people move around a bit,” says Bennett. “That’s completely normal.”
With UK scripted boss Hall getting his feet under the table, Bennett wants to be aggressive in the UK drama market. He reveals he is aiming to make three to four talent deals or minority investments in indies per yer in the UK and U.S. for at least the next two years, with one announcement imminent. “This isn’t a ‘one and done’, this is a drumbeat,” says Bennett. Recent deals of this ilk include tie-ups with Barbie star Jamie Demetriou, The Ballad of Wallis Island writer Tom Basden, Ted Lasso alum Nick Mohammed and Cunk on Earth creator Diane Morgan. Forde’s global production team, meanwhile, is “definitely” looking to acquire majority stakes in indies outside of the UK, Bennett says.
Former Pulse and Vice Studios boss Hall, who Bennett described as the “real deal” and someone who joined BBC Studios from a “very hard company to work for in recent times,” has been tasked with unearthing the “next wave of creatives.” “Is it buying companies that are a bit more established? Probably not. This is about going the next layer down, with writers, directors and producers, and telling them we can set them up in some form of IP partnership where they get to share in the success of their show and we’ll bankroll some of that.”
In a market where funding drama is becoming harder and harder, Bennett says BBC Studios can occupy an interesting place, embracing some “economic risk” when it comes to funding shows for broadcasters like the BBC – still by far and away BBC Studios’ biggest customer occupying around half of its order book – and taking big risks mixed with surefire bets.
“We can give [BBC drama boss] Lindsay [Salt] a range of editorial choices and say to her that commerically we will solve problems,” says Bennett. “If we want to do, say, an action adventure show costing £5M ($6.8M) per hour, we will take a bigger risk than normal because we can see the opportunity of selling that around the world. The risky ones are often the shows that pop.”
Big swings upcoming outside of the BBC drama stable include Netflix’s versions of Pride and Prejudice (Lookout Point) and Bella Mackie’s How to Kill Your Family (Sid Gentle), along with BritBox’s Agatha Christie series Tommy & Tuppence (Lookout).
Funding the Time Lord
No decision more neatly demonstrates the nasty headwinds facing scripted than Disney pulling out of the Doctor Who deal with the BBC, BBC Studios and Bad Wolf after just two seasons. For the show to continue long beyond its 2026 Christmas special, which is being penned by showrunner Russell T. Davies, the BBC now needs to replace some of that lost budget, which totals millions of pounds per hour.
Bennett avoids directly answering the question of whether BBC Studios will stump up some of the lost cash to give the show a long-term future – noting that he “won’t speak for the BBC” – but says “we’re all in it together” when it comes to keeping the Time Lord on the small screen for years to come.
“We’re a big important part of Doctor Who and are all motivated to make sure Doctor Who has a long and flourishing life,” he says. “We’ve got the Christmas special coming. After that, it’s time for us all to work on it.”
The BBC and BBC Studios may have lost their American co-production partner on Doctor Who but Bennett brims with confidence over BBC Studios’ standing in the States, and he is still riding high over the success of the CBS version of Ghosts, which emerged from a deal with Lionsgate that elapsed two years ago.
He reveals that BBC Studios has five paid developments with U.S. networks and streamers, including an American version of BBC family comedy Here We Go with Universal Television and Amy Poehler’s Paper Kite Productions, and a U.S. remake of Mike Bubbins’ Mammoth about a 1970s PE teacher who comes back to life in 2024, which is in with Fox.
Striking another Lionsgate-style exclusive partnership isn’t a priority – Bennett wants BBC Studios to “own the economics” of American greenlights by remaining the lead studio on projects – but he is enthused by opportunities across the Atlantic.
This extends to unscripted, where Dancing with the Stars, ABC’s version of Strictly Come Dancing, has just come off the back of one of its best ever years, due in no small part to a revamped social media strategy that focused on leveraging TikTok.
Bennett says the American unscripted team is now sharing these learnings with other territories in which Strictly is produced. “There’s some amazing stuff about casting and TikTok and it was really about making lots of native content,” he says.
New era for ‘Strictly Come Dancing’
Strictly in the UK is entering a new era and is currently seeking not one but two hosts following the shock exits of Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly. Could the BBC look to the world of TikTok – mirroring what Amazon is doing with The Grand Tour – for its next Strictly presenters? Bennett won’t be drawn on speculation. “That news will come out of the BBC,” he says. “It’s ultimately up to them.”
With shows like Bravo’s Ladies of London and Prime Video’s 1% Club doing the business in the States, Bennett is delighted with his L.A. formats team.
Next up on his unscripted docket is Secret Genius, a UK format developed by BBC Studios-owned Mothership that just launched to more than one million viewers on Channel 4 – no mean feat. That show, which sees Celebrity Traitors winner Alan Carr travel the country seeking the most extraordinary minds, will be a big talking point at the BBC Studios Showcase in London.
You can’t “smush us together”
Returning to industry chatter and no doubt set to dominate the gossip mill at the Showcase and concurrent London TV Screenings will be industry consolidation. Banijay and All3Media are reportedly merging, Sky wants to buy ITV and, across the pond, the biggest industry deal of the millennia, Netflix and Warners, rumbles on.
Bennett, for what it’s worth, can’t see BBC Studios getting caught up in a consolidation play anytime soon.
“Our industry was disrupted by streaming and you can see how during disruption there is often consolidation,” ponders Bennett. “[Companies like] Banijay and All3Media are thinking whether they can crash together a load of back office and make things a bit cheaper. You could up the margin by 1% or 2% and at that scale that makes a difference. The important thing for us is we are at a scale, and it’s an important scale. We want to grow ideally as much as humanly possible but we’re not in a position where you can smush us together with another company with any level of ease.”
Instead, Bennett once again returns to BBC Studios’ USP, “not being all things for everyone but selling a very specific thing, British storytelling, exported around the world. It’s in the name.”
BBC Studios delivered strong financial returns to the public service BBC last year. With the stakes high, Bennett is at the coalface of the work making sure these big numbers aren’t a one off. In the face of what could be deemed a great deal of pressure, he remains sanguine.
“We want commercial returns, don’t get me wrong, and we will be ruthlessly commercial about the business, but we will always take a longer term view,” he adds. “In this market, you have to.”
English (US) ·