Just days after being appointed CEO of Banijay Latin America, the executive spoke to ttv at Mipcom about the region’s new autonomy following the merger with All3Media, opportunities beyond traditional television production, a co-development agreement with Globo, and why long-running entertainment formats continue to thrive.
*by Carolina Mussio and Ana Paula Carreira from Cannes, France.
Banijay Entertainment’s newly appointed Latin America CEO, Laurens Drillich, arrived at Mipcom 2026 with an expanded mandate and a new corporate structure behind him. Announced on October 5, his appointment followed the completion of the merger between Banijay Entertainment and All3Media in July, creating a combined international group headquartered in London.
Previously President of Endemol Shine Latino since 2016, Drillich now leads a dedicated regional division encompassing production operations in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and the US Hispanic market. He reports directly to Banijay Entertainment CEO Marco Bassetti.
Speaking with ttv in Cannes, Drillich discussed what the new structure means for Latin America, the opportunities emerging from an expanded portfolio of companies and formats, and the changing appetite for original entertainment IP.
What changes for Banijay Latin America under your new role and the group’s new structure?
I’m now the CEO of Banijay Latin America. It’s not really a job I wasn’t doing before, but it is a new function. We have a new structure in place because of the merger with All3Media, and new priorities within the company. I’m now solely responsible for the region, within a company that is headquartered in London rather than Los Angeles.
We’re doing this because business in Latin America is doing really well. It has been growing, and this was the moment to say, “We are truly independent and as important as any European region or the US.” That’s essentially what happened with this promotion.
I was already focused on the region, so in that sense my work hasn’t changed completely. But I think we have more possibilities now. We have the All3Media formats, we have Little Dot Studios, which is a digital company, and there is real interest and enthusiasm within Banijay Group to see how we can grow further.
Where do you see the main opportunities for expanding the business?
If you look at where we are today, we produce in the US Hispanic market, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia. All the other countries, including Uruguay, where Gran Hermano is currently running, operate through licenses. Those are sold by Banijay Rights, which deals directly with local broadcasters or producers. My focus is production.
We’re essentially looking at where we can produce more. Endemol Shine Boomdog, which operates in the US Hispanic market, Mexico and Colombia, is already the biggest unscripted production company in that territory, and Endemol Shine Brasil is a really big unscripted company in Brazil.
That’s our starting point, but there are more possibilities. There’s YouTube, there’s digital content, there are films we’re making with A Fábrica in Rio de Janeiro, and there might be sports or live entertainment.
So we’re really looking, in the broadest possible sense, at what additional entertainment we can bring to the region.
With such an extensive catalogue across Banijay and All3Media, how much of the growth will come from adapting existing formats, and how much from developing original IP?
I think traditionally Latin America hasn’t been a region where there was a lot of original entertainment programming. There have been telenovelas, of course, lots of those, films, and sometimes locally developed entertainment within bigger shows. But there hasn’t been a locally created The Voice, Deal or No Deal or MasterChef, because clients haven’t really been looking for that. But that’s changing.
If you look at our business, of course, the biggest part is the catalogue. That’s why Gran Hermano is in Uruguay, why MasterChef is all over Latin America, and why The Traitors is going to be all over Latin America. That’s still the main part of our business. But you’re starting to see different things.
One is that we signed a co-development deal with Globo to create new content. They have that interest as well. They want to create things, to co-own IP that can travel around the world, and they’re giving us the opportunity to do that. So it is possible, and we’re working on it now.
And then you have the streamers. On the one hand, they do exactly the same thing: they adapt Physical: 100 or Love Is Blind, which we produce in Mexico and Brazil. But they also ask for original content. Suddenly, that’s a huge opportunity for local teams, because those are good budgets, these are platforms with a lot of marketing power, and sometimes they’re willing to take risks.
So I think original programming is going to grow a lot, but formats are still a bigger business.
Why do you think Banijay’s entertainment formats resonate so strongly across Latin America?
That’s a difficult question to answer, because they resonate around the world, of course. There’s something to the fact that this company has managed, through mergers, acquisitions and creation, to bring some of the biggest formats into its catalogue.
And I think we’re really good at adapting them. We’re very good at taking a show from one country and finding opportunities in other countries, making those small changes that make it feel local. A MasterChef needs to feel local in the Dominican Republic, but also in Brazil, Mexico or the UK. You keep the format, but make those changes so that the audience recognizes its own culture.
How do you keep long-running franchises such as Big Brother, Survivor and MasterChef relevant after so many years?
I think Banijay is very good at making formats feel current, even when they’re among the longest-running ones, like Survivor, MasterChef or Big Brother. The brands are constantly being renewed. What helps is that we produce in so many different countries.
Take Big Brother, for instance. Every year there’s a Big Brother exchange, usually in Holland, although it can take place anywhere in the world. Experienced Big Brother producers from all over the world come together in one place and spend two or three days talking about Big Brother. They show each other what they’ve been doing over the previous year: new twists they’ve introduced, how they’re using digital, what else they can do with live elements. Basically, anything they’ve done to adapt the show and keep it fresh.
We’re lucky because we can all benefit from that exchange. If the Mexican team attends and sees something that Israel has done, they can immediately go back and try it. It’s not one company or one team doing the work. It’s the whole world contributing. And I think that really helps keep the formats relevant.
Is the continued appeal of established IP also a commercial advantage?
There’s another thing, which has nothing to do with being creative: older IP works. Look around the world. Even in the US, brands that aren’t ours, like The Amazing Race or The Bachelor, are still around. We happen to have a lot of those established brands in our catalogue, and that helps.
What I’ve also noticed is that something like Deal or No Deal can disappear for a while and then come back again. Which is really funny, because then you don’t necessarily need a new one. It’s going to be very difficult to create a show as big as Deal or No Deal. So even if it goes away for a while, it can come back. You keep the essence of the brand, the core of the show, and then you add digital elements or social media.
How important is digital interactivity to that process of renewal?
We’re lucky that Big Brother, for instance, was an interactive show from the beginning. It was created in 1999 and first aired that same year, when everyone was talking about the internet. Obviously, it wasn’t the internet we know now, but the show already had that element of interactivity built into it.
So that makes it easier to keep evolving.
