Breakout Productions eyeing new genres after winning over global broadcasters with shark content
An Adelaide company has become one of Australia’s most prolific producers of shark-related documentary content for global broadcasters. Here’s its story.
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After carving out a niche as one of Australia’s most prolific producers of shark-related content for some of the world’s leading broadcasters, an Adelaide production company is on the hunt for more international commissions while branching out from its wildlife and adventure roots into new genres.
Since launching documentary production company Breakout Productions in 2020, Colin Thrupp has overseen a more than doubling of annual production output while revenue has increased by more than 300 per cent on the back of projects with global broadcasters including Warner Bros. Discovery and National Geographic.
A former park ranger who previously handled snakes and crocodiles for a living on the Gold Coast hinterland, Mr Thrupp had stints working with several production companies before heading up the Adelaide office of Sydney-based Screentime for three years.
While admitting it was a “terrifying” time starting a new production company during the early stages of the pandemic, it was a pitch for a new shark-based documentary – Abandoned Waters, filmed with researchers from Flinders University – to US executives at Warner Bros. Discovery that helped lay the groundwork for Breakout’s early success.
“When I was at Screentime I was trying to get a shark project away and I got talking to scientists and charter operators who, in the thick of Covid, weren’t able to take tourists out, but they were still allowed to take scientists to the shark site off the Neptune Islands off Port Lincoln,” he said.
“They were telling me that they’d seen more sharks out there than they had in the past 10-15 years, and so my producer brain went nuts, wondering if there was a way to link the Covid outbreak and the lack of boats out there with a shark resurgence at the Neptunes?
“I sent a one paragraph pitch to a company that we had affiliations with in America, and I woke up the next day asking for me to get on a call with the heads of Discovery USA to pitch it.
“We got that show green lit within eight days, largely because Covid shut production down everywhere else, but we could still operate in South Australia. So while Covid was really tough for so many people, it did allow myself an in, to be able to talk directly with Discovery US, which is arguably the biggest producer and broadcaster of factual TV in the world.
“When I left to start Breakout, we were able to continue to make shark shows directly for them and I was getting two or three shows on top of that as a director and underwater cameraman for other companies around the world, and we’ve used that momentum to get to where we are now.”
Mr Thrupp said Breakout had produced more than 15 hours of shark-related content, including several Shark Week specials for Warner Bros. Discovery and the recent completion of Super Shark Highway for Love Nature – a six-part series following two teams of researchers as they track the ocean’s largest and deadliest sharks along remote and unexplored migration routes.
“There’s no other company in Australia that does anywhere near those numbers in the shark space,” Mr Thrupp said.
“I think you’d have to go back to Ron and Valerie Taylor, back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, to find any other company or producer that could match it in that genre. And that reputation has obviously helped us immensely getting new commissions, and also opening up other doors to other broadcasters, because we’ve definitely become shark specialists in the factual television world.”
The world’s love affair with Australian wildlife has underpinned Breakout’s early work on projects like the five seasons of Aussie Snake Wranglers it delivered for National Geographic and Love Nature. More than 90 per cent of its commissions have been funded by overseas broadcasters.
Mr Thrupp is now exploring opportunities to expand into new genres outside of wildlife and adventure, while recruiting former BBC executive Gemma Greene in the UK to drive new relationships with international broadcasters and production companies.
He said that while federal and state rebates and grant programs were among the world’s most effective initiatives to support local production, the challenge in Australia was generating a consistent pipeline of work on local programs.
He wants the federal government to revive plans to place local content requirements on major streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon and Paramount.
Local content quotas were a centrepiece of Labor’s major arts policy to rejuvenate the local industry after the pandemic, but were quietly shelved last year.
“You’ve got all the big streamers that come in and they’re able to take a lot of money from Australian subscriptions, but there are no requirements for them to invest those profits back into Australian content,” he said.
“I think the introduction of quotas for both drama and documentary is critical to the ongoing success and sustainability of Australian television and film production businesses.”
Originally published as Breakout Productions eyeing new genres after winning over global broadcasters with shark content
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