How Shondaland Is Expanding Hits Like Bridgerton Beyond TV

As a producer of Netflix’s breakout hit Bridgerton, Shonda Rhimes has gone from the reigning queen of prime time to streaming royalty. As she prepares to take off the wraps of new Netflix projects, including the upcoming drama, Inventing Anna, execs at her production company Shondaland are making it plain that they’re not content with just winning over TV screens around the world—they want to reach fans on every platform. At the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) festival and conference, held virtually this year, Shondaland executives said the company is enjoying its newfound freedom at Netflix, and is eyeing more ways to explore stories in ways that don’t rely on the TV drama medium. “Television has always been viewed as the cornerstone of our business, but it now no longer is the sole defining factor of the company,” Chris Dilorio, Shondaland’s vp of strategy and business development, said at SXSW “It allows us the opportunity now to tell any story that we want and determine the best and most entertaining way to share that with our audience.” Bridgerton, adapted from Julia Quinn’s book series of the same name, is a great example of that evolution. The flirty period drama, Shondaland’s first project for Netflix, almost instantly became an enormous hit, reaching more than 82 million households in its first four weeks on the service—the biggest original series debut ever on the streaming service, Netflix said. Creating 'immersive experiences' In advance of the second season of the show, which will start production shortly, Shondaland’s team is looking for ways to give Season 1 fans additional outlets to continue exploring the stories and immersing themselves in the show’s characters and setting. Some of that includes expanding the series with Bridgerton: The Official Podcast, which rolled out in February to discuss everything about the show. “We look at it as an opportunity to create more content in these mediums, so that the person who reads the book and finds out that it’s a Shondaland show can watch the show, and then find that bespoke behind-the-scenes content on Shondaland.com, and even continue their journey and listen to the official podcast about the show produced by Shondaland audio,” Sandie Bailey, Shondaland’s chief design and digital media officer, said. “We really look at those ways that we can create immersive experiences and pieces people can choose to enjoy in whatever time they might have.” That effort to branch out into audio is new for Shondaland, which announced its inaugural podcast slate, exclusively sponsored by GroupM, in partnership with iHeartMedia and with advertisers like T-Mobile and Unilever. The expansion into podcasts and continued build-out of Shondaland.com, which the production company launched in partnership with Hearst in 2017, gives the show’s producers other outlets to build relationships with fans who often watch Shondaland shows like Grey’s Anatomy—one of Netflix's most-streamed shows—over and over. “Our fans do not simply watch the show, walk away and then move on with their lives,” Alison Eakle, Shondaland’s evp, head of creative content said. “Seeing it with Bridgerton—whether they’re going off to create a musical or a meme—it’s amazing that we can now so fully and in such an integrated way be available to them with more content to feed that craving.” Netflix Says Shonda Rhimes’ Bridgerton Is Biggest Original Series Ever Trying new formats Breaking out of the mold has been facilitated in part by Shondaland’s eye-popping $100 million deal with Netflix, reached in 2017. This has given the company more flexibility in its storytelling, and given the team access to the more than 200 million global subscribers that the service reported in late January. “At Netflix, it’s just been incredible because not only are there no confines in terms of the stories that we can tell or how we can market our show or interact with our audience—which has been wild watching this happen—it’s been so truly global,” Eakle said. That’s also meant breaking out of the scripted drama mold and trying new formats. The production company recently tried its hand at unscripted with Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker, a Netflix documentary about an annual presentation of The Nutcracker at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy in Los Angeles. That’s offered up more chances for cross-promotion: Allen herself appeared in an interview on Shondaland.com and in a podcast to help build excitement about the documentary. The expansion into new mediums has also allowed the Shondaland team to take a platform-agnostic approach to evaluating new stories and scripts that land on their desks, Bailey said. “Alison might get a script that comes into her department, and she might look at, her team might look at, and they decide, 'You know what? This could be better starting out as a podcast, what do you think?'” Bailey said. “And we sort of talk about it, and we can go from there.”