Mediawan In Talks To Buy Peter Chernin’s The North Road Company

Mediawan’s spending spree looks to be continuing.

The French media giant is in talks to acquire The North Road Company, the group run by former Fox executive Peter Chernin, Deadline has confirmed.

It comes after a busy few years of opening the cheque book for the company, which was founded in 2015 by Xavier Niel, Matthieu Pigasse and Pierre-Antoine Capton; in March it bought British production company See-Saw Films, which is behind series including Apple’s Slow Horses and Netflix’s Heartstopper, and in 2022, it bought Brad Pitt’s Plan B, which was recently behind Netflix’s Adolescence.

The deal, which was first reported by Bloomberg, is not done but is expected to close over the next few weeks.

The North Road Company, which was founded in 2022, is behind series such as Apple’s Chief of War, Netflix’s The Madness and hit reality series Love Is Blind as well as movies such as Netflix’s Back in Action and Ford vs. Ferrari.

It is operates labels including Chernin Entertainment, Kinetic Content and Words + Pictures and is an investor in Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions and Questlove’s Two One Five Entertainment.

Last year, it struck a first-look film deal with Apple.

After combining with German giant Leonine Studios in 2024, Mediawan revealed that it had sales of €1 billion. Mediawan Pictures CEO Elisabeth D’Arvieu D’Arvieu told Deadline last year that private equity backers, including KKR, “continue to support” and are not looking for an exit after investing as part of Mediawan’s de-listing from the Paris Euronext in 2020. 

“A couple of years ago, we were not the first studio [sellers] would think of,” she added. “Now, as we’ve been growing and building our reputation in the market, more of them reach out to us naturally.”