Screenworks

Screenworks was a long-running Flarlandian television producer, active until 2001, when one of its founders died.

At the time Screenworks shut down, all archives belonged to Exceeda which by then was now under the hands of the Exceeda Couch Slave consortium. As of 2021, the Screenworks brand name is being used by IBC's high-profile fiction division, in a similar way to Fremantle's revival of the Grundy brand. The brandname expanded to the Henleys and the Pakifas on April 7, 2021.

History[edit | edit source]

Founding[edit | edit source]

Screenworks was founded in 1940 as a film production company, concentrated on the production of comedy films similar to short theatricals played before regular films. Screenworks managed to produce forty films by 1945, most of them being not longer than forty minutes in length. Once the world recovered from the war, Screenworks produced films of a larger length and diversified its contents.

Jump to television, success with detective series[edit | edit source]

The shutdown of the Screenworks Film Production Unit in 1955 upon the retirement of Robert Prowler led to the company investing in a nascent industry in Flarland: television. Its quick rise at the time had led to Flarlandian production companies, including Cinema Service, but even the film industry still saw television as a threat.

In 1957, Screenworks was reformatted as a television production company, one of the first such companies to work exclusively for such medium. Their first work, Barron, had entirely made-for-television scripts, in contrast to other detective shows airing then where they often relied on pre-existing storylines from film or literature.

In September 1960, Screenworks' biggest television production to date, Mr. Whicker premiered and sales for the company skyrocketed. This was boosted by the start of television services in developing countries and also in the Henleys and the Pakifas. Screenworks was appointed as the Flarlandian agent for TIE Ltd sales and assisted throughout 1961 in the building of Voice of Pakifas Television.

"Peach" logo used by Screenworks, during the advent of color production, used between 1966 and 1973.

Because Screenworks wasn't owned by a an existing television network, it became one of the first companies in Flarland to produce TV series in color, eyeing international markets that were starting such broadcasts.

A strike that not only affected IBC but also independent production companies in 1979 ruined the company's integrity

Despite the success of the company, in the 1980s, Screenworks lost much of its market share by the end of the 90s.

Absorption by Exceeda-Couch Slave and later stages[edit | edit source]

By 1991, the rise of the so-called "new production companies" has changed the Flarlandian television landscape, and the investor that backed up Screenworks was facing bankruptcy. In order to prevent a furhter deterioration of the assets, Screenworks was sold to a small production company led by big investors and catering segmented markets: Exceeda.

Exceeda's eyes were set on the creation of a generalist cable and satellite network called Channel A that was considered to be a long-term priority for the new owners.

Reactivation[edit | edit source]

With IBC buying the former Exceeda catalog in 2018, IBC decided to revive the Screenworks brand for its overseas division, Screenworks Overseas Flarland, as a result of the renaming of the Henleyan Eye on People Productions and the Pakifan Time Prodz.