YellowbirdPictures

Talent first

Yellow Bird Pictures specialises in high quality story development for both television and cinema, teaming up with the most talented, first-class authors. 

Alongside material developed in-house the projects are based on original ideas, successful international formats and successful books. Among other titles, Yellow Bird Pictures owns exclusive rights to the German-language screen adaptations of the majority of Henning Mankell’s novels.

Yellow Bird Pictures – a Zodiak Media Group

Yellow Bird is part of Zodiak Media Group, which is an association of over 30 succesful and mainly European production companies with annual turnover in excess of € 500 million. Within the De Agostini Group the association coordinates all production and distribution activities for television and new media.

Apart from Yellow Bird, Zodiak Media Group includes such successful production groups and companies such as RDF (GB, USA),  the Marathon Group (France), Gaumont Télévision (France) and Magnolia (Italy).

Within the group there is a lively exchange of successful format and exclusive rights to bestsellers, as well as continuous know-how transfer in development and production. The group benefits from opportunities in international co-financings and co-productions, and from access to production facilities in various countries. In addition, exploitation of our formats and productions is guaranteed by the strong distribution arms of the group.

Team

In 2001 Schündler was appointed as Head of International Co-Production, placing him in charge of the Bavaria Film Group’s complete slate of international co-productions. In 2003, he also became Head of Bavaria Media Television, managing Bavaria Film’s international TV rights distribution. In that period, a number of high profile event programmes were developed as international co-productions, e.g. “Die Auferstehung”, “Der Todestunnel” (1200° - The Truth Will Survive), “Störtebeker” (A Pirate’s Heart), “Kennedy’s Brain” or “Die Jahrhundertlawine” (White Menace – The Avalanche of the Century). In 2004, Oliver Schündler was named managing director of the first Italian subsidiary of the Bavaria Film Group, Bavaria Media Italia s.r.l. in Rome, and in 2005 he was appointed co-managing director of German United Distributors – he held both positions until he left Bavaria Film in order to co-found Yellow Bird Pictures GmbH.

Boris Ausserer is producer with Yellow Bird Pictures. Born in Annecy (France), Boris graduated from the Munich film school HFF in 1998, to which he had already added a number of stays abroad including Cambridge, Paris, New York and Los Angeles. He started working for MTM Filmproduktion but soon he was hired as a junior producer for the Bavaria Film Group. Only a year later, in 2000, he was assigned producer for international co-productions with Bavaria Media Television. From 2003 he was the Deputy Head of International Co-Production until he left Bavaria Media Television for Yellow Bird Pictures GmbH. During this time, he was involved in the development and financing of a number of TV co-productions with European key partners (TF1, Mediaset, Rai, France2, M6, TVC, TVN, ORF and others), such as “La Bicyclette Bleue”, “Die Auferstehung”, “Sans Famille”, “Tatort-Tödliche Souvenirs”, “Kitchen Affairs”, Heinrich Breloer’s docudrama “Speer & Hitler – The Devil’s Architect” as well as “Der Todestunnel”, “White Menace – The Avalanche of the Century” and most recently “Henri IV.”