Robin Wright and Kevin Spacey in Netflix’s House of Cards.David Giesbrecht
Quebecor Inc. is looking to expand the reach of its television production and hopes to create more content in Quebec for international viewers.
Chief executive officer Pierre Dion said Thursday the company is ready to play a leadership role in making the province a global hub for TV creation and production.
Content producers in Quebec can no longer satisfy themselves with a provincial market of 6.8 million francophones, Mr. Dion said, speaking at the Quebecor annual general meeting in Montreal.
Other countries like France and England want to export concepts hatched in Quebec, he said, adding that Quebecor believes it can produce, in French and maybe also in English, major TV series locally for international distribution.
"Why not a big American series produced here and broadcast across the world? We can do a House of Cards à la Québécois," Mr. Dion mused, referring to the popular Netflix series.
The company will open an office in Los Angeles in coming days, in part to push that effort forward, and build on existing co-development relationships with NBCUniversal in the U.K., TF1 Group in France and other international media companies. It would seek partners to help finance and broadcast the material produced, Mr. Dion said.
"Today, we're thinking about local markets and then we try to export it afterwards," Mr. Dion said. "But we're telling creators let's try to think about the international potential from the start."
Nicolas Van Praet