Spotify, Chernin Entertainment Sign Multiyear Deal to Adapt Podcast Content to Video

Peter Chernin’s production company Chernin Entertainment signed a multi-year agreement with Spotify to bring popular podcast content to video, including film, television and streaming. The deal gives Chernin Entertainment, producers of TV shows like “See” and “P-Valley” and movies like the “Planet of the Apes” sereies, access to Spotify’s library of over 250 original and exclusive podcasts. That includes the newly-launched “Michelle Obama Podcast,” Bill Simmons’ “The Ringer,” and popular shows from true crime-focused subsidiary network Gimlet Media. Terms of the deal or its specific duration were not disclosed. Spotify’s newly appointed chief content officer Dawn Ostroff announced the agreement Thursday. Spotify has about a dozen projects already in development at television studios, including “The Two Princes,” a forthcoming adaptation for HBO Max, and two Amazon Prime Video series called “The Horror of Dolores Roach,” and “Homecoming.” A podcast-video adaptation is already in the works from Chernin and Spotify, who partnered earlier this year with podcast producers Pineapple Street Media to adapt podcast series “The Clearing” for TV. The production outfit at Chernin Entertainment is known for delivering recently acclaimed films including Oscar-nominated “Ford Vs. Ferrari,” “Hidden Figures” and “The Greatest Showman.” Chernin said in a statement, “audio is by far the fastest-growing medium in the entertainment business… and Spotify has one of the largest libraries of unattached (intellectual property) that exists in the world today and that library is being added to daily.” Chernin described the Spotify library as a “treasure trove of content,” and added, “the acceleration of new voices and stories provides an enormous opportunity to transform these addictive stories and IP into content for the screen.”