"Celebrity doesn’t impress me much after a while.”

Böss is down-to-earth, a quality that serves him well when negotiating with the heavy hitters of the movie business. “I come from the Upper Palatinate. Celebrity doesn’t impress me much after a while.” The ability to keep your cool is an advantage in a business that is in-creasingly driven by attorneys, bankers and financial managers. Even more important is a sensibility for the winners of tomorrow. “We don’t wait to see how a movie does at the box office before we buy it.” His department receives over 200 screenplays each month. Who is producing? Who are the writers? Who will be in it? These are the questions that Böss must ask years before a show or film is broadcast. When it comes to international productions, he even has a say in choosing the crew. “This is how we create a relationship for the film in key national markets.”

Today, Böss is in charge of negotiating licenses with all major and independent studios in the United States and Europe on behalf of the ProSiebenSat.1 Group. Occasionally he escapes the confines of the trade show circuit and sets his own schedule. “When I arrive, most people find time for me.”

Yet he remains humble, especially where the product is concerned. “My personal preferences take a back seat, but I do have a good feel for mainstream tastes.” And sometimes he really gets lucky. That’s when an inner voice tells him: ‘Forget what everyone else is saying. This one is pure gold.’ “One time, we were sitting in a tiny theater in Hollywood after three days of screenings, and we watched a series that

absolutely no one wanted. My team and I knew immediately that we would buy this one. We had our work cut out for ourselves to convince people back home that a concept like this could work. But we stood our ground.” The rest is TV history.
And the show was “Sex and the City.”

Contracts with all the major Hollywood studios

Rüdiger Böss negotiates the broadcasting rights to blockbusters, American feature films and licensed series for all TV stations in the ProSiebenSat.1 Group. The ProSiebenSat.1 Group has long-standing contracts with nearly all the major Hollywood studios, producers and film distributors, such as Sony Pictures Television International, Paramount Pictures Global, CBS International Television, Disney- ABC International Television, Warner Bros. International, MGM International, Lucasfilm, Dreamworks, Constantin Filmverleih, Tobisfilm, Kinowelt and Telepool.