Al Munteanu’s German Outfit BriskPace Confirms Leadership Team

EXCLUSIVE: Former SquareOne boss Al Munteanu’s film and TV production company BriskPace Studios has set its leadership team. Longtime Telepool exec André Druskeit will be Chief Financial Officer, with former Millenium exec Rob Van Norden as Head of Production, and former RTL and ProSieben exec Michael Bütow as Head of German Originals. All will be based in Germany. The company’s core slate is English-language features and series made in Europe for the U.S. and international market. All three report to Munteanu, who is in L.A. with Van Norden this week meeting buyers and potential partners during the American Film Market. The announcement comes two weeks after we revealed the company’s first TV project in the shape of The Light and Hard Times of Lucky Briscoe and a few days after it acquired The Greatest Duo unscripted format for Germany. Watch on Deadline Al Munteanu, Founder and CEO of BriskPace Studios, said: “We are building a studio for how audiences watch now: we originate the IP, we finance and produce it, we keep it, and we take it to every screen it belongs on. André, Rob and Michael have each spent their careers on a different side of that equation: the bank, the set and the broadcaster. We spent a year building quietly. We are done being quiet.” Druskeit joined BriskPace in 2025 from DZ Bank AG, where he was Head of Media and Entertainment Banking from 2021. He previously spent fifteen years at the Munich distributor and producer Telepool, as Deputy Managing Director and CFO and then Managing Director, co-leading its 2018 sale to Swiss and US investors, after a decade in structured and media finance at HypoVereinsbank. Druskeit said: “For years I helped decide which films a bank would finance, and the pattern was always the same: the film gets made, the bank gets repaid, and too little stays with the producer to fund the next one. BriskPace keeps the rights, runs the numbers the way a lender would, and finds more than one way to earn from each project. I wanted to build that from the inside, not watch it from across the table.” Van Norden has run physical production for BriskPace since 2025. He was Head of Production at Millennium Media in Los Angeles from 2018 to 2023, overseeing a slate including Expend4bles, Rambo: Last Blood, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard and Angel Has Fallen; his producer credits include The Beast, Deep Water, The Bricklayer, Dirty Angels, The Protégé, Hellboy: The Crooked Man, Jolt and Blackbird. Before Millennium he spent more than a decade as a producer and line producer. Van Norden commented: “Al built BriskPace to emphasize quality. My job is to make sure we get that quality at the right cost. Being based in Europe, where I have been working for years, gives us a stable place to make theatrical projects using strong incentives, seasoned crews and great locations. After twenty years making other people’s slates work, I wanted to build one from scratch, in a place where we can succeed creatively and financially.” Munich-based Bütow has spent almost fifteen years in Central and Eastern Europe as Head of Fiction for RTL Group and then CME, where he launched more than 25 scripted series. He was previously Senior Vice President International Production at ProSiebenSat.1, and managing director and executive producer at German production companies including Odeon Film and Studio Babelsberg, after beginning in fiction commissioning at RTL II and ProSieben. Bütow noted: “Producing abroad taught me one thing: audiences are local, but the way a good series is built is not. German originals are rarely developed with international ambition and the rights kept at home. I am happy to join my colleagues at BriskPace to prove it can be done.” BriskPace Unlimited will work on AI-native productions, micro-dramas and creator-led formats, developed alongside Briskpace Studios’ main film and TV slate. Unlimited holds a minority stake in AiMation. It is also a seed investor, alongside Groupe M6, in Sweetz, the French micro-drama app from AI studio Nation and app publisher Kovalee, and an investor in Snips, the Israel-based platform turning full-length film and TV into vertical micro-episodes, which launched in August with catalogue deals from Banijay Rights and BIG Media.