Mark Greenberg sits at his desk in a sun-kissed corner office 31 stories above New York’s Times Square.

It’s a bright late-winter day, and the president–CEO of Epix is recalling how MGM, Paramount and Lionsgate first became partners in his new programming idea. Several weeks after this conversation, MGM will pay a cool $1 billion to its partners for full ownership of the premium pay-TV network.

So how did this billion-dollar story start? After eight years at HBO in the ’80s, followed by 17 years at Showtime, Greenberg was working as a consultant with Blockbuster when he recognized a shift in the landscape.

The writing was on the wall,” he remembers. “I came to realize the world of streaming was about to take off.” In 2009, he persuaded Lionsgate, Paramount and MGM to opt out of their licensing deals with Showtime and join forces to create Epix, a streaming, video-on-demand channel.

Originally available only through Verizon, Epix is now carried by 35 cable providers and available in 50 million households. Over the past five years, it has been the fastest-growing premium network. And now it has a single owner committed to keeping that momentum going.

In April, MGM bought out Viacom’s 49.76 percent stake and Lionsgate’s 31.15 percent stake. Lionsgate and Paramount will keep providing their first-run movies to Epix under multi-year agreements. But original scripted programming is a priority.

Late last year — after streaming countless movies, concerts, documentaries and comedy specials — Epix premiered Graves and Berlin Station. These original series, both of which will return this fall for season two, marked the network’s first serious commitment to the scripted world. Despite the challenges of a crowded marketplace and being the new kid on the original-series block, Greenberg is confident.

“Are there too many great books, too many great films?” he asks rhetorically. “What I learned from Michael Fuchs,” Greenberg says of his former boss at HBO, “is to create a platform for the creative community to be able to take on issues that are big, interesting and dynamic. If we can deliver a quality, fun, interesting product, we’ll find a passionate audience, then grow that.”

Last October — nearly seven years to the day after the network’s 2009 launch — Epix went in search of that audience with its back-to-back premieres of Graves and Berlin Station. Both series featured high production values, received critical acclaim and were created by TV neophytes.

Joshua Michael Stern had worked exclusively in film, mostly as a writer-director (Swing Vote, Never Was), before he finally got behind an idea about an ex-president that his producing partner, Greg Shapiro, had been pitching him for months. Stern was thinking of Nick Nolte, Shapiro’s former boss (he’d been the actor’s assistant), when he wrote the pilot for Graves.

The half-hour single-camera dramedy — which Stern and Shapiro executive-produce with Rebecca Kirshner — stars Nolte as a gruff, guilt-ridden former president living out his twilight years in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his family. Nolte picked up a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor just weeks after the show premiered.

Berlin Station, on the other hand, is a psychological spy tale from novelist Olen Steinhauer, whose pilot script marked his first foray into TV writing. The series features Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under) and explores the human toll at a CIA field office after a Snowden-type leak.

Timely subject matter and a willingness to roll the dice with a pair of TV newcomers reflect the network’s out-of-the-box approach.

“We’re looking for unusual stories from interesting voices,” says Jocelyn Diaz, Epix’s executive vice-president for original programming, herself a veteran of HBO (along with ABC and Walt Disney Studios). “So we’re taking pitches, we’re looking at web series, magazine articles — everything you could imagine — to find the next distinctive voice.”

The network is enticing producers and studios by scrapping pilots and going straight to series with first-season orders of 10 episodes. Limited development and production slates allow for greater attention to the needs of writers and producers.

“I’ve been at certain companies where the shows and the creators can feel a little bit cannibalized because they’re sort of dropped off a cliff,” Diaz says. “It’s kill or be killed and see if anything floats.

"But we want these shows to work, so there’s not that kind of abandonment of them. If anything, we’re going to throw everything that we have — our entire company, our entire publicity and marketing machine, our digital group — behind you. You’re really gonna feel it.”

As a first-time showrunner on Berlin Station, veteran TV scribe Bradford Winters agrees. “Having the unconditional, ever-present support of Jocelyn was one of the things that helped me more than anything else,” says Winters, who executive-produces the series with Steinhauer, Eric Roth, Steve Golin, Kerry Kohansky-Roberts, Keith Redmon and Luke Rivett.

“Knowing that I not only had such a wise network head there, but a real support system and a true friend — you can’t underestimate how valuable that is to a showrunner. Because that’s far from always the case.”

Kevin Beggs, who’s been running Lionsgate’s TV business since its inception in 1998, is excited about helping Epix build its brand and identity by supplying shows like Graves. “We really focus on emerging platforms,” says Beggs, whose studio has supplied successful shows — Weeds (Showtime), Orange Is the New Black (Netflix), The Royals (E!) — that have helped define networks. “So I was super excited when they drilled down into originals.”

The change has been a long time coming. Beggs has been lobbying for Epix to enter the scripted series space since the first board meeting he was invited to attend. “And not just because I want more clients,” he adds. More because he believes that original scripted series are the programming catnip that attracts new customers.

“Original series get reviews, they get talked about, they get buzz,” Beggs says. “Keeping [subscribers] in the family and resisting churn is the province of movies, specials and a variety of other things. But the catalyst to get new subscribers is all about the new and original.”

Greenberg knew he was getting something new and original when he gave Stern a 10-episode commitment to make Graves. Lionsgate purchased the project based on Stern’s spec script, with Nolte attached to star as former president Richard Graves, who sets out to right the wrongs he committed during his presidency 20 years earlier.

“We gravitated towards Josh’s script because we heard a voice that felt different,” Greenberg says. He was thrilled when Sela Ward later joined the cast as the former first lady, who’s considering a run for the Senate. “Sort of like if Donald married Hillary,” he says, smiling.

The series tackles a number of timely issues, such as immigration policy and gay rights. By midseason, the former president — a notorious homophobe during his administration (Stern describes him as having hints of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and “even a lot of Lyndon Johnson”) — finds himself in a hot tub with former Congressman Barney Frank and friends at a gay wedding.

(The first season featured a number of politicos, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.)

But Graves isn’t simply about politics, Greenberg says. “It’s really about family,” he notes, pointing to storylines involving Nolte and Ward’s long-married couple and their two adult children (Helene Yorke and Chris Lowell).

Stern gives the network high marks. “There wasn’t a lot of red tape,” he says. “[I was] dealing with just a couple of people. They keep their operation small, which keeps the creative very focused. It doesn’t feel as if you’re operating through layers of obstacles to get the answers you need.”

And the studio? “The creative team at Lionsgate is incredible,” he goes on. “They’re such amazing people. They’re smart, their shows are smart, their notes are smart. They talk to you without imposing on you.”

As for Epix, he adds, “From the very beginning, they believed in the show and said to me as a producer and writer and director that I could make the shows that I wanted to make. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop — it seemed too good to be true.”

While Graves explores an over-scrutinized first family two decades after the White House, Berlin Station captures the personal toll at a German CIA outpost amid classified leaks of Edward Snowden proportions. But when Olen Steinhauer’s spec script for Berlin Station arrived at the offices of Anonymous Content, CEO and producer Steve Golin thought he might not be the obvious choice to guide the project. “I had never really worked on a flat-out espionage [story],” he says.

He was, however, on a major producing roll, both in television (Mr. Robot, True Detective) and in film (Spotlight, The Revenant). Plus, he loved the genre. “I’m really intrigued by spycraft,” Golin says. “I’d read one of Olen’s other books, so I was excited about [the influence of John] le Carré — but I’m a little bit tired of the Cold War aspect of it.”

Goodbye, Cold War. Hello, modern spy story. Golin jumped on the project, then took it to Paramount — when it was still an Epix co-owner — where it sparked matching enthusiasm from Amy Powell, president of Paramount TV. She immediately told Golin and his team that the project would be a perfect fit for Epix. Greenberg and Diaz at Epix would soon agree. Another big idea was in motion.

Greenberg sees Berlin Station as a shining example of what he wants from his network’s scripted series. “It’s story, it’s personality, it’s relationships,” explains the exec, who flew to L.A. from New York 31 times last year and paid22 set visits. “It’s human drama, it’s suspense. Who did it? How’d it happen? It’s like life: it’s not linear. It’s not straightforward, and it doesn’t always have a Hollywood ending.”

Epix is showing its commitment to authenticity and high production values by shooting the entire series in Berlin. The city itself becomes a character, a mix of modern bohemia and living history on every street corner. Golin says the chance to explore modern Berlin was one of the things that drew him to the project.

Winters, the showrunner, says shooting the first season in Berlin was “absolutely life-changing for me.” Greenberg and Diaz hope Berlin Station will be life-changing for the network, too. The series has already shown up on more than one “best of” list, and the Epix team is earning praise from both the creatives and the studio behind the show. “They cared about creating a show with a vision,” Winters says. “And that’s what they backed from the beginning.”

Paramount’s Powell was impressed not only with the content at Epix, but with the marketing team as well. “I grew up in marketing,” she says. “So I can say, without question, that we were very lucky to be one of two shows to get their approach to marketing. Their willingness and desire to market the show and jump in with us was just terrific.”

On August 13, Epix will debut its next original scripted series, a new twist on an old favorite, Get Shorty. Development of the venerable Elmore Leonard property proceeded slowly.

“We were in no rush,” says Steve Stark, president of production and development at MGM Television. (MGM, which owns Get Shorty, was the last studio from the old triumvirate of co-owners to sell Epix a scripted series.)

“It had to be the right time, with the right project.” And when the right project did finally come along — a fresh take on Get Shorty from writer-producer Davey Holmes (Shameless, Pushing Daisies) — Epix had to wait patiently for another two years.

“It was a couple years of begging, apologizing and ‘I really want to do this,’” recalls Holmes, who had a series of other commitments that delayed the start. “I knew in my heart that I should be pushing aside everything else — this is the project I should be doing.”

Holmes sold MGM — and then Epix — on scrapping the Chili Palmer character altogether and creating an entirely new lead, an idea that resonated with Stark.

“Anybody playing John Travolta’s character is just doing karaoke TV,” he says. Instead, the series stars Chris O’Dowd as an Irish mobster and goes to darker, more sinister places than the movie did. Greenberg says the series owes more to Elmore Leonard and less to Get Shorty the film.

“As much as I love the movie, we’re not re-making the movie,” Holmes says. “It’s tonally very different — but in a way that I think is great and will sustain interest not just for two hours, but for many hours to come. Chili Palmer was sort of cool with everything. But I wanted a character who was passionate about his problems and his dreams in a way that goes beyond cool.”

Ray Romano joins O’Dowd in the cast, and Stark says their pairing has been electric. “There’s such a great alchemy of emotion and drama and pathos and tragedy,” the MGM exec says. “Having these two in the room together has been such a great gift. We could have miscast this. But I think we hit it out of the park.”

Holmes isn’t worried about Get Shorty getting short shrift in the marketplace due to Epix’s relatively low profile.

“We’re taking a leap of faith in terms of what kind of audience will show up,” he says. “But I got such a great feeling from everybody I met over there. And some of my favorite shows — Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Shield — were shows that helped brand a network. So the idea that we could get that opportunity to come to a network that didn’t have that codified brand yet — and be part of creating that — is really exciting.”

It’s an idea that seems to be resonating across all of Epix’s original series: the chance to build something. So far, the pitch is working.

“We’re able to tell people, ‘You can come and brand the network,’” Diaz says. “We’re building this foundation and it’s not, right now, set in stone in terms of the programming model, the tone and pace. So you can come and be that brand-maker. That’s exciting to people, to feel like they’re the first at something.”

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 6, 2017