EXCLUSIVE: The CW, Roku and Australia‘s Stan are working up Good Cop/Bad Cop, a comedic crime procedural The CW with Jeff Wachtel’s Future Shack Entertainment.
23.02.2024 - 11:29 / deadline.com
Such has been the chaos in international TV over the past 12 months that you could argue Cineflix Rights’ Head of Scripted, James Durie, is underplaying things when he says it has been “a hell of a year.”
Distributors around the world have watched on in horror as the streaming sector crumbled and the crashing TV ad market decimated budgets at commercial nets everywhere, not to mention the license fee woes being experienced by the likes of the BBC. Redundancies, cost saving and restructuring took hold, and the likes of Paramount, Disney+ and Prime Video have cut back on international originals, in some cases brutally culling non-U.S. shows.
In recent months, international scripted projects from countries such as the UK, Canada and Australia that would have been viable options for the U.S. streamers have suddenly been seen as big gambles. The sense that co-production agreements with streamers could be struck faded into dust, while linear networks kept their hands in their pockets or came to the table with reduced budgets.
The knock-on effects for a distribution industry that had experienced nothing but more and more product hitting the market for years have been felt deeply. Even global acquisitions deals, which really kicked off the streaming revolution in the early 2010s, have been largely off the table, with only Netflix’s LA team and Apple consistently cited by sources as potential buyers. In general, lower-priced local territory deals have replaced them.
It hardly needs saying that the labor strikes in Hollywood have exacerbated the situation, slowing down development and investment pipelines. Many sources claim streamers are now commissioning by committee out of LA, while risk taking — especially on international
EXCLUSIVE: The CW, Roku and Australia‘s Stan are working up Good Cop/Bad Cop, a comedic crime procedural The CW with Jeff Wachtel’s Future Shack Entertainment.
ZDF Latest To ‘Race Across The World‘
It was a good night for the UK at the 96th Oscars. Brits won in seven separate categories at the Dolby Theatre, with Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Glazer‘s wins the highest profile.
Paramount+ may have culled a raft of international originals last month but UK commissioning appears to be continuing apace.
Leo Barraclough International Features Editor The 44th edition of genre film festival Fantasporto, which runs in Portugal’s second city Porto from March 1-10, has bestowed its best film award on Japanese sci-fi fantasy pic “From the End of the World,” directed by Kaz I Kiriya. The movie follows 10-year-old Hana, whose dreams transport her across various eras in Japanese history, and have the ability to save humanity. The jury’s special award went to “The Complex Forms,” Italian director Fabio D’Orta’s debut feature.
Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Ahead of its U.S. premiere at SXSW, “The Queen of My Dreams” has been sold to a flurry of international markets, including in the U.K. and Ireland to Peccadillo Pictures.
EXCLUSIVE: Ahead of its world premiere at SXSW on Saturday (March 9), feature doc Plastic People: The Hidden Crisis of Microplastics has found an international distributor in the UK’s Rainmaker Content.
Ten projects have been selected for the second edition of Seriesmakers, Series Mania’s development lab for feature film directors sidestepping into series production.
REM, Amy Winehouse, Florence & The Machine, Adele, The Killers and Nick Cave. It was also the venue for Kings Of Leon’s first UK show in 2006.The former Edwardian dance hall has been used as a music venue since 2001, when it was restored by its current owners, Charlie Raworth and Emma Hutchinson.Now, Bush Hall has confirmed its future as a music establishment is under threat and they are four months away from “making a hideous decision” about whether to cease hosting live music events.
Good afternoon Insiders, Jesse Whittock with you in London, where the TV world has decamped this week for a series of screenings. Read on, and sign up for the newsletter here.
Honest Cammy Devlin believes Hearts must stop their sleepy starts if they are to see off Celtic on Sunday.
EXCLUSIVE: Michael MacMillan retired from the world of television 17 years ago. Except, he didn’t.
Slow Horses actress Catherine McCormack is to star alongside Colin Firth in Sky and Peacock‘s retelling of the 1988 terror attack on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Cynthia Littleton Business Editor The contract talks finally reached the handshake point at 3 a.m. PT on Feb. 23.
Annika Pham One of Banijay’s scripted centrepieces at the London TV Screenings, the Swedish crime drama “Fallen” (“Sanningen”), sees the first reunion of star actor Sofia Helin, writer Camilla Ahlgren, and Stockholm-based Filmlance International since the multi-season hit crime show “The Bridge” (2011-2018). Their collaboration has paid off again as “Fallen” has wooed a first batch of global sellers – including MHz Choice for the U.S.
John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent European giant Beta Film, known for ambitious titles such as “Babylon Berlin” and “The Swarm,” has shared with Variety in exclusivity a first-look picture of 1o-part series “Rise of the Raven,” which it hails as “one of the most epic European TV productions of all time.” “Rise of the Raven” weighs in as a passion project of Hungarian-born and Canada-based producer Robert Lantos, behind “Sunshine,” “The Sweet Hereafter,” “Barney’s Version,” “Eastern Promises” and “Crimes of the Future.” A highlight at Beta Film’s showcase this Tuesday at the London TV Screenings, “Rise of the Raven” turns on the extraordinary feat of Hungarian army commander Janos Hunyadi, played by discovery Gellért L. Kádár, who in 1456 won a bloody, brutal Battle of Belgrade against a vast Ottoman force twice the size of his troops who were often farm labourers armed with just slings and patriotic fervor. Hunyadi largely halted a full Ottoman expansion in Europe for the next 70 years, allowing its Renaissance to lift off in Italy.
Good afternoon Insiders, Max Goldbart here steering you away from Berlin and towards London for the Screenings. Please do read on, and sign up here.
Lunar New Year is a key box office period in several Asian territories, but nowhere was it more hotly contested this year than in Vietnam, where several local, Japanese and Hollywood movies were slugging it over the week-long holidays (February 9-15).
Welcome to Deadline’s London TV Screenings list, our definitive look at next week’s buzzy event taking Soho by storm. If you’re wondering who’s exhibiting, what’s on offer and want to dive deeper into the distribs’ strategy, we’ve done the hard work for you, presenting profiles from nearly 30 exhibiting sales houses. Below, check out profiles for the companies headed over from the States and other nations around the globe. Read on, and find all our London TV Screenings content throughout the week here.
Welcome to Deadline’s London TV Screenings list, our definitive look at next week’s buzzy event taking Soho by storm. If you’re wondering who’s exhibiting, what’s on offer and want to dive deeper into the distribs’ strategy, we’ve done the hard work for you, presenting profiles from nearly 30 exhibiting sales houses. Below, check out profiles for all the London TV Screenings founders, along with the outfits based in the UK. Read on, and find all our London TV Screenings content throughout the week here.