Patricia Arquette Unveiled As Series Mania Guest Of Honor

Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald has won the €50,000 ($54,000) Series Mania Seriesmakers award.

Christian Schwochow has signed up to direct , the upcoming Constantin Film and Big Light Productions scripted series based on events surrounding the Nuremberg trials that took place in the wake of World War Two.

EXCLUSIVE: Sky Studios and Groenlandia are readying feature film director Sydney Sibilia’s first TV drama series. Someone Killed Spiderman – Accidentally Famous (working title) is for Sky Italia and is about a non-conformist teenager who becomes on half of successful musical duo 883.

Disney+ unveiled new originals out of France, Germany and Spain at Series Mania, with period drama and a pair of true crime projects added to a 70-part Spanish novella that will be stripped through the week.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor A panel moderated by the European Audiovisual Observatory at Series Mania Tuesday looked at four key trends in series production in Europe. Warning Signs?Gilles Fontaine, EAO’s head of department for market information, said there were warning signs of a downward trend in the number of seasons being produced, first in the U.S.

Ben Croll An explosive political drama retracing the 2018 murders of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová, “Our People” claimed the best project award at this year’s Series Mania Forum. Winning €50,000 ($54,318) in prize money and earning an enhanced international stature, the unflinching miniseries should now see an easier path forward – particularly given the chilly reception it found with funding authorities in native Slovakia. “We thought it impossible,” said director Tereza Nvotova as she claimed the Series Mania prize.

A small pro-Palestine protest formed outside Series Mania in France on Tuesday.

EXCLUSIVE: AGC Television is dropping a hot TV project into this week’s Series Mania market in Lille.

Peak TV just got put into perspective. Asked at a Series Mania session about the volume of TV being made, European Commission official Lucia Recalde broke out an estimate that it would take over three centuries to watch everything currently on streaming services.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Variety’s Series Mania Bulletin highlights breaking news at this year’s French TV festival: Paramount+ has announced the schedule and pricing for its international ad-supported Basic subscription offering and Premium plan, both set to begin this month in selected countries. The ad-supported Basic plan will be available in April in Canada and in June in Australia, priced at $6.99 in Canadian and Australian dollars.

Netflix EMEA boss Larry Tanz has criticized local quotas for “stifling creativity” and said the streamer remains “all in” while competitors “dial back.”

Isabelle Adjani and Famke Janssen are to star in thriller series for Netflix coming from France and the Netherlands.

Creatives behind sperm donor series All & Eva have said the show represents a new wave of auteur-driven Scandi drama.

EXCLUSIVE: Leonard Cohen had a huge impact on generations of fans, and So Long, Marianne star Alex Wolff is no different.

Emiliano De Pablos Five upcoming Spanish TV fiction projects, involving top local production and distribution companies, feature in Coming Next from Spain, a showcase of series unspooling March 19 at Series Mania. Atresmedia TV’s “Sanctuary,” Movistar+ Plus’ “Fine Arts,” Filmax‘s “Dating in Barcelona” Season 2, The Good Mood-Mediawan’s “The Other Life” and Onza Distribution‘s “Heartless” will be presented at the event, proving once more that Spanish fiction production is in good health.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Spinning audiences back to the mid-1970s, UFA Fiction‘s latest period series “Disko 76” is set in a pivotal time in the industrial heartland of West Germany as a new American pop music craze takes over the airwaves and dance floors. The six-part series, which premiered at the recent Berlinale Series Market, continues its international rollout at Series Mania in Lille before bowing on the RTL+ streaming platform on March 28 and on RTL Group channel Nitro on April 1. UFA Fiction quickly won over RTL+ with the idea from former UFA Fiction producer Benjamin Benedict of a family story set in the disco era, says fellow producer Sinah Swyter.

EXCLUSIVE: More citizens will head to the polls this year for elections than any other in history, and the political fever has reached Series Mania.

Naman Ramachandran Four African screenwriters will pitch stories spanning genres at the 15th edition of Series Mania in Lille, France. Pitching this year are Kelly-Eve Koopman (South Africa) with urban fantasy “Facing the Mountain”; Moreetsi Gabang (Botswana) with crime drama “Outreach”; Tiah Beye (Senegal/Côte d’Ivoire) with comedy-drama “Brouteure” (“The Yahoo Girl”); and Wanjiru Kairu (Kenya) with political satire “Serikali Saidia!” The shows are under the aegis of the AuthenticA Series Lab, a training program for African episodic screenwriters from Realness Institute.

Marta Balaga Netflix’s big gamble, “3 Body Problem” – created by “Game of Thrones” masterminds David Benioff and D.B.Weiss with Alexander Woo – opened Lille’s Series Mania on Friday, immediately dividing the viewers on a series well reviewed by Variety. “It’s a very ambitious show and it has a great scale, but I wonder when all the hooks they got into me will reward me with knowledge. I see a lot of potential, but I don’t see a clear path,” actor Malick Bauer told Variety after the screening.

EXCLUSIVE John Bradley didn’t know what he was getting into with 3 Body Problem. The Game Of Thrones star plays physicist and entrepreneur Jack Rooney in the upcoming sci-fi epic. Speaking to Deadline, he said that showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss initially told him about the character they had written for him, but very little else: “David and Dan got in touch with me and said, ‘We’re doing this new thing, we’re not going to tell you what it is, but we’ve written this part for you’.”