Rome’s MIA Market Kicks Off as Director Sends Wishes to Israeli Execs Not Able to Attend: ‘Our Thoughts Go Out to Them’

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Oscar-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore’s vintage TV series “Il Camorrista,” starring Ben Gazzara as one of the fiercest bosses of the Neapolitan Camorra crime syndicate, is being unearthed from the vault 37 years after the mobster himself quashed the show before it aired. “Il Camorrista” was shot in 1985 as part of an innovative production mounted by Italy’s glorious Titanus shingle and Silvio Berlusconi’s ReteItalia. The production comprised both a Tornatore feature film by the same title and the five-episode TV show.

Netflix is gearing up for the holiday season!

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Beta Film has announced a half-dozen sales to European public broadcasters on high-end period drama “La Storia,” which is Italian pubcaster RAI’s biggest event show of the year and is world premiering at the Rome Film Fest. The sweeping eight-episode saga, set in Italy during the final years of World War II and its immediate aftermath, is based on a globally bestselling novel by the late great Elsa Morante, whom “My Brilliant Friend” author Elena Ferrante often cites as her primary literary reference.

Paul McCartney has kicked off the Australian leg of his 2023 tour by performing The Beatles’ track ‘She’s A Woman’ for the first time in nearly two decades. Check out the setlist and footage of the show below.The gig took place at the Entertainment Centre in Adelaide last night (October 18), and marked the opening night of McCartney’s solo tour across Australia.Kicking off the new run of live shows – which mark his first performances in over a year – the Adelaide set spanned across nearly three hours and included a mix of his solo hits, as well as discography with The Beatles and Wings.The main highlight of the set came just four songs in, however, when Macca surprised fans with a rendition of The Beatles’ track ‘She’s A Woman’.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Veteran RAI exec Adriano De Maio has been trying to shake things up at the Italian state broadcaster since last May, when he was appointed head of film and drama. To contend with the unstoppable disruption caused by digital and streaming in Italy’s TV landscape, De Maio is trying to steer RAI toward programming that provides more cultural enrichment, while also catering to the youth demographic that drives traffic on the pubcaster’s RAI Play streaming platform — which has more than 23 million subscribers, way more than Netflix’s Italian customer base. As RAI faces possible budget cuts due to the government’s decision to lower its license fee [RAI’s current allocation for film and TV series was not immediately available], De Maio sat down with Variety in Rome to discuss his vision for the scripted content he’d like RAI to acquire for its viewers.

Madonna kicked off her ‘Celebration Tour’ in London last night (October 14) and said that she “didn’t think I would make it” after she was admitted to intensive care with a serious bacterial infection over the summer.The Queen of Pop performed over 40 songs from her back catalogue including her most famous hits and a number of deep cuts.During a rendition of ‘Mother And Father’ – a song about the death of her own mother – midway through the show, the star addressed her recent illness before she covered Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’.She told the crowd: “I didn’t think I would make it, and neither did my doctors. That’s why I woke up with all of my children sitting around me.”Madonna continued: “I forgot five days of my life, or my death, I don’t really know where I was.

Ben Croll A romantic comedy about an Israeli-Palestinian couple based on the real life story of creators Nayef Hammoud and Gal Rosenbluth, the development series “Non-Issue” won the Paramount+ drama prize at this year’s MIA Market, which wrapped its ninth edition on an optimistic note. Of course, well before Friday’s closing award ceremony, the heartbreaking crisis in the Middle East cast a heavy pall over an otherwise ebullient audiovisual market, often informing conversations professional and otherwise.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Investment in original content production continues to grow in Italy where resources across all genres reached a total of €1.8 billion ($1.9 billion) thanks to increased investments from U.S. streamers.

Taylor Swift, but the box office fun is just beginning. Her concert movie, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” is opening this weekend and has made $2.8 million in Thursday previews from 2,700 theaters. Showings began last night at 6 p.m.

Spend on Italian TV and film productions shot upwards by 28% to €1.8B ($1.9B) last year, the latest report into the country’s sector revealed today.

The MIA Market, Rome’s splashy precursor to Mipcom Cannes, is almost over and there has been plenty to digest. Attendants from all over the world including a healthy dose of U.S. C-suite star power have been listening intently in the cinema screening rooms on the Piazza Barberini all week, and there has been plenty to discuss, as execs from around the world ponder a path to normality following a year of chaos and disruption. Meanwhile, the Israeli-Hamas conflict rages and the world mourns, with ripples felt here in Rome. See below for Deadline’s key takeaways from the annual TV and film confab.

England Under-21s are aiming to keep their winning record in Group F going with a victory over Serbia tonight as they push to qualify for the European Championships.

“Hollywood should be jealous of what Spain is doing and our facilities allow for this,” Netflix Spain and Portugal boss Diego Ávalos proclaimed today.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Sky Italia is launching a high-profile documentary series with international ambitions titled “The Overlooked Serial Killer,” reconstructing a true-crime case that has gripped millions of Italians. The documentary investigates the connection between Elisa Claps, an Italian teenager who disappeared in 1993, and Heather Barnett, a British woman whose mutilated body was found in Bournemouth in 2002.

Documentaries like Netflix’s Harry & Meghan are “almost in a different category,” the docs boss of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment said today.

“We’re trying to introduce entirely new filmmakers into the repertoire of our company,” Anonymous Content‘s David Levine said today.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Philippe Bober’s Coproduction Office, whose recent films include Jessica Hausner’s Cannes Competition title “Club Zero” and Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winner “Triangle of Sadness,” has kicked off international sales on Gust Van den Berghe‘s “The Magnet Man.” The Paris and Berlin based production and sales outfit is attending this week’s MIA Market in Rome. Van den Berghe’s previous films, “Blue Bird” (2011) and “Little Baby Jesus of Flandr” (2010), have both premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. “The Magnet Man,” which is in post-production, tells the tragicomic tale of how our greatest talents can become our greatest flaws, and how unpredictable our lives can be.

A European TV project will soon be on the same quality level as American but for half the cost, predicted Mediawan, Sony and Universal International Studios (UIS) execs today.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian distribution and production company Notorious Pictures is expanding into the TV series sphere by snapping up rights to buzzy literary property “Forbidden Notebook,” a 1952 novel by Italian-Cuban writer Alba de Céspedes that has been recently rediscovered and successfully republished in English. De Céspedes has been described by the New York Times as “a bestselling novelist and political activist in her native Italy” admired for her sensitive depictions of women whose recently rediscovered work “has lost none of its subversive force.” She is considered a source of inspiration for Elena Ferrante, the Italian writer with legions of fervent fans around the world and whose four “Neapolitan Novels” have been adapted into the long-running “My Brilliant Friend” TV series by Italy’s RAI and HBO.

Dreaming Whilst Black brought a new, diverse audience to the BBC in droves, according to the buzzy comedy’s EP Dhanny Joshi, who was speaking on a panel of diverse creatives at MIA Market.