Netflix Gives Second Season to Australia‘s ‘Heartbreak High’

EXCLUSIVE: The Empress is returning to Netflix.

Three episodes remain in the first season of “Andor,” airing on Disney+ now. But production for Season Two of the “Star Wars” show starts filming soon, so showrunner Tony Gilroy needs to put the finishing touches on his cast and crew list.

Starz is already smitten with its Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont: The network has renewed Dangerous Liaisons for a second season, ahead of its November debut.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Dollhouse Pictures, production company founded by Krew Boylan, Rose Byrne, Jessica Carrera, Shannon Murphy and Gracie Otto, is to produce “Devotion,” a book-to-film adaptation of Hannah Kent’s bestselling novel of the same title. The production is in partnership with production and finance firm Storyd.

Heartbreak High is coming back for a second session.

CBS has given full season orders to Fire Country, East New York and So Help Me Todd.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment is taking ElectricNow, its AVOD channel and app, into international markets for the first time. The rollout outside the U.S. starts in early November with outreach into Australia. Los Angeles-based indie, Electric Entertainment has previously licensed its content to local distributors and channels at international markets. When it launched the OTT channel in 2019 it did not seek to build global operations, which would have entailed undoing, or waiting for the expiry, of some of those deals. The company , headed by Devlin and partners Marc Roskin and Rachel Olschan-Wilson, says that ElectricNow will soon be rolled out in other English-language territories, Canada and the U.K, but did not specify a timetable.

Marta Balaga Melissa George’s Margot is looking for a way out in the “twisty” second season of “The Mosquito Coast.”  “This couple has been together for 15 years. They’ve got these two kids [played by Logan Polish and Gabriel Bateman]. But they separated when the children were young, for a very good reason. There was an incident, which we will reveal in the first episode,” she tells Variety at Mipcom. “It’s going to hit the ground running. We are going to say exactly what happened and why this family is on the run.” A Fremantle production for Apple TV+ – based on Paul Theroux’s novel and created by Neil Cross – it follows Allie Fox (Justin Theroux), who uproots his family to find refuge from the U.S. government, cartels and hitmen. Now, they will venture into the Guatemalan jungle to meet an old friend and her community of refugees. 

. And, as a young lady of the ton, Chandran's hair was regularly fashioned into intricate updos for society balls, or left long and loose when she was alone with her sister.Outside of the Netflix period drama, though, it seems Chandran's a lot more experimental with her hair. And this week, she swapped our her long dark brown strands and headed in a very different direction, debuting a cropped, choppy, wet-look , while attending Veronica Beard's fashion show in London.The look was created by top celebrity hairstylist and GHD creative artist , who let us in on the thought process behind the look.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Australia’s SLR Productions has announced production on season two of the award-winning original CGI animated series, “Space Nova” for ABC ME. The 15 x 22-minute season has received significant production funding from both Screen Australia and the Australian Children’s Television Foundation as well as development funding from ABC ME and Create NSW. “Space Nova” will be co-produced with Giggle Garage in Malaysia and distributed internationally by ZDF Studios, with ACTF representing the series across Australia and New Zealand. Targeting a six- to ten-year-old global audience, the first season sold to broadcasters or streamers in Germany, the U.K., Norway, Finland, Sweden, Poland, the U.S, Singapore, East Asia, Indonesia, and Brazil.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Netflix has come on board for the second year to support the Short Film Camp, a film industry training program for professionals from Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. The SFC is led by Purin Pictures, a film funding body backed by the Purin Foundation. The event, running for ten days (Dec. 2-12, 2022) in Bangkok, Thailand, will involve 12 teams of directors and producers. The 24 participants will receive mentoring that aims to hone their writing, producing and directing skills. The workshop culminates in a live pitch of their short film projects, where four winners will receive funding and post-production support to produce their short films.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief European-Australian firm Flying Bark Productions has been appointed as the animator of the first of three untitled ‘Avatar’ films from Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Animation. The film series, derived from the “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and “The Legend of Korra “animated series, originally created for Nickelodeon by Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino, was announced earlier this year. The first feature will be directed by Lauren Montgomery, with Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino producing. Flying Bark, which is based in Belgium and has major facilities in Sydney, Australia, describes the film series as “[pushing] the style and boundaries of hybrid animation [..] it will couple traditional 2D animation with substantial CG elements.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chinese filmmaker, Bi Gan, best-known for his single-take feature “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” has seen his “A Short Story” picked up by Kino Lorber for distribution in North America. A fairy tale that follows the relationship between man and cat, the film had its world premiere in competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and now has its North American premiere in the Currents section of the New York Film Festival. Kino Lorber plans to qualify “A Short Story” for the 96th Academy Awards, showing it theatrically nationwide in early 2023 in tandem with a theatrical re-release of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” “Kino Lorber rarely acquires short films, but Bi Gan has packed more cinematic delight into the fifteen minutes of ‘A Short Story’ than many feature length films deliver in two hours,” said Kino Lorber SVP Wendy Lidell. The deal was brokered by Les Films du Losange.

Netflix show ever. The platform’s statistics for the week of Oct. 3rd to the 9th showed that the drama, starring Evan Peters as notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, drew in 205.33 million hours of viewing time worldwide.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Kamila Andini’s “Before Now and Then” (aka “Nana”) topped the nominations for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, with nods in four categories including best film and best director. The film, about a gentlewoman’s memories of escaping from a Communist purge, narrowly headed three films with three nominations each: “Poet” (aka “Akyn”) by Kazakhstan’s Darezhan Omirbayev; “This Is What I Remember” (aka “Esimde”) by Kyrgyzstan’s Aktan Arym Kubat; and Philippines director Lav Diaz’s “When The Waves Are Gone” (“Kapag Wala Nang Mga Alon”). APSA casts its net wide, seeking honors for cinematic excellence from 78 countries and territories defined as Asia Pacific. The awards will be presented at a ceremony at HOTA on Australia’s Gold Coast on Nov. 11, 2022.

EXCLUSIVE: Acorn TV and ZDF mystery drama series The Chelsea Detective has a new co-lead for its second season.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix fans continue to flock to binge-watch “Dahmer,” the unsettling drama series starring Evan Peters as the infamous killer cannibal, in record numbers. Ryan Murphy’s “Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” topped Netflix’s English TV Top 10 list for the third week in a row, with 205.33 million hours viewed for the week of Oct. 3-9. That means the limited series is now Netflix’s second most popular English-language series of all time in its initial release, with 701.37 million hours watched, behind only “Stranger Things 4,” which was watched 1.35 billion hours in its first 28 days. “Dahmer” has now garnered more watch-time than seasons 1 and 2 of Shonda Rhimes’ “Bridgerton” in their first four weeks on the service.

Dahmer: Monster – The Jeffrey Dahmer Story continues its ratings spree.