Netflix Partners With European Producers Club On Female Producer Initiative – Series Mania

Organisation lovers rejoice! Netflix's new eight-part series, Get Organised with The Home Edit, is back for a second season. Organising gurus, Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin, help to edit, categorise and contain clutter from celebrity homes including Reese Witherspoon, Neil Patrick Harris, Eva Longoria and Khloe Kardashian. Airing on Wednesday 9th September, it will see Clea and Joanna — the organisers behind the innovative home organisation company, The Home Edit — transform the lives of their clients.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentGaining ground on the field of live sports, Netflix is teaming up with with A.S.O. to create a documentary series on the Tour de France 2022, with the participation of France Télévisions.

Oscar Isaac, follows the first hero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to struggle with Dissociative Identity Disorder. The show’s protagonist has four individual identities, though the series will start out focusing on the lives of just two. Alongside Issac, Ethan Hawke, Gaspard Ulliel and May Calamawy also star in.

K.J. Yossman “Judas and The Black Messiah” star Daniel Kaluuya has co-written a futuristic dystopian drama called “The Kitchen” for Netflix which will be executive produced by Michael Fassbender.Written alongside Joe Murtagh (“Gangs of London”), “The Kitchen” is based on an idea from Kaluuya, Kibwe Tavares (“Noughts + Crosses”) and Daniel Emmerson (“Calm with Horses”).

Marta Balaga Netflix and Arte’s musical show “Le Monde de Demain” (“The World of Tomorrow”) took the top prize in the International Competition of television festival Series Mania at the event’s awards ceremony Friday.The series, created by Katell Quillévéré, Hélier Cisterne – both also directing – Vincent Poymiro and David Elkaïm, takes a look at the birth of the French hip-hop movement in the 1980s. Made with the collaboration of Laurent Rigoulet and the participation of Kool Shen, JoeyStarr and DJ Détonateur S, it was described by the organizers as “a personal chronicle about a Parisian suburban youth reaching adulthood, claiming its own space in a new France, a country to reinvent.” In the acting categories, Michelle De Swarte was noticed for her role in the U.K.’s “The Baby,” produced by Sky, HBO and OCS, while Israeli actor Yehuda Levi impressed the jurors with his performance in “Fire Dance,” a Yes TV, Firma Productions and Kuma Studios production about an 18-year-old girl falling for a much-older married son of their ultra-Orthodox community’s leader.“He had to be charismatic in a manly way,” helmer Rama Burshtein-Shai told Variety ahead of the series’ premiere.“Levi, a very big star here in Israel, is so talented.

Hello Insiders, Tom Grater here delivering a newsletter packed full of the week’s most important headlines from across the film and TV world.

Amazon Studios Europe Boss Georgia Brown has revealed how the streamer “completely turned storymaking on its head” for upcoming hybrid grime/drill musical Jungle. 

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentPriya Dogra, president of WarnerMedia Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia (excluding China), took the stage on Thursday to deliver a keynote speech at the Series Mania TV fest in Lille, France, and the message was clear: the U.S. conglomerate is ramping up production in Europe.“Our industry is becoming more global,” said Dogra.

WarnerMedia EMEA & Asia President Priya Dogra has talked up the U.S. media giant’s plan to “ramp up investment in local creative communities across Europe,” with 40 shows in the pipeline for 2023.

Paramount International boss Raffaele Annecchino has talked up the streamer for “launching quicker than others” in key European markets, as he unveiled a tied-up with global Lupin and Narcos production house Gaumont and set titles from France, Argentina and Germany.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentVery few The Mediapro Studio shows, indeed very few Spanish series in general, have lit a fire on the open market like “The Head,” an Antarctic-set thriller which lifts off as a murder mystery to constantly evolve into other realms. Starring Álvaro Morte, “Money Heist’s” Professor and Japanese pop idol Tomohisa Yamashita, written by Alex and David Pastor (“Hogar,” “Carriers”) and directed by Jorge Dorado (“The Department of Time,” “The Pier”), “The Head” broke viewership records on co-financiers Hulu Japan and HBO Asia and sold to over 90 countries including HBO in the U.S. The Mediapro Studio retained IP. “Sales opened doors to new markets and clients with whom we hadn’t worked before,” said Laura Fernández Espeso, CEO of The Mediapro Studio.

Naman Ramachandran “Is bigger generally better?” was one of the hot button topics being debated at a Series Mania panel on Wednesday and the answer in general was there is always room for growth in a rapidly expanding market, albeit with some caveats. Weighing in on the topic were the heads of Europe-based companies, each of which operate several labels across territories.

As competition for the best European talent ramps up, bosses at some of the continent’s biggest production houses are finding U.S. agents tricky to deal with.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentVariety shined a spotlight on European talents at its jam-packed dinner cocktail party at Series Mania Festival in Lille, France.The event, which was co-hosted by Variety and Series Mania Forum, celebrated Mo Abudu, the CEO of Nigeria’s EbonyLife Media who won the 2022 Woman in Series Award. The party also brought together the laureates of the Copro pitching sessions and over 800 international industry players.Following an introduction by Series Mania Forum’s head Francesco Capurro, Variety‘s international editor Manori Ravindran welcomed on stage three rising series directors and creators who are part of Variety’s 10 European Talents to Watch: Chas Appeti and Junior Okoli, the cinematographer and director of “Jungle,” and Quoc Dang Tran, the creator, showrunner and writer of Disney Plus’ French original “Parallels.” “Jungle” is an Amazon Original Series showcasing the creativity of the U.K.’s drill, grime and rap music.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentParis-based lobbying group the European Producers Club (EPC) is launching an initiative in tandem with Netflix to help create new opportunities for European women TV drama producers in attempt to balance the gender gap in Europe’s industry.This new initiative, launched at the Series Mania TV festival, comprises a pitch contest for fiction series as well as a workshop run by Netflix about how to best pitch a project.Producers of the six selected best projects will get the opportunity to pitch to Netflix. The three best pitches will receive awards of €50.000 ($55,000), €20.000 and €10.000 respectively to take their projects to the next development stage.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent“Game of Thrones” producer Frank Doelger, after executive producing “The Swarm” through his Berlin-based Intaglio Films, now has two new high-end shows for the international pipeline in the pipeline: “Concordia” and “Doing Good.”During a panel at the Series Mania TV festival Doelger described “Concordia” as “a series about a 21st century community which uses cutting edge AI technology to see if it can create a fairer, safer, society.” Twenty years after this community has been a huge success, “countries around the world are approaching the founders of this social engineering experiment to found similar communities in their countries,” he added.And, “as they research the twenty-year history of this community, they discover that this instance of utopia has provided safe homes for immigrants and thousands of refugees seeking a better life. But they also discover the dark secret that led to its founding.” Doelger — whose Intaglio is a joint venture between German outfits Beta Cinema and ZDF Enterprises — said  “Concordia” will start shooting in September.

EXCLUSIVE: BBC Studios has started drumming up interest internationally for The Birth of Daniel F Harris, the latest young adult drama from End of the F***ing World producer Clerkenwell Films.

Series Mania has combined with European content powerhouse Beta Group on an initiative to encourage filmmakers to move into TV.

Marta Balaga Returning barely six months after its 2021 edition, which wrapped in September, French TV festival Series Mania welcomed Jury President Julia Sinkevych,who arrived in Lille from war-torn Ukraine.“I didn’t know if I would be lucky enough to be here tonight,” said Sinkevych to a standing ovation, with Laurence Herszberg, Series Mania general director, observing that culture cannot be insensitive to what is happening.“The whole world is now admiring our resistance, the resistance of the Ukrainian people. But there is another battlefield, which is culture, and I want us to be noticed, recognized and admired on the cultural battlefield, too,” added Sinkevych.“This [conflict] has been going on for a long time and there have been many episodes in this TV series.