New Series from ‘The Killing’s’ Piv Berth, ‘The Beasts’ Rodrigo Sorogoyen Feature in Series Mania’s International Panorama

wcinkala pmc-editorial-manager Variety announced Thursday the programming for its second annual Miami Entertainment Town lunch, to be held on Thursday, April 13, in Miami. The event, in partnership with CN Bank, celebrates the growing entertainment and media industry based out of Miami and recognizes those profiled in Variety’s Miami Entertainment Impact Report. At the celebration, Ronald Day, President of Entertainment and Content Strategy for NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, and Karen Barroeta, Executive Vice President of Production and Development Telemundo Global Studios, will participate in a keynote conversation with Rodrigo Nieto-Galvis, Entertainment Banking Team Leader at CN Bank Miami. The conversation will be centered around Telemundo’s strategy and around music and original programming based out of Miami.

Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard is Bravo’s new reality series, a spinoff of Summer House, that is set to premiere Sunday, May 7 at 9 p.m. ET.

HYBE Labels subsidiary ADOR, home to K-pop girl group NewJeans, have opened online auditions for a potential new boyband.Today (March 28), ADOR unveiled several posters and videos on social media and YouTube announcing its ‘The Real Hype Boys’ audition. The label will be accepting online auditions on ador.world from now until 1pm KST on April 14.An unnamed male trainee as well as the members of NewJeans feature in the promotional video for the auditions, which details the online application period and host countries where in-person auditions will take place.Per ADOR’s guidelines, the auditions are open to boys born between 2004-2012.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief In cricket-mad India the upcoming Indian Premier League tournament could be a watershed for the country’s jostling media empires, according to Singapore-based consultancy and analysis firm, Media Partners Asia. Video rights for the tournament were split between incumbent pay-TV player Disney Star India, which paid close to $3.1 billion for broadcast rights to the five 2023-2027 editions, and Viacom18, which is backed by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and Paramount (as a minority stakeholder), in partnership with financier Bodhi Tree Systems. It paid a similar sum for the separate digital rights. Media Partners Asia estimates that advertising revenues spawned by the two-month 2023 competition will end up around $550 million – representing a clear loss on the annualized cost of $1.2 billion, or roughly $600 million per conglomerate, for the tournament rights. (The analysis firm forecasts that RIL will earn $300-350 million in ad sales, while Star’s best-case scenario is $220 million.)

With Series Mania 2023 coming to a close, the event’s founder and general director Laurence Herszberg announced the winners of the Series Mania Festival today.

Series Mania on March 21 just after a Spanish series, “Wrong Side of the Tracks” from Mediaset España and Alea Media, had scored 149.6 million watching hours in three weeks on Netflix for Seasons 1 and 2.  That platform connection and power of Spanish series threaded most of the series and much of the commentary at Tuesday’s Next from Spain, supported by Audiiovisual from Spain.  At least in terms of titles now ready to hit the market, there’s little sign as yet of platform pullback in Spain. Rather, it remains a ground zero in the streamer wars.

The cast of Neighbours has announced that a new series of the Australian show will start filming next month. Alan Fletcher, Jackie Woodburne, Stefan Dennis, Ryan Moloney, Annie Jones, and April Rose Pengilly told the audience of Neighbours – The Celebration Tour at the London Palladium that production will start in April.The six actors including Fletcher, 65, who played Karl Kennedy, and his on-screen wife Susan, portrayed by Woodburne, 67, were also confirmed for a new chapter of the long-running soap.

A.O. Scott this week ends his 23-year run as film critic for the New York Times and most movie people are glad to see him go. So is he.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent While she retired prematurely at the age of 39, Brigitte Bardot has left an indelible mark on France’s popular culture in the 1960’s and 1970’s. With her wild blonde mane, smoky eyes and pouty lips, Bardot became a symbol of a modern and effortlessly sexy French woman, and a style emblem that continues to inspire current trends. The event series “Bardot,” which is penned and directed by Daniele Thompson (“The Queen Margot”) and Christopher Thompson (“La bûche”), world premiered at Series Mania Festival to unanimous praise and has been pre-sold by Federation nearly worldwide. “‘Bardot’ is like the French ‘The Crown’ because Bardot embodied France, and through her journey we reminisce about many parts of France’s history and popular culture in the 1950’s and 1960’s,” Federation’s boss and “Bardot” producer Pascal Breton told Variety.

Amazon Prime Video is exploring more global franchise opportunities following the success of the Russo Brothers’ Citadel.

Sky Studios CEO Cecile Frot-Coutaz has called the plethora of shows on the market “really confusing” for viewers.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent LILLE, France — Germany’s Beta Group is a company for our challenged times, Moritz von Kruedener, Beta Group managing director told an audience at Series Mania’s Lille Dialogues on Thursday.  He also broke down Beta’s business model which takes elements which hark back to the past – a powerful, ultra connected territory-by-territory international sales apparatus  combined with Beta’s biggest pivot in recent years: a move from picking up and selling finished shows into far larger production involvement, be its financial support or early upstream input on maximising a project’s international potential. Beta Group and Series Mania has also scored heavily at this year’s festival with the first edition go Seriesmakers, a mentoring program for filmmakers making their TV creator debut.

“We all have to become a bit more Scandinavian,” Beta Film MD Moritz von Kruedener told a Series Mania audience this morning.

Netflix teased its slate of European series, including part 3 of its hit heist show “Lupin,” starring Omar Sy, during its showcase at Series Mania in Lille. The panel was attended by Katja Hofem from Germany, Damien Couvreur from France and Jenny Stjernströmer Björk from the Nordics, who each discussed their editorial strategies. The streamer also announced season 2 of its off-beat comedy series “Represent” starring Cesar-winning actor-director Jean-Pascal Zadi (“Tout simplement noir”) as an ordinary man from a project becomes President of France. The show, whose French title is “En Place,” launched earlier this year and was one of the service’s biggest local hits. Other new French titles in the pipeline include “Thicker than Water,” “Tapie,” “Fury” and “Anthracite.”

Paramount+ is well ahead of its target to greenlight 150 non-U.S. originals by 2025 but international boss Marco Nobili wishes the streamer could have rolled out quicker.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent LILLE, France — Paramount+ will be bowing “Drag Race Italia” Season 3 on the streaming service in Italy, followed by the U.S. and Latin America later this year.  The Italian Season 3 follows on the recent announcement of three new “Drag Race” editions in Brazil, Germany and Mexico and a “Global Drag Race All Stars,” which will air on Paramount+ in their respective territories this year, Paramount+ announced Wednesday. “As we expand Paramount+’s global footprint, it was important to recapture ‘Drag Race’ in key international markets and also build an interconnected competition series with a new ‘Global Drag Race All Stars’ – it’s like a global Super Bowl for Drag,” said Chris McCarthy, president-CEO, Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios & Paramount Media Networks.

Norway’s Casper Ruud and Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti helped groom puppies while volunteering during the Miami Open Unites campaign on Monday (March 20) in Miami, Fla.

Lille’s Series Mania Forum is kicking off today with a packed schedule of talks, screenings and competitions.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent With an International Panorama spangled by gems  – think Spain’s “Apagón,” Sweden’s “Blackwater,” and Canada’s “Disobey” and “Little Bird” – Series Mania also weighs in this year with one, if not the, strongest and most mouthwatering of international competitions in its history.  Including the opening and closing series, Amazon’s “Greek Salad” and Netflix’s “Transatlantic,” nearly all the global streamers have titles in the lineup, from Apple TV+’s “Drops of God” and Paramount+’s “Fleeting Lies.” The lineup also features some A-List international writing talents, such as the U.K.’s Jack Thorne and Israel’s Ron Leshem and Amit Cohen, whose “The Virtues” and “No Man’s Land” rank among the most memorable of recent Series Mania competition titles, and closing the festival, out of competition, “Unorthodox’s” Anna Wenger.”Fleeting Lies” also represents one of the first series from Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar’s El Deseo label in Madrid, opening series “Greek Salad” Cedric Klapisch’s first works a TV series creator.

Naman Ramachandran A poster has been unveiled for “Barzakh,” starring top Pakistani actors Fawad Khan and Sanam Saeed. The only South Asian selection at Series Mania this year, the series will debut in the showcase’s International Panorama, a 12-title competitive section where it will be eligible for the best series, director, actress, actor, student jury and audience awards. “Barzakh” (6 x 58′) is produced by Waqas Hassan and Shailja Kejriwal for Zindagi, the Indian subcontinent focused programming block on streamer ZEE5 Global. It is helmed by critically acclaimed director Asim Abbasi who also directed Zindagi’s first Pakistani original “Churails” and the feature film “Cake.”