Laurence Herszberg Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

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

Slovakian drama series Our People has won the Series Mania Co-Pro Pitch and taken home a €50,000 ($55,000) development prize.

Francesca Orsi Wins Series Mania Award

Ten projects have been selected for the second edition of Seriesmakers, Series Mania’s development lab for feature film directors sidestepping into series production. 

Series Mania brings the world of drama together every year in March in Lilles, France. It has public screenings and competition strands spanning various types of scripted TV. The industry component, the Forum, includes the Co-Production Pitching Sessions, which have become one of the event’s signature elements.

Peak intellectual property doesn’t have the same ring to it as peak TV. Drama based on tried-and-true ideas, however, removes risk for commissioners in challenging international markets and is in vogue. But producers be warned: the best ideas don’t come cheap.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent “A True Novel,” directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, manga-inspired “Issak,” written by Itaru Mizuno (“Double Booking”) and “4 Blocks” Richard Kropf, look like potential highlights at this year’s Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, the centerpiece at Series Mania’s Forum, as its projects expand ever more their geographic compass, here welcoming their first titles co-produced by Japan. They are joined by titles from around the world such as Argentinean Daniel Burman’s “Witness 36,” which won the Series Mania Award at the Berlinale Series Market on Tuesday, and a slice of Vatican noir and which reunites the team of “De Grace,”and The Forum runs March 19-21 during Series Mania, Europe’s biggest dedicated TV festival, which will unspool this year over March 15-22 in Lille, Northern France.

EXCLUSIVE: The Israeli producers and writers guilds have been in talks with Series Mania bosses after the festival’s chief said it was “impossible” for a show from the country to be included in its official selection this year.

France’s Series Mania Festival is teaming with Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) to launch a workshop, Serial  Bridges, in France and Taiwan next year that is aimed at East Asian screenwriters and producers. 

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.

Unspoken,” a war drama series wrapping in a thriller format one of ordinary people’s most relatable nightmares and the urgent relevance of a real-life game-changing conflict, walked off Tuesday night with the Series Mania Forum Best Project Award, the highest-profile industry prize at the biggest TV festival in Europe.  Given to one of 15 drama series projects pitched Tuesday on the first day of proceedings at the Series Mania Forum in its centerpiece Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, the Award carries a €50,000 ($53,500) cash prize, enough to boost seriously continued development on the TV show.  Produced by Match & Spark (Poland), Toy Cinema and 2Brave Productions (Ukraine), the six-episode series is created by Filip Syczyński, who is co-writing with Zhanna Ozirna. 

Marta Balaga French TV festival Series Mania started out playfully with a slew of humorous digs directed at its starry guests during the opening ceremony, including Brian Cox, back in town to hold a masterclass and introduce the latest episode of his smash hit “Succession.” “I didn’t have time to watch Season 3. I have to see my children grow up, Brian!,” exclaimed host Daphné Bürki, before introducing this year’s opening show “Greek Salad” by Cédric Klapisch: “A prequel to ‘Norwegian Omelette,’ always starring Romain Duris,” Bürki joked. Series Mania general director Laurence Herszberg joined in on the fun, giving a shoutout to “Emily in Paris’s” Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, attending with co-star Arnaud Binard: “She became a symbol of a Parisian woman. I hope there isn’t too much weight on your shoulders, Philippine!”

Ben Croll Based in the northern French town of Lille since 2018, Series Mania has emerged as a key showcase for premium series and a spotlight for international creators — though, given the wider forces shaping the TV business, that spotlight has often shone on talent from the same three or four territories. And so, when programming the latest edition, the Series Mania brass looked to widen the field. “This year, we will introduce our attendees to new narrative modes and visual possibilities,” says general director Laurence Herszberg. “Because we’ve discovered so many series from countries that haven’t often attended the major festivals, with creative outputs that are much lesser-known. We want to celebrate them as well.”

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Casey Bloys, chairman and CEO, HBO and HBO Max Content will deliver a keynote at Series Mania’s Lille Dialogues whose one-day summit looks set to take the pulse on a global content industry as content investment flattens and ask how to build a more responsible industry in the future. Marking an early opportunity to hear from streaming platforms after both Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney have announced multi-billion dollar cuts in content investment, the Lille Dialogues also count on a keynote from James Farrell, head of local originals, Prime Video. Further keynotes will be delivered by top execs at France’s biggest free-to-air service, TF1, as well as its energetic public broadcaster France Télévisions and Europe’s biggest pay TV operator, Sky. Jan Mojto, CEO, Beta Film, can be expected to deliver a wide-angled vision of how stories made in Europe can find a market worldwide.

Berlinale Series Market’s annual project pitching event, “Tipping Point” walked off Tuesday morning with the Series Mania Award. The prize is an invitation to the production’s team to present again at the industry centrepiece at next month’s Lille-based get-together, the Series Mania Forum’s Co-Pro Pitching Sessions. “Tipping Point” joins 15 other projects as a sixteenth project presented out of competition in partnership with the Berlinale Co-Production Market.  Set in the extraordinary Svalbard – an archipelago half way between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole, it  turns on a feisty young eco-activist at constant odds with her father, an oil exec, until he is murdered. Teaming with some of his friends to investigate his death, she discovers another man from the one she knew, as she chases a stolen software which could solve climate crisis or destroy the world.

Lisa Joy, the Emmy-nominated writer, director and producer of shows like Westworld and Pushing Daisies, has been selected as Jury President for this year’s Series Mania Festival and its International Competition.

Is there a better way to prove the virtue of the cinematic experience than to get 5,000 people on their feet giving a film a standing ovation?  Cannes Film Festival chief Thierry Fremaux did just that on the opening night of his 14th Lumière Film Festival in Lyon with Louis Garrel’s romantic comedy “The Innocent.”  The movie played in the jam-packed Halle Tony Garnier before a star-studded crowd, including Garrel and his cast, Noémie Merlant and Roschdy Zem, as well as Sebastián Lelio, Costa Gavras, Leila Bekhti, Marina Fois, Lee Chang-dong, Nicole Garcia, Sabine Azema and Damien Bonnard. 

Marti Noxon & Frank Doegler Among Showrunner Speakers For Series Mania And Beta’s Seriesmakers Initiative As It Opens For Submissions

French hip-hop series Le Monde de Demain has scooped the Grand Prize at the Series Mania International Competition.

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

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentSeries Mania Forum, the festival’s industry sidebar, is joining forces with Jan Mojto’s Beta Group to launch Seriesmakers, a creative initiative to support feature film directors venturing into scripted drama.Seriesmakers will select 10 projects which will participate in a tailor-made training program focused on the development of a full pitch deck. Mentored by renowned directors, showrunners, writers and producers, each team will deliver a series bible.Those eligible for Seriesmakers include directors who have have their first or second feature film play in the official selection of A-category film festival.A special jury will award two projects during Series Mania Forum in 2023.

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.

Tim Dams It may only be six months since 2021’s pandemic-delayed edition of Series Mania took place, but the annual Lille, France-based drama festival returns once again but this time in its traditional slot of March 18-25.It’s been “challenging” for the Series Mania team to pull together 2022’s program so soon after last year’s event, says general director Laurence Herszberg.However, it hasn’t been hard to attract projects to the festival. In a reflection of both Series Mania’s growing stature and the buoyant state of the scripted TV market, the event had 331 submissions from 46 different countries to the competition program.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentMo Abudu, CEO of Nigeria’s The EbonyLife Group, will be celebrated by France’s upcoming Series Mania festival with its Women in Series Award. The prize, given in tandem with the European Women’s Audiovisual Network (EWA Network) and advocacy group Pour Les Femmes Dans Les Médias (PFDM), honors a remarkable woman from the audiovisual industry for her vision and leadership.

The Co-Founder of the Ukrainian Film Academy has been named Jury President for this year’s Series Mania.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentOnly six months after its 2021 edition, Series Mania will be back with a sprawling selection, including the world premieres of Michael Hirst’s “Billy The Kid” (pictured), the Israeli series “Fire Dance” and rap music-themed French show “Le monde de demain.”Underscoring the large presence of streamers within the roster, Series Mania will kick off with Netflix’s “Standing Up,” a new comedy series from “Call My Agent” creator and showrunner Fanny Herrero; while Disney Plus’ “Oussekine,” about a tragic case of police brutality in France, will close the festival.The lineup boasts 58 series spanning 21 countries. These were chosen from 331 series.

Naman Ramachandran Series Mania, the annual series jamboree at Lille, France, has revealed 21 high-end series from 19 countries that will be part of its Forum Exclusives strand.Seven of these titles are world premieres, a new record since the creation of the Forum in 2013, Laurence Herszberg, founder and general director of Series Mania (Aug. 26 – Sept.

In one of the first concrete instances of a new virtual TV marketplace building in Europe as a response to the COVID-19 crisis, Series Mania, which cancelled its 2020 edition in Lille, is instead launching Series Mania Digital Platform.

In one of the first concrete instances of a new virtual TV marketplace building in Europe as a response to the COVID-19 crisis, Series Mania, which cancelled its 2020 edition in Lille, is instead launching Series Mania Digital Platform.