Walter Presents Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

EXCLUSIVE: Fox Entertainment has struck a first-of-its-kind drama development deal with two UK production companies, Walter Iuzzolino‘s Eagle Eye and The Serial Killer’s Wife producer Clapperboard.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Beta Film has sold more than 100 hours of drama series to PBS Distribution-backed Walter Presents for the U.S., and Channel 4-backed Walter Presents for the U.K. Five seasons of Italy’s gritty crime series “Rocco Schiavone” as well as Canadian mystery dramas “The Wall – The Chateau Murder” and “The Wall – The Orchard” will be available in both territories.

Emiliano De Pablos Spanish public broadcaster RTVE has struck a VOD deal with Walter Presents to bring noir thriller series “Sequía” (“The Drought”) to the U.S, U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Canada. The suspense series is co-produced by Spanish and Portuguese public broadcasters RTVE and RTP, in collaboration with Atlantia Media and Coral Europa.  “The Drought” is set in a small submerged village on the Spanish-Portuguese border that re-emerges from a huge dam built in the 1990s after a severe drought. Two skeletons are also unearthed, revealing evidence of a bloody crime. 

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent “Mobile 101, a Nokia Story,” a series about the dramatic rise and fall of the Finnish phone company, has been acquired by Disney+ and Walter Presents in multiple territories. The series was produced by Finland’s Rabbit Films and is represented in international markets by the outfit. The six-part series, which sheds light on how a small Finnish company specializing in rubber boots became the world’s biggest mobile manufacturer at the turn of the 21st century, has been picked by Disney+ Italy, Netherlands and Belgium. Walter Presents, meanwhile, bought it for the UK & Ireland. RUV Iceland has also acquired season one of the series.

Liza Foreman CANNES  — TV series “Agatha Christie’s Hjerson” has been picked up by streamer Topic for North America and by the Australian channel SBS, ZDF Studios announced Tuesday at Cannes Mipcom trade fair.  “Agatha Christie’s Hjerson” is being sold as both a 45-minute series and four feature-length stories.  Topic has taken exclusive rights for the U.S. and Canada. SBS, a multicultural Australian broadcaster, has also closed an exclusive deal for the drama series. Additionally, ZDF Studios has licensed the program to VOD platforms  Google Play, iTunes, Amazon, Deutsche Telekom and Huawei for German speaking territories, as well as Germany’s public broadcaster, ZDF. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Eagle Eye Drama, the U.K. scripted production indie headed by Walter Iuzzolino that is known for hit TV shows such the British remake of Belgium’s “Professor T” have announced the launch of Belgium-based production company Happy Duck Films.  Eagle Eye, which was set up by Iuzzolino and other founders of his foreign-language drama streaming service Walter Presents, have now teamed up with Belgian director Dries Vos who directed the “Professor T” remake and local line producer Hiskia Van Aert (“Undercover,” “Rough Justice”) to set up this new venture. Happy Duck Films will be based in the Belgian region of Flanders and will produce a wide range of English language titles “with creative talent from Flanders and beyond,” a statement said. No projects were announced.

Manori Ravindran International EditorChannel 4 has renewed the Lesley Sharp-fronted crime thriller “Before We Die” — an English adaptation of a Swedish series, produced by the team behind Walter Presents.Sharp will return as detective Hannah Laing, who joins forces with maverick detective Billy Murdoch (Vincent Regan) in a desperate bid to protect her son Christian (Gibson). Season 2 won’t follow the same storyline as its Swedish counterpart, which aired in 2019, but will see Hannah pitched directly against Dubravka, played by Kazia Pelka, the matriarch at the head of the Mimica Croatian crime family.The adaptation is produced by Eagle Eye Drama, which was formed in late 2019 by Walter Iuzzolino, Jo McGrath and Jason Thorp, the creative team behind the global drama company Walter Presents.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentWalter Presents has inked a two-year deal with Scandinavian streaming service C More to launch a curated selection of international scripted series across Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland.Walter Presents, which specializes in premium foreign-language programming, will initially launch on C More with an 80-hour collection comprising eight first-run and exclusive series, including the Dutch psychological thriller “The Blood Pact”; Italian crime

Walter Presents, a foreign-language drama streamer, launched in the UK in 2016 as a joint venture with Channel 4.

Ronin and Californication star Natascha McElhone is to headline a period drama set on the Italian Riviera, which has pre-sold to ITV/BritBox (UK), Sky Italia (Italy), and Foxtel (Australia). Titled Hotel Portofino, PBS Distribution has taken North American rights.

Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and HBO Max may hog all the headlines, but just below the 800-pound gorillas of the streaming world, an army of smaller regional and specialty platforms are carving out online niches in the booming world of binge TV.

Jake Kanter International TV EditorThe Crown star Helena Bonham Carter is to narrate an animated Channel 4 adaptation of Clown, a kids story written and illustrated by Sir Quentin Blake.Channel 4 has commissioned Eagle Eye Drama, the production company recently launched by the team behind global drama streamer Walter Presents, to make the 30-minute special using hand-drawn animation techniques.Quentin Blake’s Clown will bring to life the adventures of a little toy clown, thrown away with a load

Naman Ramachandran Boutique international streamer Walter Presents has inked a two-year deal with Russian premium SVOD service Start, and will be available in the territory from early July.Walter Presents, which specializes in non-English language programming, will launch on the service with a 100-hour collection encompassing 11 first-run series. This will grow to 400 hours.

By Elsa Keslassy

By Peter White