RTL Group Buys Out Disney From Kids Network Super RTL – Global Bulletin

Amazon is taking German coming-of-age drama We Children From Bahnhof Zoo global. The coming-of-age series, a modern-day update of the bestselling Berlin-set memoir Christiane F., is produced by Constantin Television and Amazon Studios in Germany.

Ed Meza @edmezavarDavid Hasselhoff is heading to Germany to star in a comedy spy series produced by Christian Alvart’s Berlin-based Syrreal Entertainment in what will be the first project from the company’s new international first-look deal with CBS Studios.A straight-to-series order for Mediengruppe RTL’s SVOD platform TVNow, “Ze Network” sees Hasselhoff playing himself as he travels to Germany to headline a stage production in what he believes is a major theater in East Berlin, only to

CBS Studios and German producer Syrreal Entertainment are teaming to create a series for RTL streamer TV Now in which David Hasselhoff will star as himself in a fictional international conspiracy story.

Naman Ramachandran In today’s Global Bulletin, musical “Anything Goes” sets London revival; iZen signs diversity pact with LineLight; BET launches in Brazil; MTV’s “True Life Crime” gets U.K. version; and Banijay’s refreshed “Changing Rooms” format returns to Germany and U.K.Cole Porter and P.G. Wodehouse’s classic musical “Anything Goes,” will open at London’s Barbican Theatre from July 23 for a 12-week summer engagement.

Naman Ramachandran In today’s Global Bulletin, U.K.

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentSales agency Pony Canyon is bringing some of the biggest upcoming Japanese live-action films to FilMart, including genre titles with global ambitions.One is “Office Royale,” whose title references the 2000 Fukasaku Kinji classic “Battle Royale,” but is an action comedy scripted by popular funnyman Bakarhythm and directed by TV drama veteran Seki Kazuaki. Nakano Mei (“Park”) stars as an ordinary “office lady” (OL or clerk) in a humdrum company.

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentV6, a male idol supergroup associated with the once all-powerful Johnny & Associates agency, has announced its break-up, effective Nov. 1.

Sony Pictures Classics has taken world rights – excluding UK, France and Germany – to The Lost Leonardo, the feature documentary directed by Andreas Koefoed about the remarkable story behind the most expensive painting ever sold.

Naman Ramachandran U.K. production funding and distribution agency Drive has sold two-part documentary series “The Diana Interview: Revenge of a Princess” to Channel Nine in Australia, REELZ in the U.S., TV 2 in Norway, Servus TV in Austria, RTL Netherlands and TVNOW in Germany, to broadcast this year.Produced by Minnow Films for U.K.

EXCLUSIVE: Craig Plestis, the man who brought Korean format The Masked Singer to the U.S., has struck a deal with Japan’s Tokyo Broadcasting System Television to create unscripted formats for the U.S. and global markets.

Jamie Lang In today’s Global Bulletin, Highland Film Group secures distribution in key territories for Kevin Bacon-starrer “One Way,” “Germany’s Next Top Model” gets a five-season renewal, ITV brings back “The Cube,” launches “Stack It!” and picks up co-producers for “A Year on Planet Earth,” Amazon Prime Video unveils premiere details for “Toofaan,” Filmzie and Netgem TV team in the U.K., Mopar Studios enlists U.K.

IFC Films has acquired U.S. rights to Jacques Audiard’s upcoming film “Paris, 13th District” (Les Olympiades) during the virtual European Film Market.

RTL Group has agreed to buy out the Walt Disney Co.'s stake in the German kids channel Super RTL. The Cologne-based free-to-air network — Europe's largest commercial children's channel — was founded in 1999 as a 50-50 joint venture between RTL's German TV division, RTL Deutschland, and BVI Television Investments, Inc., a unit of Disney.

Disney is continuing its retreat from traditional television by selling its stake in German family channel Super RTL.

Ed Meza @edmezavarWith a strong showing at this year’s Berlin Film Festival that includes the directorial debut of Daniel Brühl and new works by Maria Schrader and Dominik Graf in competition, German films are set to garner much of the spotlight at the accompanying European Film Market.Brühl, who is set to reprise his role as the vengeful Helmut Zemo in the upcoming Marvel series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” explores the contradictions of present-day Berlin in “Next Door.” The seemingly

Three bright, talented young people in their 20s struggle to find their place in a rotten society, scarred by Germany’s defeat in World War I and menaced by the rising tide of Nazism, in Fabian — Going to the Dogs (Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde.) This second screen adaptation of Erich Kastner’s now classic 1931 novel (the first was directed by Wolf Gremm in 1980) marks a stylistically daring attempt to capture the zeitgeist by director Dominik Graf, who returns to Berlin competition where

Christopher Vourlias Hungarian broadcaster RTL Klub has boarded “Balaton Brigade,” a Cold War spy drama set on the shores of Hungary’s Lake Balaton in the summer of ’86, Variety has learned exclusively.