Series Mania: 10 Buzz Titles, From David Simon’s ‘We Own This City’ to Michael Hirst’s ‘Billy the Kid’

Refresh for latest…: After setting a new opening day record for a local title in India, S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR (Rise! Roar! Revolt!) continued a strong run in the home market throughout the weekend and picked up an estimated $3.8M from 16 offshore hubs along with $9.5M from North America.

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

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.

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.

The head of France Télévisions Delphine Ernotte Cunci has said she “wouldn’t personally have applied censorship” to Russian news networks.

Major networks are “beginning to see the light” by commissioning entertaining content from Africa, according to EbonyLife Founder Mo Abudu, as the heads of production houses in some of the world’s biggest growing content markets spotlighted the challenge of attracting new talent.

Manori Ravindran International EditorParamount is the latest studio to plant its flag in the ground at French TV drama festival Series Mania, where international CEO Raffaele Annecchino broke down the company’s international distribution and SVOD strategy.In a keynote moderated by Variety’s Italy and West Asia correspondent Nick Vivarelli, Annecchino detailed plans to focus internationally on premium SVOD service Paramount Plus and FAST offering Pluto TV, which has more than 64 million monthly users. Also in the mix to “compete with our ecosystem,” according to Annecchino, is Paramount’s JV with Comcast, SkyShowtime, which is launching in 20 European markets where Paramount Plus won’t be available.By the end of 2022, both Paramount Plus and SkyShowtime will be in more than 60 markets in Europe.

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.

Marta Balaga The conditions are set for an increase in scripted adaptations, argued Tim Westcott of research organization Omdia at Series Mania.According to the research opening the “With Local Content Going Global, What’s the Future of Scripted Formats?” session on Wednesday, the U.S. has been the biggest and “most enthusiastic” buyer of scripted remakes between 2010 and 2022, with South Korea, Turkey and France also following suit.

Anna Marie de la Fuente At a time when journalists are under attack in many parts of the world and the odious term “fake news” has become part of the global lexicon, Spain’s Mediacrest presents the topical drama series “Fake” at a key event in France-based Series Mania, the invitation-only Spain Pitching Breakfast, on Thursday.Leading the charge is industry vet-producer Gustavo Ferrada (“Klaus,” “Nobody Knows Anybody”), Mediacrest’s executive director of fiction, who joined the fast-rising Spanish production company in January.“Fake” is one of five selected projects from leading Spanish production companies seeking European partners, comprising Fedent España, Friki Films, Onza, Vertice 360 and Mediacrest. Created in-house by Mediacrest’s deputy head of fiction, Carlos Molinero and senior scriptwriter Nicolás Romero, the Strasbourg-based series of six 52-minute episodes follows a high-powered couple as their once idyllic relationship turns toxic.

HBO Max EMEA Boss Anthony Root has set out his team’s stall to “broaden the appeal” of the streamer “beyond the die hard Euphoria fan.”

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentTicking multiple boxes, and a competition frontrunner,  “Paradys” walked off on Tuesday night with the Series Mania Forum Best Project Award, the biggest industry plaudit at one of Europe’s largest TV festivals.A novel crime drama “Paradys” is produced by South Africa’s Quizzical Pictures and Keshet International, which also handles international distribution.

The Tudors and Vikings creator Michael Hirst has branded his upcoming big budget Billy the Kid drama a “new kind of western.”

Marta Balaga “Vikings” creator Michael Hirst takes on his childhood hero in “Billy the Kid.” Starring Tom Blyth as the legendary gunslinger, born Henry McCarty, the eight-episode series – co-produced by Epix Studios and MGM International Television Productions, in association with Viaplay – is currently screening at French TV festival Series Mania ahead of its April 24 premiere.“It’s probably true that you shouldn’t meet your heroes; I have met a couple of mine and it didn’t go particularly well. But what I want more than anything else is for people to love this Billy,” Hirst tells Variety in Lille.“Michael [Wright, president of Epix] allowed me to tell a story I wanted to tell, which doesn’t happen very often.

Frank Doelger, who was an executive producer on Game Of Thrones between 2011 and 2019, provided an update on his new company in Germany during a Series Mania panel today.

EXCLUSIVE: Call My Agent! and Marianne writer Quoc Dang Tran has struck a first-look deal with Universal International Studios, becoming the first French writer to sign such a deal with a major studio.

Ed Meza @edmezavarIn his latest work, which was being singled out for praise on the first day of Malaga’s Spanish Screenings, Imanol Uribe recounts the fateful story of Lucia Cerna, the only witness to the 1989 massacre in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests and two other people by a U.S.-trained death squad at a university residence in San Salvador.“What Lucia Saw” (“Llegaron de Noche”) focuses on the story of Lucia and her husband Jorge, who, with the help of church officials and Spanish and French diplomats, are spirited out of the country to Miami, where they hope to find safe haven. Once in the U.S., however, they fall into the clutches of the FBI and a Salvadoran colonel, who interrogate the couple in an effort to discredit Lucia’s testimony.

Marta Balaga Just in time for the 20th anniversary of “The Wire,” celebrated during the opening of French TV festival Series Mania currently unspooling in Lille, David Simon returns to Baltimore with HBO’s miniseries “We Own This City.”Co-created with George Pelecanos and directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, it focuses on true events described in Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton’s nonfiction book, chronicling the inner workings of the Gun Trace Task Force: the Baltimore Police Department unit charged with racketeering, robbery, extortion and overtime fraud in 2017.Jon Bernthal and Baltimore native Josh Charles star – as disgraced Sgt. Wayne Jenkins and GTTF detective Daniel Hersl respectively – as well as “Succession’s” Dagmara Domińczyk, McKinley Belcher III, Jamie Hector and Wunmi Mosaku.