Tull Stories Nabs Alief-Backed Tallinn Winner ‘Driving Mum,’ for U.K. as Aurora Films Locks Poland (EXCLUSIVE)

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Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic It’s an interesting, telling choice that “Up Here,” Hulu’s new musical sitcom starring Mae Whitman and Carlos Valdes, is set in 1999. Not merely is the turn of the century, according to the roughly 20-year nostalgia cycle, currently in vogue, but the particular sort of moment the Y2K era was lends texture and meaning to the story “Up Here” tells. Assaying a time just before the social web allowed loners to find one another, “Up Here” presents a winning and lovely pair of oddballs singing their hearts out, in disbelief at having found one another. Here, Whitman plays Lindsay, who was lectured in childhood to shield her spiky and odd side from peers in order to be liked. “You show people the nice parts, because believe me, that’s all that people want to see,” her mother (Katie Finneran) tells her; grown up, she’s terrified to show vulnerability at all.

Joe Otterson TV Reporter HBO Max is developing a drama series based on the life of Heidi Fleiss, Variety has learned exclusively. The untitled series hails from writer and executive producer Maggie Cohn, who most recently served as the co-showrunner on HBO Max’s critically acclaimed limited series “The Staircase.” Fleiss will serve as a consultant on the project. Emma Tillinger Koskoff (“Joker,” The Irishman”) of First Love Films will also executive produce, along with Alex Goldstone (“Dickinson”) for Anonymous Content, Bill Gerber (“Muhammed Ali,” “A Star Is Born”) of Gerber Pictures, and David Bernon, Paul Bernon, and Sam Slater of Burn Later Productions (“Support the Girls,” “Mile 22,” “Drinking Buddies”).

BreAnna Bell Fans of Matthew Quirk’s novel “The Night Agent” might be surprised to see a few creative changes in Shawn Ryan’s series adaptation on Netflix. For instance, not only is there the addition of several new players — including Eve Harlow, who portrays Ellen, an opposing cutthroat spy — but Ryan, who serves as showrunner and executive producer, said Rose (Lucianne Buchanan) and Peter’s (Gabriel Basso) love story will be deeply explored throughout the political thriller’s 10 episodes. The series follows FBI agent Peter Sutherland, who while working in the basement of the White House monitoring an emergency line that rarely rings, answers a call that plunges him into a deadly conspiracy involving a mole in America’s executive mansion.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent DR Sales has boarded “Behind Every Man,” an off-beat restaurant drama from Julie Rudbæk and Jesper Zuschlag, the actors-turned-screenwriters duo whose credits include “Love You For Now” (“29”). Produced by Drive Studios for the Danish broadcaster DR Drama, “Behind Every Man” takes place at a high-end restaurant in Copenhagen and explores power struggles in that hectic work environment. The show’s creators, Rudbæk and Zuschlag, will also take on the lead roles as Michael and Nadia. The cast is completed by prominent Nordic talent, including Ann Eleonora Jørgensen (“Ride Upon The Storm,” “The Killing”) and Camilla Lau (“Those Who Kill,” “Ride Upon The Storm”).

Adam Sandler is looking back as his career in comedy is celebrated with a very special honor.Sandler walked the carpet outside the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, ahead of being honored with the 24th Annual Mark Twain Prize For American Humor.Sandler spoke with ET's Rachel Smith on the carpet, and reflected on his very first big screen role in a 1989 comedy, which he shot when he was 22 years old, and pre-dated his years on .«That was probably the last time I was excited about the shirt coming off,» Sandler joked about his role as Shecky Moskowitz, an inexperienced stand-up comic on a cruise ship.

Emiliano De Pablos The Walt Disney Co.’s Star Distribution has taken Latin American distribution rights to Argentine writer-director Pablo Solarz’s coming-of-age film “Desperté con un sueño” (“I Woke Up with a Dream”) An Argentina-Uruguay co-production, teaming Buenos Aires-based Pampa Films and Aramos Cine with Montevideo’s Mutante Cine and Bocacha Films, “I Woke Up with a Dream” screened March 14 at the Málaga Film Festival’s main competition. Top Argentine producer Pablo Bossi’s Madrid-based company Gloriamundi is handling “I Woke Up with a Dream” rights outside Latin America.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Tull Stories has acquired the BIFA-winning feature film “Our River…Our Sky,” which will be released in U.K. cinemas in September. The film won Best Ensemble Performance at the 2022 British Independent Film Awards and was nominated for two other BIFA awards, including Best Casting (Leila Bertrand) and Best Supporting Performance (Zainab Joda). “Our River…Our Sky” features intersecting individual stories set in Baghdad, Iraq, at a time of intense sectarian violence and nightly curfews, unfolding over the last week of 2006 and culminating in the sudden execution of Saddam Hussein.

Selling Sunset is set to be an intense one. Chrishell Stause and her cast better have a therapist on speed dial. The Netflix star, and her date, G Flip, spoke with ET’s Cassie DiLaura at Elton John’s AIDS Foundation Oscars Party 2023 on Sunday and opened up about the upcoming season and the importance of the event. «We're actually season six in the can and you'll hear an announcement about that soon, but that’s done and we’re filming seven now.

Holly Jones Drawing from personal experience and driven by the lack of real talk around sexuality, Spanish author Beatriz de Silva dove into filmmaking with her debut “Tula,” which bowed globally at the Houston International Film Festival, winning Gold for Best Comedy Short.  The project has since garnered large festival buzz, stacked awards and was among contenders placed on the Oscars shortlist from 200 entries. Shot in the Basque Country and taking advantage of the region’s robust creative initiatives, the film offers a humorous take on sexual miseducation and those that step in to enlighten our adolescence when parents, teachers and peers fail miserably.

Called out! Amid filming for Selling Sunset season 6, star Chrishell Stause has publicly called out the production team’s tricks.

EXCLUSIVE: BET+ has greenlit the biopic The First Lady of BMF: The Tonesa Welch Story inspired by the true life of Detroit native Tonesa Welch, which was first chronicled in American Gangster: Trap Queens, also from the streamer.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian sales company True Colours has closed a raft of sales following Berlin’s European Film Market. Italy’s box office hit “La Stranezza” (“Strangeness”) got picked up for a dozen territories and queer romantic drama “Norwegian Dream” also sold widely, including to North America. Directed by Roberto Andò, “Strangeness” (pictured) toplines Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) as Nobel-prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello. This tragicomic period piece about how Pirandello found inspiration to write his masterpiece “Six Characters in Search of an Author” has been a sleeper hit at the Italian box office, coming from nowhere to pull more than €5.5 million ($5.8 million) and becoming the local 2022 box office champ.

Making some changes. Hallmark announced a prequel Aurora Teagarden film starring Skyler Samuels in the titular role after Candace Cameron Bure‘s departure from the network.

Hallmark Movies & Mysteries will continue its popular Aurora Teagarden Mysteries without longtime star Candace Cameron Bure. It has green-lit the prequel Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Something New that will premiere later this year.

Emily Longeretta Hallmark Movies & Mysteries is bringing back “Aurora Teagarden Mysteries” with a new Aurora. On Thursday, the network announced the return of the franchise with a new prequel series, “Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Something New,” set to premiere later this year. Skyler Samuels will star as young Aurora, while Evan Roderick will play young Arthur. Marilu Henner will return as Aida Teagarden. “Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Something New” is set after Aurora has graduated college and returns home in Lawrenceton. “While her mother, Aida, struggles to keep her newfound real estate business, Aurora supports herself by working as a teacher’s assistant in a crime fiction class, and waitresses at the local diner at night, where she shares her love of researching true crime with her friend Sally and police officer Arthur,” Hallmark’s press release reads. “When Sally’s fiancé doesn’t show up at their wedding rehearsal, Maid of Honor Aurora gets Arthur to help her search for him. When they discover a body, everyone assumes it is Sally’s tardy groom, but when it turns out to be someone else, Sally’s fiancé becomes the main suspect.”

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Autlook Filmsales has sold “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood,” which won the directing award for Anna Hints in the World Cinema Documentary section at Sundance, to more than 20 territories in North America, Europe and Australia. Deals are confirmed with Neue Visionen in Germany, Trigon in Switzerland, Against Gravity in Poland, Fidalgo in Norway, Ost For Paradise in Denmark, Vedetta in Benelux, Filmtrade in Greece and Cyprus, FilmIn in Spain, Alambique in Portugal, Filmladen in Austria, Pasaka Films in Lithuania, Artcam in Czech Rep. and Slovak Rep., Best Film in Latvia, Mozinet in Hungary, and Madman in Australia and New Zealand. The rights in U.S. have been picked up by Greenwich Entertainment and in Canada by Sherry Media Group. The theatrical release in Estonia is by ACME Film.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Sideshow and Janus Films have bought North American rights for “Orlando, My Political Biography,” Paul B. Preciado’s film which won four awards at the Berlinale. In “Orlando, My Political Biography,” Preciado sheds light on Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando,” the first novel in which the main character changes sex in the middle of the story.  A century later, Preciado, who is a trans writer and activist, decides to send a film letter to Woolf, telling her that Orlando has come out of her fiction and is living a life she could have never imagined. Preciado organizes a casting and gathers 26 contemporary trans and non-binary people, from 8 to 70 years old, who embody Orlando.

EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based Alpha Violet has posted fresh sales on Mexican director Lila Avilés’s family drama Tótem, which world premiered in competition at the Berlinale to acclaim in February.

EXCLUSIVE: The Match Factory has unveiled a slew of deals for German director Christian Petzold’s Berlin Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize winner Afire.