Vice, France’s M6, Strike Content Partnership Deal – Global Bulletin

Bolton has lost out on hosting a Rugby League World Cup quarter-final game this November. The match will now take place in Warrington, Cheshire, organisers have announced.

Banijay Launches French Format Fund

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorThere’s a new contender in the arena.As Discovery begins its new era of operating Warner Bros., HBO and Turner, all eyes are on how the new company will navigate the media sector’s streaming wars with thousands of hours of content from popular TV brands like TLC, TBS, TNT, CNN and HBO. Behind that effort, however, could look a new sports giant that is poised to add another deep-pocketed player vying for major league negotiations that it previously ignored.Warner Bros.

Selome Hailu Spencer Boldman has been cast in the recurring role of Lance McCrae in “Immigrant,” Hulu’s upcoming limited series based on the story of Chippendales founder Somen “Steve” Banerjee (Kumail Nanjiani).The series, which is written, executive produced and co-showrun by Robert Siegel, follows Banerjee’s darkly comedic, crime-ridden journey as an Indian-American immigrant creating what became a wildly popular male revue show.Lance McCrae is described as “the ultimate specimen” and the hottest Chippendales dancer of them all. He is also the inspiration and star of choreographer Nick De Noia’s (Murray Bartlett) greatest, most ambitious routine yet.Along with Nanjiani and Bartlett, previously announced cast members include Andrew Rannells, Dan Stevens, Juliette Lewis, Robin De Jesús, Annaleigh Ashford, Quentin Plair and Nicola Peltz.

Naman Ramachandran London-based Endeavor Content has closed several international territories on high profile crime drama “Tokyo Vice” (8 x 60’), which has a pilot episode directed by Michael Mann.Handling global sales on the project, Endeavor Content has inked deals with Crave (Canada), Canal Plus (France), Paramount Plus (Australia) and OSN Plus (West Asia and Northern Africa).The series was commissioned by HBO Max in the U.S. and by Wowow, Japan’s leading premium pay-TV broadcaster, with Endeavor as co-producer. It will also debut on HBO Max (Latin America and EMEA) and HBO Go (Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong) and Starzplay (Austria, Germany, German-speaking Switzerland, Ireland and the U.K.).

Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we shine a spotlight on key executives and companies outside of the U.S. shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week, we’re speaking to Romain Bessi, CEO of French group Newen Studios. The company, which is producing Liaison, the first English and French language original for Apple TV+, is ramping up its global ambitions and Bessi takes us through the overall strategy. 

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentProminent Turkish sales company Global Agency, which brought milestone TV series “Magnificent Century” to the world, has more recently been scoring with formats, such as their singing talent show “Good Singers” that has been a primetime hit on TF1 in France.Now the Istanbul-based company is at MipTV with a new singing show called “Beat Me If You Can,” which is already a hit in Saudi Arabia where Saudi broadcaster SBC has just commissioned a second season.“When I established Global Agency 15 years ago we started with formats,” says Global Agency chief Izzet Pinto. During its first two years his company was actually just a format distributor.

Refresh for latest…: New blood in the form of Sony’s Jared Leto-fronted Morbius led the global box office this weekend with an $84M debut, while Paramount’s Sonic The Hedgehog 2 got off to a booming $25.5M start from its first 31 offshore markets. Warner Bros/DC also has something to crow about as The Batman topped $700M worldwide.

There’s nothing like on-screen text over a crystal-clear establishing shot to tell you exactly how stupid a filmmaker thinks their audience is. Sometimes it’s the big, bold “PARIS, FRANCE” chyron over an aerial shot of the Eiffel Tower; sometimes we get a widescreen image of the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Capital building with a helpful “WASHINGTON, D.C.” In “Morbius,” our title character is explaining to his best friend that an experimental procedure has to be performed in international waters, after which director Daniel Espinoza cuts to a giant shipping boat, in the middle of the ocean, with the words “INTERNATIONAL WATERS, EASTERN SEABOARD” plastered on the bottom of the screen.

Naman Ramachandran Concert for Ukraine, the fundraising event for the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal on Tuesday, saw £13.4 million ($17.6 million) raised from sponsorship, ad revenue, ticket sales and public donations. The two-hour event, which was live from the Resorts World Arena Birmingham, and broadcast exclusively on ITV and STV, featured performances from Anne-Marie, Becky Hill, Camila Cabello, Nile Rogers & Chic, Ed Sheeran, Emeli Sandé, Gregory Porter, Jamala, The Kingdom Choir, Manic Street Preachers, Nicola Benedetti, Snow Patrol and Tom Odell.A highpoint of the evening was a violin performance, which saw the recent viral video of young violinist Illia Bondarenko playing the Ukrainian folk song “Verbovaya Doschechka” from a basement shelter along with 94 violinists from around the world, joined up with a live performance in the room by Nicola Benedetti.

BTS, Adele and Taylor Swift contributing to a £19.5billion increase.According to industry trading body International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in a new report published Tuesday (March 22), revenues for global recorded music grew by 18.5 per cent in 2021, totalling £19.63billion (US$25.9billion), largely driven by increases in paid subscription streaming.The report stipulates there were 523million users of paid subscription accounts at the end of 2021 – up from 443million in 2020 – generating an increase of 21.9 per cent, or £9.32billion (US$12.3billion).Streaming in 2021 accounted for 65 per cent of total revenues, while downloads equated to four per cent, 19 per cent made up by CDs, vinyl and cassettes.According to IFPI, this means the industry is in its seventh consecutive year of growth, IFPI chief executive Frances Moore told the BBC: “We lived through that dire period after 1999 where the industry declined by 40 per cent.Recorded music revenues grew in every region in 2021. Asia grew by 16.1 per cent, with South Korean superstars BTS the biggest-selling act for the second consecutive year.After being named 2020’s second-biggest seller, Taylor Swift achieved the same position in 2021, with Adele, having released her fourth studio album, ’30’, in November, sold 4.7million copies, making it the most popular album overall.Similar results were seen in Europe – the world’s second-largest music region – with a growth of 15.4 per cent up from 3.2 per cent.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItaly’s Lux Vide, the production company behind “Medici” and financial thriller “Devils,” is now scoring a global hit with its medical procedural “Doc,” the second season of which had its French launch at the Series Mania fest.“Doc,” which turns on a prominent physician who, following a head injury, suffers a permanent partial memory loss but still finds a new way to practice his profession, has been sold as a ready made to a slew of territories, including Australia, Canada, Venezuela, the Netherlands and Nigeria. The Italian version has already aired in France (TF1), Australia (SBS), Spain (AXN) and Portugal (AXN), while a local adaptation played in the Czech Republic.

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.

Guy Lodge Film CriticA decade ago, when his documentary “How to Survive a Plague” rode a wave of festival acclaim to an Oscar nomination, journalist-turned-filmmaker David France probably didn’t imagine that a similarly titled quasi-sequel was in the cards. A superb overview of the early years of HIV-AIDS activism in the face of political indifference and ineptitude — ultimately leading to game-changing medication and pharmaceutical policy change — that film has given France a solid grounding for another feature-length study of very different if somewhat comparable global health crisis, centered on the COVID-19 pandemic and the extraordinarily accelerated scientific race for a solution.Researched and assembled with his characteristic intelligence and thoroughness, “How to Survive a Pandemic” serves as both a valuable potted history of the last two years of medical tumult and relief, and a critical progress report marking work yet to be done. Hardly the first high-profile documentary on the pandemic, but the most substantial yet to focus specifically on the trajectory of the vaccine, France’s film is assured a receptive audience when it bows on HBO next week, following docfest premiere slots in Thessaloniki and Copenhagen.

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.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentParamount Plus, which is the global streaming service of recently rebranded Paramount — formerly ViacomCBS — has forged a three-year partnership with Gaumont, the storied French studio behind Netflix’s “Lupin” and “Narcos,” to jointly produce a slate of high-end original shows for its growing subscribers around the world.Under the partnership Gaumont will produce these series in association with Paramount’s international studio, VIS. The shows will be part of Paramount Plus’s stated plans to green light 50 new non-U.S.

Banijay Germany Hires

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe global recorded music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by growth in paid subscription streaming, according to IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), the organization that represents the recorded music industry worldwide. Figures released Tuesday in IFPI’s Global Music Report show total revenues for 2021 were $25.9 billion.While the free version of the report does not attach numbers to all of the rankings, they’re pretty fascinating anyway:The top 10 global artists, based on “consumption across all formats and all countries, weighted based on the value of each method of consumption,” are:The top 10 global digital singles were: The top 10 all-format albums were:And, for good measure, the top-selling vinyl titles across the world were:Digging into the data, the report notes that paid subscription streaming revenues increased by 21.9% to $12.3 billion, with 523 million users of paid subscription accounts at the end of 2021.

Manori Ravindran International EditorUniversal International Studios has struck a first-look deal with “Call My Agent!” and “Parallèles” writer Quoc Dang Tran as it continues a charm offensive directed at international creators.UIS has inked a first-look deal with the French-Vietnamese writer and showrunner who will develop and produce English and French-language television projects with the studio for the global market. French-language series will be co-produced with the “Marianne” writer’s recently formed label, Daïmôn Films.“He really leads from themes that speak to his heart versus responding to the industry, so we’re excited to do business with a creator who listens to their gut instead of just what the network is mandating,” Beatrice Springborn, president of Universal International Studios, tells Variety ahead of a keynote at French TV festival Series Mania.

Warner Bros/DC’s The Batman has winged its way past the half a billion dollar mark worldwide to become the fourth highest-grossing studio release of the pandemic era. The global total is $505.8M through Wednesday, and there’s still plenty of gas left in the Batmobile.