Actualités

Exclusive: Lifetime is approaching its 40th anniversary and it’s launching a number of unscripted series to celebrate.

The A+E Networks-owned cabler has ordered Prison Brides and I Wasn’t Expecting a Baby! as part of its new non-scripted slate.

The series, which will launch in the first quarter of 2024, join long running series such as Married at First Sight as well as previously announced shows such as The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, Casey Anthony’s Parents: The Lie Detector Test and Theresa Caputo: Raising Spirits.

Prison Brides follows women who find love in locked up places and I Wasn’t Expecting a Baby! recounts the stories of women who only discovered they were pregnant as they are about to give birth.

Prison Brides follows seven women from around the world who believe they have found their soulmates in the most unexpected of places, American prisons. While...

Netflix Greenlights Swedish Film ‘A Day And A Half’ From ‘Chernobyl’ Star Fares Fares

Netflix has greenlit A Day and a Half, a Swedish action film directed by, written by and starring Chernobyl and Westworld star Fares Fares. Fares will play police officer Lukas, tracking down leads Artan (Alexej Manvelov) and Louise (Alma Pöysti), a divorced couple on an emotionally-charged road trip when Artan takes Louise hostage to reunite with his daughter. The journey takes them through rural Sweden during a hot summer, all while having police on their heels. Warner Bros. International TV Production is producing and Fares is also writing alongside Peter Smirnakos. Netflix Director of Film, Nordics, Claire Willats, called A Day and a Half “in essence an intimate story about loss, lies, betrayals, love, prejudice and family.” Earlier this week, Amazon Prime Video ordered its debut Nordic original TV series Toppen, which recently entered production.

Screenbound...

Cannes

Ava Cahen will become the artistic director of Critics’ Week at Cannes from Aug. 1, taking over from Charles Tesson.

Cahen founded the magazine Clap in 2014 and FrenchMania in 2017 along with the Woody Club she created in 2016. She has been a commentator for the TV program “Le Cercle” on Canal Plus since 2014 and since 2019 for “Une heure en séries,” a radio show on France Inter. She has published several books on cinema and series including “Woody Allen Profession Cynique” (2015), “Cheforama” (2017) and “Game of Thrones” (2019).

In 2016, at 30, Cahen became the youngest selection committee member in the history of Critics’ Week and joined the French Union of Film Critics. She also lectures at Nanterre Paris X University.

Sales

Producer Sean O’Kelly (“Iron Sky”) has teamed with veteran sales agent Marc Bikindou to launch Brilliant Pictures, a venture encompassing production, finance, sales and distribution for film and TV with offices in London and Rome,...

In this week’s International TV Newswire Variety catches you up on Canal Plus Group’s appointment of Anna Marsh as CEO of Studiocanal, Dazn’s champion’s league coup in Germany, HBO’s new Polish original “The Thaw,” new London factual production company Big Little Fish and Starzplay’s Middle Eastern partnership with Image Nation Abu Dhabi.

Anna Marsh Named Studiocanal CEO

The glass ceiling has suddenly risen a notch in Europe. This week, France’s Canal Plus Group announced that Anna Marsh will take over from Didier Lupfer as the CEO of Studiocanal, which Cpg owns 100%..

That’s no ordinary job. A production-distribution-sales combo, Studiocanal runs theatrical direct distribution operations for its films in the U.K., France, Germany and Australia/New Zealand, making it is Europe’s biggest non-studio theatrical distributor. Under Marsh, its film international sales team for other territories has become one of only four...

Former Discovery executives Mark Procter and Steve Jones have launched non-scripted production company Big Little Fish.

The pair have established the London-based producer and have begun developing two documentary projects. They are working on Hitler’s Women: The Forgotten Nazis and Breaking Dad.

Hitler’s Women: The Forgotten Nazis will utilize archive and a new crop of historians and experts including James Wyllie, author of recently published Nazi Wives to analyze the women behind the infamous men at the head of the Third Reich. Wyllie will act as consultant and on-screen contributor for the series.

Breaking Dad (w/t) recounts the true story of Richard Lubbock, who went from mild-mannered family-man to drug kingpin during the early noughties. Dubbed ‘the UK’s Walter White’, police claimed he was Britain’s biggest ever crystal meth dealer at the time of his arrest in 2009. Big Little Fish has secured the exclusive story...