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Galvanized by pre-sales to France, Germany and Spain on awaited Icelandic crime series “Reykjavik Fusion,” Erik Barmack’s ahead of the game L.A-based Wild Sheep Content has boarded “Good Bones,” a New Zealand murder mystery series.

Wild Sheep by Barmack, a former Netflix head of international originals with oversight over “The Witcher,” “Casa de Papel,” “Kingdom” and “Sacred Games,” will co-produce “Good Bones,” with Luminous Beast.

One of New Zealand most in-demand new production companies Luminous Beast burst on the scene with Sky Originals series “INSiDE,” a 2021 International Emmy winner, and then “After the Party,” picked up by the U.K.’s Channel 4, and whose lead performance by Robyn Malcom was hailed by The Guardian as “among the best television portrayals in years, from anywhere in the world.”

Backed by The Mediapro Studio, Wild Sheep will also handle international distribution.

“Good Bones” is now funded by Sky New Zealand and Wild Sheep Content.

Exclusive: Warner Bros Discovery’s New Zealand arm has boarded The Sanctuary, an upcoming comedy series from LA’s Happy Accidents and Kiwi producer Kevin & Co.

The eight-part show, from writing duo Laura Daniel and Joseph Moore, will air on Wbd’s free-to-air network Three and VOD service ThreeNow following the deal.

Series has just been greenlit in the final Nz On Air funding round of this year, and production is set to begin early next year.

The Sanctuary follows Hunter, an eccentric American billionaire hiding in New Zealand. Synopsis reads: “After selling an innocuous app, he discovers it was sold to a Russian-affiliated private military company and can be weaponized. Hunter finds himself caught between the FBI, Russian assassins, and New Zealand’s most passionate bird conservationists. His solution? Transform his luxury island retreat into a Department of Conservation sanctuary for our feathered friends. As his private paradise...

Exclusive: Gersh has signed 3 Body Problem‘s Jess Hong for representation in all areas.

A New Zealand actress of Chinese descent, Hong broke into the public consciousness with her performance in the hit Netflix series from Game of Thrones co-creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo.

Marking her first major project after graduating from Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School, the show based on Liu Cixin’s acclaimed science fiction novel centers on the story of humanity’s first contact with an alien civilization from the star system Trisolaris. Portraying theoretical physicist Dr. Jin Cheng, she’s part of an ensemble that also includes Jovan Adepo, John Bradley, Rosalind Chao, Liam Cunningham, Eiza González, Marlo Kelly, Alex Sharp, Benedict Wong and Jonathan Pryce, among others. Following the series’ premiere on Netflix in March, it was renewed for two more seasons.

In addition to the Lucy Lawless series My Life Is Murder,...

Watching an international version of Taskmaster has the uncanny quality of trying to explain a dream. The sets are the same, but also not. The theme music’s a match, but it’s playing over people and tasks you don’t recognise. The Taskmaster was there, but it wasn’t the Taskmaster, just some other tall man in a suit. And instead of the familiar comedian configuration of ‘two off telly, two off Twitter and one you’ve never heard of’, you (probably) haven’t heard of anybody.

Once you have your bearings though, free Taskmaster! Multiple new-to-you episodes to fill the gap while we wait for series 16. And it’s good stuff. The New Zealand version is particularly strong, with an excellent choice of Taskmaster’s Assistant and consistently funny comedians. Also, thanks to (the show’s own) joke that New Zealand has a population of just eight people,...

In “Creamerie,”currently playing on Hulu, the future is female — and it’s also dark, dystopian and funny. Season 2 of the New Zealand-made comedy drama, now airing on the streamer as well as Tvnz, is set some years after a plague has wiped out 99.9% of humans with the Y chromosome, i.e. men. And, rather than obsessing about the mandemic’s lost males, “Creamerie” focuses instead on the women who have survived and the different ways they heal and rebuild. The key characters are a group of female dairy farmers and the lone surviving man they have stashed away.

“Kiwis have a very particular sense of humor. We find humor in really mundane things, the day to day. But in a dystopian world, after a pandemic, where everything is stripped back, the basics become quite a big deal. You can find a lot of humor in [characters] trying to get back to normal,...

It’s a hell of time for the Y chromosome set in the New Zealand apocalyptic disaster comedy, Creamerie. Season one of this wickedly fun series presented a clever premise: A virus has decimated all the men on Earth — except one, the secretly discovered and hunky Bobby, played by Jay Ryan of TV’s Beauty and the Beast. Three New Zealand female dairy farmers, Alex (Ally Zue), Jamie (JJ Fong), and Phillipa/Pip (Perlina Lau) find Bobby, and together, this motley crew soon discover that everything they’ve believed to be true may not be entirely true at all.

Apparently, Bobby isn’t the only man left on the planet. This effects the estrogen parade, of course, as the women must evade Lane (Tandi Wright), the ominous matriarch of Wellness, the group that has been monitoring a tricky repopulation plan with its semen lottery — hey, it pays to have kept those sperm banks around.

The hit New Zealand apocalypse comedy Creamerie is coming back, and we have an exclusive season two clip! “Scheduled to land on commissioning broadcaster Tvnz’s Tvnz+ today and on Hulu this Saturday, July 15 in the US, Creamerie drops audiences into a world where men have been supposedly wiped out by a mysterious plague, and follows three friends who now run a dairy farm under the watchful eye of Wellness, the local governing body. You can check out our exclusive clip from Creamerie season two above.

Creamerie picks up after a virus plague that decimated men around the globe, and follows three female dairy farmers from New Zealand, Alex, Jamie, and Pip, who accidentally run into the last surviving male on the planet... or is he? An organization called Wellness now runs their community and controls repopulation via lottery, using semen saved from old sperm banks. The friends' lives are...

The Netflix series Wellmania mainly revolves around its lead character as she makes major changes in her life, but it also features a memorable supporting cast for her to interact with during the process. Created by journalist Benjamin Law and Brigid Delaney based on the latter's memoir, Wellmania: Misadventures in the Search for Wellness, the Australian Netflix TV show follows a New York-based food writer whose sudden health scare causes her to resettle back in Sydney and try out various methods to improving the way she lives her life.

As with any journey, the main character's wellness quest involves a support system of helpers and guides as well as an array of brief encounters along the way. The secondary players of Wellmania include the usual for this sort of show — the protagonist's family members, best friends, and work colleagues, plus a love interest — while another level of regular characters includes doctors,...

Exclusive: Travis Jeffery (Unbroken), Neil Sandilands (Sweet Tooth), Sara Wiseman (One Of Us Is Lying), Ras-Samuel Welda’abzgi (The Clearing) and Lydia Peckham (Cowboy Bebop) have signed on for roles in 20th Century’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. The actors join an ensemble which also includes Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Peter Macon, Kevin Durand and Eka Darville, as previously announced.

While specifics as to the film’s plot are under wraps, it’s a continuation of the storied Planet of the Apes sci-fi franchise which goes all the way back to Franklin J. Schaffner’s 1968 same-name film. We understand that it will pick up many years after the conclusion of the most recent entry in the franchise, 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes.

Specifics as to the new actor’s roles haven’t been disclosed. But Wes Ball (Maze Runner franchise) is directing from a script by Josh Friedman,...

Exclusive: Mark Strong (TÁR), Jahleel Kamara (Nanny), Marvin “Krondon” Jones III (Black Lightning), Natalia Reyes (Terminator: Dark Fate), Yoson An (The Plane) and Ed Quinn (The Oval) have signed on for roles in Lionsgate’s action-thriller Shadow Force, from director Joe Carnahan, which has entered production in Colombia. The actors join an ensemble led by Kerry Washington and Omar Sy, which also includes Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Cliff “Method Man” Smith, as previously announced.

The film penned by Leon Chills and Carnahan follows Kyrah (Washington) and Isaac (Sy), who were once the leaders of a multinational special forces group called Shadow Force. They broke the rules by falling in love, and in order to protect their son, they go underground. With a large bounty on their heads, and the vengeful Shadow Force hot on their trail, one family’s fight becomes all-out war.

Details as to the roles the film...

NBCUniversal has terminated its contract with streaming service Hulu, TheWrap has learned.

“With the proliferation of streaming services entering the marketplace, we have long anticipated changes to our third-party content offering and over the past few years have increased our investment in original content, including popular and award-nominated titles like ‘Only Murders in the Building,’ ‘Dopesick,’ ‘Reservation Dogs,’ ‘How I Met Your Father,’ and the Academy Award-nominated ‘Summer of Soul,'” a Hulu spokesperson said in a statement obtained by TheWrap after the news broke. “As a leading destination for breakthrough storytelling, we continue to transform Hulu into an exclusive home for stories from across The Walt Disney Company and beyond to bring our viewers even more premium content led by Hulu Originals and next-day television programming.”

According to Variety, the change won’t officially occur until late September of 2022, including library titles and next-day streaming rights to NBC hits like “Saturday Night Live,...

NBCUniversal is clawing back streaming rights for its current-season TV shows from Hulu — in order to keep them for its own Peacock service. The Comcast-owned programmer officially terminated its next-day TV streaming deal with Hulu, which is majority-owned by Disney.

An NBCU rep confirmed that the Hulu agreement has been terminated. Reps for Disney did not respond to requests for comment.

The change will not go into effect until the next broadcast TV season, starting in late September for next-day and library content.

With the change, new episodes of NBCU shows such as “Saturday Night Live,” “The Voice” and “Law & Order: Organized Crime” — along with the rest of NBC’s broadcast and cable lineup for the 2022-23 season — will no longer be available on Hulu.

That said, a wide selection of many popular NBCU titles will remain on Hulu. For example, Hulu will continue to have rights to...

[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “All of Us Are Dead” Episode 12, including the ending.]

Zombies are frightening abstract concepts for any number of reasons. They can represent a loss of control or a threat to the fundamental trust we can have for one another. Maybe the most terrifying part of a majority of these stories is that zombies are presented as a clear binary. You either are one or you aren’t. Pull up your sleeve to reveal a few stray tooth marks and it’s just a matter of time before you flip over from one category to the other, forever.

While “All of Us Are Dead” isn’t exactly brimming with challenges to zombie conventions, one notable exception is in the character of Nam-ra (Cho Yi-hyun). The reluctant Hyosan High School class president ends up as part of a small group of survivors, plotting their survival while a mysterious virus overtakes nearly everyone else outside.

[This post originally appeared as part of Recommendation Machine, IndieWire’s daily TV picks feature.]

Where to Watch ‘Creamerie’: Hulu (the show originally aired in New Zealand on Tvnz)

Sociologists will look back at this point in pop culture history and see 2021 as a year that a certain corner of TV immersed itself in fictional pandemics. “Sweet Tooth,” “Y: The Last Man,” and the upcoming “Station Eleven” all kick off their stories with a world in rapid decline. There may be a bit of a placid intro to kick things off, but it isn’t long before things take a drastic, doomed turn.

To that subgenre, add “Creamerie,” which will probably end up being the funniest of this growing group of on-screen overnight societal transformations. The show leads off with its own share of blood, splattered against a locker room wall. A tracking shot time lapse shows how one building goes from the epicenter of an outbreak to...

2021 is nearly in the books and Hulu is celebrating by heading back to the past…like, the way past. With its list of new releases for December 2021, Hulu is going positive Medieval with two swords and shield original series arriving this month.

Animated comedy Crossing Swords premieres its second season on Dec. 10. This stop-motion style tale follows Patrick (Nicholas Hoult) as he works his way up the feudal latter of The Kingdom. This will be complemented by Dragons: The Nine Realms on Dec. 23. This series is set in the How to Train Your Dragon universe and takes place over 1,000 years after the events of the films. In it, a group of modern day kids uncover the secret truth about dragons.

Hulu also has some more current options for TV this month. Original comedy Pen15 premieres the second half of its second season on Dec. 3. Watch it to relive the trauma...