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Emmy-winning “The White Lotus” executive producer David Bernad has teamed with German production company UFA to develop series “Hotel Neptun.” The move comes as UFA, which is part of Fremantle, ramps up its international ambitions. A year after Sascha Schwingel took over as CEO of UFA, he spoke to Variety about the company’s priorities.

Journalists Joshua Davis (“Little America”) and Joshuah Bearman (“Argo”) are attached to “Hotel Neptun,” which is about a hotel in the former East Germany, where spies from all over the world met.

Nataly Kudiabor, a producer on UFA’s dark comedy “Where’s Wanda?” for Apple TV+ and managing director of UFA Fiction, is also attached to “Hotel Neptun.”

Bernad is also known for the Amazon Freevee mockumentary “Jury Duty” and the HBO limited series “White House Plumbers” with Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux.

“Maxton Hall”

Schwingel tells Variety: “Our strategy is quite simple. It’s...

"Let's go over the plan once again... Apple TV has revealed the trailer for a mysterious dark comedy series called Where's Wanda?, which is technically the first-ever German-language series made for Apple TV+. Netflix has been making tons of German series for years (e.g. Dark) and Disney+ also just debuted Sam: A Saxon last year. After Wanda Klatt goes missing, her family takes matters into their own hands and hatch a wild plan: Spy on the entire neighborhood. Desperate parents Dedo & Carlotta Klatt search for their missing daughter months after her disappearance. Frustrated by the police's inability to find her, they investigate their neighbors, uncovering dark secrets behind closed doors. Starring Heike Makatsch, Axel Stein, Lea Drinda, Leo Simon, Nikeata Thompson, Palina Rojinski, Kostja Ullmann, and Harriet Herbig-Matten, with Devid Striesow, Jasmin Shakeri, and Joachim Król. This trailer is dubbed in English for the US release. It seems all...

Netflix’s big gamble, “3 Body Problem” – created by “Game of Thrones” masterminds David Benioff and D.B.Weiss with Alexander Woo – opened Lille’s Series Mania on Friday, immediately dividing the viewers on a series well reviewed by Variety.

Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’ Cements ‘Game of Thrones’ Creators as Masters of Adapting the Unadaptable: TV Review

“It’s a very ambitious show and it has a great scale, but I wonder when all the hooks they got into me will reward me with knowledge. I see a lot of potential, but I don’t see a clear path,” actor Malick Bauer told Variety after the screening. One of this year’s International Competition jurors, he is known for the first German Disney+ series “Sam – A Saxon.”

“It can be a great thing, but I do worry if the audience will be given their time. It’s one of...

Revenues and profits at European production group Fremantle, whose labels are behind films such as Oscar winner Poor Things and Italian box office hit There’s Still Tomorrow, fell in 2023.

Revenue was down by 3.5% to €2.27bn while adjusted Ebita declined 14.2% to €139m.

The figures were published this morning (March 14) as Fremantle parent company Rtl Group announced its annual results for 2023.

Fremantle’s revenue fall comes as it seeks to hit a well-publicised target of €3bn in revenues by 2025/26.

Rtl Group said Fremantle’s 2023 fall in revenue was “mainly due to timing effects and negative foreign exchange rate effects”.

Rtl reiterated its...

Revenues and profits at European production group Fremantle, whose labels are behind films such as Oscar winner Poor Things and Italian box office hit There’s Still Tomorrow, fell in 2023.

Revenue was down by 3.5% to €2.27bn while adjusted Ebita declined 14.2% to €139m.

The figures were published this morning (March 14) as Fremantle parent company Rtl Group announced its annual results for 2023.

Fremantle’s revenue fall comes as it seeks to hit a well-publicised target of €3bn in revenues by 2025/26.

Rtl Group said Fremantle’s 2023 fall in revenue was “mainly due to timing effects and negative foreign exchange rate effects”.

Rtl reiterated its...

Peacock’s Apples Never Fall, MGM+’s Hotel Cocaine and Nrk’s buzzy drama about Leonard Cohen, So Long, Marianne will be in the International Competition race at Series Mania in March.

The shows will be up against BBC Three’s UK series Boarders, France 2 drama Dans L’Ombre (In the Shadows), Ard’s German series Herrhausen, the Banker and the Bomb, ABC Australia’s House of Gods, and Franco-Hungarian co-production Rematch, which is for Arte, Disney+ and HBO Europe.

The shows comprise an interesting cross-section of U.S. and European projects, with the Annette Bening-starring thriller Apples Never Fall among the highest profile. Hotel Cocaine, about a Cuban expatriate who re-made his life in Miami, is among MGM+’s biggest recent bets, while So Long, Marianne has been building steam as a study into the life of singer-songwriter Cohen and his muse, Marianne Ihlen.

International television market Mipcom Cannes on Thursday unveiled this year’s nominees for the Diversify TV Awards, which honor international programming promoting diversity and inclusion.

The nominees were picked from some 165 submissions from more than 27 countries. To be eligible, programs were required to provide a fair and balanced representation of race and ethnicity, the Lgbtqia+ and disabled communities; to show a positive impact; to stand out in originality and excellence in terms of storytelling, casting and production values; to challenge stereotypes and to have aired tin the past year. The awards honor both fiction and non-fiction shows.

Among the nominees for scripted representation of race and ethnicity are the British Amazon/ITV series Riches, the German Disney+ show Sam – A Saxon and Canadian drama Little Bird, which aired on Crave and Aptn lumi. In the representation of disability category, nominees include Canadian drama About Antoine from Club illico and...

Sascha Schwingel has been named the new CEO of German TV production giant UFA, replacing Nico Hofmann, who will become chair of the Berlin-based company behind such series as Generation War, Deutschland ’83 and Ku’damm 56. UFA is part of global production giant Fremantle.

Hofmann, who has been CEO of UFA since 2017, joined the company in 1998, setting up UFA’s serial fiction group teamWorx (now UFA Fiction). He is largely credited with helping turn UFA into Germany’s leading television producer, with shows across all genres and on air on virtually every German channel and streaming service.

The group consists of four production units: UFA Fiction, which produces high-end drama such as Deutschland ’83, Charité and the recent Disney+ series Sam – A Saxon; soaps division UFA Serial Drama, whose long-running serials include Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten and Unter Uns; UFA Show & Factual, which produce shiny floor shows including the local versions...

Apple TV+ has greenlit its first project out of Germany.

Darkly comic TV series Where’s Wanda? answers the question of how far a person would go to save their child. Produced by Fremantle-backed Moonage Daydream-maker UFA Fiction, Where’s Wanda? tells the story of Dedo (Axel Stein) and Carlotta Klatt (Heike Makatsch), who are desperate to locate their missing daughter months after her disappearance. When the police fail to find her, they take matters into their own hands and discover that behind closed doors, none of their neighbors are who they pretend to be.

Where’s Wanda features an ensemble German cast including multiple award-winning actress Lea Drinda (The Gryphon), newcomer Leo Simon, presenter and actress Palina Rojinski (Welcome to Germany) and entrepreneur, actress and author Nikeata Thompson (How to Dad). It is directed by Christian Ditter (How to be Single) and Tobi Baumann (Faking Hitler) and written...

Many Lives And Deaths Of Christopher Lee

Abacus Media Rights has pre-sold the feature documentary “The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee,” to Sky Arts, Sbs Television Australia; to NonStop Entertainment for Scandinavia, Iceland and the Baltics and to Movistar for Spain.

Lee is known as the Dracula character and for transitioning from 1960s Hammer horror films to a distinguished acting career that encompassed James Bond films, the “Star Wars” and “Lord of the Rings” franchises.

Less well-known are his aristocratic Italian roots, a close family connection to James Bond novelist Ian Fleming, Lee’s wartime experiences in the British and Finnish military, post-war Nazi-hunting adventures and a side career as a heavy metal rock singer. As an actor, Lee achieved a Guinness world record for the highest number of screen appearances.

Produced in association with the British Film Institute and Trigger Films by Canal Cat Films, “Life and Deaths...

It’s not often that a TV series will take viewers behind the Iron Curtain and into a place and time where Communism still reigned supreme. But that’s exactly what “Sam- A Saxon,” the new series coming to Hulu on Wednesday, April 26 aims to do. It tells the story of the first Black police officer in East German history, and how corruption and racism led to his downfall. You can watch with a 30-Day Free Trial of Hulu.

How to Watch 'Sam - A Saxon' When: Wednesday, April 26, 2023 Where: Hulu Stream: Watch with a 30-Day Free Trial of Hulu. 30-Day Free Trial$7.99+ / month hulu.com About 'Sam - A Saxon'

“Sam - A Saxon” is based on the incredible, true story of Samuel Meffire, the first black policeman in East Germany. This is a gripping series that follows Sam’s irrepressible search for his place in an intensely prejudiced society.

In one of the first scenes of Sam — A Saxon, we see Samuel Meffire (Malick Bauer) running full-tilt through the streets of Dresden. Sam stands out. Not just because he is (literally) chasing an ambulance. But because this is 1989. We are in Saxony, deep inside communist East Germany. And Sam is a six-foot-something Black man.

He rushes past a parked police car. The officers sound the siren. Sam stops. He put his hands up. The cops, in the green khaki uniforms of the Deutsche Volkspolizei (German People’s Police), get out of the car. Things look bad. Then, Sam turns around and starts to explain. His girlfriend is in that ambulance, about to give birth to their son. “They wouldn’t let ride with them,” he says. Then he quotes Kierkegaard, to the effect that only someone who hears a cry of a woman in labor at the hour of...

If you’re a Star Trek fan, you likely watched with bittersweet enthusiasm last week as “Star Trek: Picard” aired its series finale on Thursday on Paramount+. Star Wars fans got a pretty big finale of their own, as “The Mandalorian” finished its third season on Wednesday, though some of its characters will return in future Disney+ projects.

If you were a devotee of both shows, you may be worried that you’ll have less to stream going forward. You can put those fears safely to rest however; there are some excellent new titles coming to streaming this week for TV lovers to enjoy.

Monday, April 24 ‘The Cult of Elon’ | Tubi

“The Cult of Elon” follows the story behind Elon Musk’s relentless pursuit to build out Tesla and the aftermath in the years that followed. And by acquiring Twitter, the platform that propelled him and his companies to prominence,...

Warner Bros. has revealed a new trailer for the Ben Affleck-led and Robert Rodriguez-directed psychological thriller ‘Hypnotic.’

Determined to find his missing daughter, Austin detective Danny Rourke (Ben Affleck) instead finds himself spiralling down a rabbit hole while investigating a series of reality-bending bank robberies where he will ultimately call into question his most basic assumptions about everything and everyone in his world. Aided by Diana Cruz (Alice Braga), an unnervingly gifted psychic, Rourke simultaneously pursues and is pursued by a lethal spectre (William Fichtner) – the one man he believes holds the key to finding the missing girl – only to discover more than he ever bargained for.

Directed By Robert Rodriguez, Jd Pardo, Dayo Okeniyi, Jeff Fahey and Jackie Earle Haley co-star in the film which Rodriguez penned alongside Racer Rodriguez and Max Borenstein.

Also in trailers – Trailer drops for Disney+ series ‘Sam – A Saxon’

The film...

Disney+ has released the official trailer for ‘Sam – A Saxon.’ It is the first original series produced out of Germany.

Based on the incredible, true story of Samuel Meffire, the first black policeman in East Germany. This gripping series follows Sam’s irrepressible search for his place in an intensely prejudiced society. In his fight to overcome the system, he becomes the face of an anti-racism campaign and a symbol of a new Germany. However, his meteoric rise to fame is quickly followed by an abrupt downfall as he ends up behind bars with German tabloids branding him “public enemy #1”.

Starring Malick Bauer, Svenja Jung, Luise von Finckh, Ivy Quainoo, Thorsten Merten, Martin Brambach, Carina Wiese and Tyron Ricketts, International Emmy Award® winner Jörg Winger (“Deutschland83/86/89”) is a showrunner Sebastian Werninger (both Big Window Productions) and Tyron Ricketts (Panthertainment) are the producers of the seven-part miniseries.

Also in trailers...

Sales

Chris O’Dowd (“Puffin Rock”), Amy Huberman (“Derry Girls”), Beth McCafferty and Eva Whittaker (“Wolfwalkers”) lead the voice cast of “Puffin Rock and the New Friends,” the film based on the TV series “Puffin Rock.”

Following their collaboration on Oscar nominees “Song of the Sea” and “The Breadwinner,” WestEnd Films is teaming again with Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon and Northern Ireland’s Dog Ears on the film and is launching sales at Berlin’s European Film Market (EFM), where first footage will be shown to buyers.

“Puffin Rock and the New Friends” sees Oona, Baba, May and Mossy joined by a new characters Isabelle, Phoenix and Marvin. When the last Little Egg of the season disappears under mysterious circumstances, Oona and her new friends race against time to bring the Little Egg home before a big storm hits Puffin Rock and puts the entire island in danger.

The film...