Deadline Hollywood - Special Issue: MIPCOM - 10/13/25

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CO-EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Nellie Andreeva (Television)

Mike Fleming Jr. (Film)

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EXECUTIVE EDITOR, AWARDSLINE Antonia Blyth

DESIGN DIRECTOR Fah Sakharet

FILM EDITOR Damon Wise

DOCUMENTARY EDITOR Matthew Carey

CRAFTS EDITOR Ryan Fleming

PRODUCTION EDITOR David Morgan

AWARDS WRITER Destiny Jackson

EDITORIAL

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AWARDS COLUMNIST & CHIEF FILM CRITIC Pete Hammond

COLUMNIST & INTERNATIONAL EDITOR-AT-LARGE Baz Bamigboye

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EDITORIAL DIRECTOR & BOX OFFICE EDITOR Anthony D’Alessandro

EXECUTIVE EDITOR, TELEVISION Peter White

EXECUTIVE EDITOR, LEGAL, LABOR & POLITICS Dominic Patten

EXECUTIVE EDITOR, INTERNATIONAL & STRATEGY Andreas Wiseman

SENIOR MANAGING EDITOR Denise Petski

MANAGING EDITOR Erik Pedersen

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR Tom Tapp

PHOTO EDITOR Robert Lang

EDITOR-AT-LARGE Peter Bart

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, CONTENT, INTERNATIONAL Stewart Clarke

INTERNATIONAL FEATURES EDITOR Diana Lodderhose

BUSINESS EDITOR Dade Hayes

CO-BUSINESS EDITOR Jill Goldsmith

POLITICAL EDITOR Ted Johnson

FILM EDITOR Justin Kroll

NEW YORK & BROADWAY EDITOR Greg Evans

ASSOCIATE EDITOR, TELEVISION Rosy Cordero

SENIOR TELEVISION WRITER Lynette Rice

TELEVISION REPORTER Katie Campione

SENIOR FILM REPORTER Matt Grobar

INTERNATIONAL INVESTIGATIONS EDITOR Jake Kanter

INTERNATIONAL BOX OFFICE EDITOR & SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR Nancy Tartaglione

SENIOR INTERNATIONAL FILM CORRESPONDENT Melanie Goodfellow

INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION CO-EDITOR Max Goldbart

INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION CO-EDITOR Jesse Whittock

INTERNATIONAL REPORTER Zac Ntim

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, ASIA Liz Shackleton

ASIA REPORTER Sara Merican

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Glenn Garner

STAFF WRITER Dessi Gomez

NIGHT AND WEEKEND EDITOR Armando Tinoco

WEEKEND EDITOR Natalie Oganesyan

PRESIDENT Ellie Duque

BUSINESS LEADERSHIP

Carra Fenton SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, ENTERTAINMENT SALES

Céline Rotterman SVP, GLOBAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS

Brianna Corrado PRESIDENT, ENTERTAINMENT SALES

Melinda Carson VICE PRESIDENT, SALES & EVENTS

Tracy Kain VICE PRESIDENT, SALES & EVENTS

Nadia Romdhani SALES DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL

Letitia Buchan SENIOR DIRECTOR SALES PLANNING & CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT

Renee Amponin ACCOUNT MANAGER

Luke Licata SENIOR DIGITAL SALES PLANNER

Caitlyn Halfon JUNIOR DIGITAL SALES PLANNER

Kayla Eber SENIOR SALES & MARKETING ASSOCIATE

ART

Grant Dehner SENIOR DESIGNER

Paige Petersen DESIGNER

Terrence Ellsworth DESIGN PRODUCTION COORDINATOR

EVENTS AND MARKETING

Laureen O’Brien DIRECTOR, BRAND MARKETING

Ally Goldberg SENIOR EVENTS ASSOCIATE

Maddy Situmeang EVENTS ASSOCIATE

PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO

Michael Buckner CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER

Benjamin Bloom VIDEO DIRECTOR

Jade Collins VIDEO PRODUCER/EDITOR

Francis Ray Rettinger VIDEO PRODUCER/EDITOR

Stevie Szerlip VIDEO PRODUCER/EDITOR

SOCIAL MEDIA

Scott Shilstone DIRECTOR, SOCIAL MEDIA

Natalie Sitek SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER

Nada Aboul Kheir SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR

PRODUCTION

Natalie Longman PRODUCTION DIRECTOR

Michael Petre DISTRIBUTION DIRECTOR

Andrea Wynnyk PRODUCTION MANAGER

CALL SHEET

Scene Setters

12 Beyond Treasonable Doubt

Why The Traitors still reigns as a gameshow-changer.

13 Stuck In The Middle With YouTube

The TV companies that met streaming halfway.

14 War In Gaza

How the conflict is impacting the Israeli TV sector.

16 Passage To Indie

The producers looking to the film world for inspiration.

Premiere

18 Islands In The Stream

Why terrestrial TV companies are making digital friends.

22 The Kids Are Alright Business is booming for kids’ TV megabrands.

Cover Story

26 To Market, To Market!

Jimmy Fallon & Bozoma Saint John launch their new show On Brand at MIPCOM.

Features

32 Out Of Africa

Behind the scenes with South Africa’s biggest-ever production, Shaka iLembe

34 Onward To Wayward Comedian and actor Mae Martin talks tricky teens.

36 The Beat Goes On Hit cop show Blue Bloods makes way for Boston Blue

38 Marian Keyes

Meet the bestselling Irish author whose novels are being snapped up for the screen.

40 Clowning Glory

The brother-and-sister duo bringing Stephen King’s horror hit IT to TV.

Hot Ones

44 TALK OF THE TOWN

A look at the hottest programs hitting the Croisette this year.

40

Siblngs Barbara and Andy Muschietti put the scary back into horror. ON THE COVER Jimmy Fallon and Bozoma Saint John. Photographed by Kwaku Alston for NBC. 34

Comedian Mae Martin shares a bit of their serious side.

Bozoma Saint John and Jimmy Fallon get branded.

sphere-abacus.com

sales@sphere-abacus.com

Drama Series: 6 x one hour

EDITORS' LETTER

“Survive ’til ’25” was the doomy mantra for much of last year, but as 2026 approaches, we head into MIPCOM with a sense of cautious optimism.

“In the mix in ’26,” as the cool kids are now saying. Sure, the industry is facing big challenges, but stars, producers, buyers and sellers arrive in Cannes ready to do business, network, check out new projects and look to the future. With MIPTV out of the international picture, this is !rmly the biggest show in town.

Here at Deadline, we’ve been busy analyzing where the industry is at and spotlighting the best that will be on o"er along the Croisette. Since the ructions caused by the Covid19 pandemic, U.S. labor strikes and global economic shocks, the business has adapted to the ‘new normal’, which now just looks like ‘normal’. Buyers are choosier and American players are keeping a closer eye on their check books, but there is still plenty happening, and the room—or maybe the requirement— for innovation is there.

Two people who know a thing or two about innovation are our cover stars, Jimmy Fallon and Bozoma Saint John, who dish on their buzzy new format On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. They also share what they think the other one would be like as president—let us not forget the career trajectory of a certain former host of a di"erent NBC format. Or, what about Barbara and Andy Muschietti, the

producer/director duo behind HBO Max’s elevated horror series IT: Welcome to Derry, who reveal how to make horror jump out on the small screen. They also discuss the prospect of working (or not) in their native Argentina under the current political regime and even address a possible new Batman project.

Elsewhere, this year has been one of aggregation, as streaming giants decide that the best way to burrow into local territories is to tie with local players. Our deep dive unpacks this trend, its impact on rights and looks at what’s to come. We also spotlight how the streamers and YouTube have disrupted the kids’ entertainment space in the era of the mega-brand.

We were also delighted to land an interview with the team behind Shaka iLembe, South Africa’s biggest ever production, which tells of a history that has “been underserved in almost every way.” All that, plus we have interviews with Mae Martin, Marian Keys and Boston Blue stars Donnie Wahlberg and Sonequa Martin-Green, along with our annual Hot Ones selection. So, sit back, sip a glass of rosé and !nd yourselves a moment to take stock of the opportunities around you.

STEWART CLARKE Senior Vice President, Content, International

JESSE WHITTOCK

International Television

Co-Editor

MAX GOLDBART

International Television Co-Editor

PREMIERE

Deadline is here to give you a rundown of all the major talking points in the global television sphere

Scene Setters

The war in Gaza

YouTube to TV

Alan Cumming in The Traitors

Scripted meets indie TV

The impact of The Traitors is felt beyond its audience. Our Hot Ones submissions for this year (see pages 44-54), which are an annual barometer of what’s hot and what’s not, are stacked full of guessing-game formats covered with The Traitors’ pawprints.

The Traitors Rules

It’s been a minute since the Dutch guessing game format hit the big time, but format developers are still turning to it for inspiration

BY MAX GOLDBART

Nearly three years have passed since The Traitors !rst landed on the BBC and Peacock, immediately signaling what felt like a new era for formats, and an invigorating one at that.

The watercooler moments ushered in by that !rst season of The Traitors were ten a penny (if you haven’t checked out the infamous breakfast scene from the British version then !re up YouTube now). Crucially for The Traitors distributor All3Media International, the show, which was originated in the Netherlands and made there on a modest budget, registered signi!cant moments on both sides of the pond.

Since then, The Traitors train has kept chugging. Both the American and U.K. Traitors have gained viewers as they settle !rmly within the cultural zeitgeist, and new versions are springing up around the world. A celebrity spin-o" featuring Stephen Fry and Ted Lasso star Nick Mohammed just launched on the BBC and could provide the franchise with yet another lease on life.

All3Media International’s The Inheritance, which comes from The Traitors producer Studio Lambert, is set in a country estate and sees strangers compete for a fake fortune from a deceased benefactor, played with aplomb by Liz Hurley. Tim Harcourt, Studio Lambert’s chief creative o#cer, tells us The Inheritance would work well as a companion piece for networks that already show The Traitors, and “buyers who missed out on The Traitors and want something with the same human drama.”

ITV Studios, meanwhile, is bringing Celebrity Sabotage to MIPCOM, a show that is packed full of evasion, while Fox’s latest, Gordon Ramsay’s Secret Service, uncovers a world of in!ltration and espionage, as the top chef goes undercover in failing restaurants.

Last year was a slightly quieter one for new versions of The Traitors, as it was knocked o" the top of analyst !rm K7’s annual Format of the Year rankings by fellow Dutch hit The Floor, but this year, The Traitors has come back with a vengeance. With 13 new launches this year, we’re seeing that it is now becoming evergreen.

“Despite the slower pace of 2024 premieres, The Traitors' pipeline indicates a strong continued momentum,” writes K7 in its latest Tracking the Giants report.

The BBC and NBCUniversal, whose partnership spawned the British and American versions of The Traitors and subsequently Destination X, are now on the hunt for their next premium launch, and they have issued a callout to producers to pitch original British IP.

As format developers from around the world continue to seek inspiration from The Traitors, the show that signaled the beginning of a new generation looks set to stay in the thick of conversation on the Croisette. ★

Alan Cumming

Below, from left: Dylan Efron, Dolores Catania, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, Britney Haynes, Gabby Windey.

YouTube to TV

After years of being uneasy bedfellows, TV execs and YouTube might fnally see eye-to-eye

BY JESSE WHITTOCK

The halls of the Palais des Festivals have for years been packed full of producers telling you they have a series launching on YouTube. And for a long while, they couldn’t !nd distribution via traditional means. However, TV and the Googleowned platform have reached an in"ection point. Now, when a producer talks up a YouTube launch, it may well be that they have worked out a solid business model that bypasses networks and global streamers.

Of course, established TV brands such as The Sidemen, MrBeast, Ms. Rachel, CoComelon and Blue Therapy began life on YouTube. The di#erence now is that any ‘traditional’ production house worth its salt is developing directly for the platform. Even The Traitors maker Studio Lambert, which could surely turnover enough cash purely through its traditional TV business, is in early-stage development on formats that can crack the platform.

The industry shift comes as the pendulum of consumer taste swings from TV to YouTube. YouTube has topped Nielsen’s Media Distributor Gauge report table in the U.S. for most of 2025, accounting for around 13% of all viewing—a huge turnaround from years past. That shift is manifesting into YouTube becoming a distributor even for established TV shows.

In August, word broke that

British comedy series Taskmaster was, for the !rst time ever, going day-and-date in the U.S.—where it is primarily available on YouTube—with Channel 4’s broadcast in the U.K.

This was after the BAFTAwinning Avalon comedy format’s YouTube channel surpassed 1.2 billion views, with a considerable percentage coming from North America. Season 19, which starred American comic Jason Mantzoukas among its competitors, garnered nearly 20 million North American views and helped subscriptions rise by 200,000.

Taskmaster was remade in the U.S. in 2018 on Comedy Central, but it failed miserably after numerous format changes were made. So, it’s clearly the popularity of YouTube that has built the show’s reputation now in North America. This has reached the point where hosts Greg Davies and Alex Horne have appeared on late-night shows, despite having never appeared on U.S. TV screens. They’ve also hosted soldout private screenings in New York, while Mantzoukas’ appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers promoting Taskmaster is the late-night show's second-most streamed interview online— behind Barack Obama.

“It’s ‘culty’, and people have to seek it out for themselves—it’s not promoted out there on Peacock or advertised,” says Horne. “A million Americans is a tiny fraction of their

population, but it’s still a hell of a lot of Americans.”

“We’re both absolutely blown away by the response out there from people on the street,” adds Davies. “It was just wonderful.”

There have been noises that a U.S. network might give Taskmaster another try-out, with YouTube now proven as a great audience

incubator. Horne and Davies have both said they would want to front Taskmaster U.S. 2.0 and keep control of the production. They are not desperate for it happen, but they will try, if there’s a willing buyer.

“We would love to do an American version, and do it properly, but we’re not courting it,” says Horne. Perhaps YouTube is enough. ★

From top: The Taskmaster; comic Jason Mantzoukas on Late Night With Seth Meyers

The War in Gaza 03

Two years after October 7, the international tide has turned on the devastating confict and the TV industry is feeling the impact

BY MAX GOLDBART

“I feel like it is my obligation as a Jewish person to distinguish Jews from the State of Israel.”

These were not the words of a religious !gure or politician but of Hacks star Hannah Einbinder as she collected her Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy last month. Einbinder’s proclamation communicated a dilemma faced by Jews around the world at the passing of the two-year anniversary of the war in Gaza.

The devastating con"ict started on October 7, 2023 when Hamas militants stormed Israel,

killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostage. Israel’s response has been brutal and unforgiving. According to the Hamas-run health ministry, more than 65,000 people have been killed in Gaza, and numerous reputable organizations have now said that Israel is committing genocide in the territory. At the time of press in early October, a resolution to the con"ict still feels a distant dream.

Israel’s TV industry has always punched above its weight—think the original Euphoria, Tehran or Fauda—but Israeli creatives have found it tough going since October 7, and even more so since the international mood has so drastically shifted. Two years ago, that mood was one of sympathy for the plight of Israelis, but as war has worn on, and more and more Palestinians have been killed, this has changed.

In the TV and !lm industries, creatives and producers are more publicly choosing

to distance themselves from Israel. In early September, thousands of stars and industry !gures, including Olivia Colman, Ava DuVernay and Emma Stone signed a pledge to boycott festivals, cinemas, broadcasters and production companies that are viewed as being “complicit” in the “unrelenting horror” in Gaza, although the pledge did not name speci!c networks or indies. Responding, the Israeli Film and TV Producers Association branded the pledge “profoundly misguided”.

Anecdotally, Israeli creatives tell us it is becoming harder to simply get in the room with international buyers, let alone obtain !nancing, because of the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, even though many of these creatives deem themselves progressive and anti-war.

We hear about more and more Israeli show launches that are being delayed because of the war, including Tehran Season 3, which kicked o# on Israeli broadcaster Kan 11, but has been repeatedly pushed back for global release by Apple TV+. For what it’s worth, there will be plenty of Israeli fare at MIPCOM, including October 7 scripted series One Day in October, which just sold to HBO Max, Yes Studios’ dark comedy Little Fucker and historical drama Etty from Our Boys creator Hagai Levi. We understand there will be a small number of Israeli buyers and a few Israeli companies in Cannes. It remains to be seen how the discourse around the con"ict will reverberate around MIPCOM, but organizer RX France has no plans to formally mark the war’s anniversary. The recent Venice Film Festival was dominated by anti-Gaza war protests amid the breakout success of Golden Lion nominee The Voice of Hind Rajab, but !lm festivals tend to attract more dissent than their small-screen siblings. Whatever their creed, we hope that all in attendance at MIPCOM will be united in a desire for an end to this war. ★

From left: destruction in Gaza City; protesters at the Venice Film Festival.

Scripted Goes Indie

With streaming budgets crunched, some scripted TV producers are exploring indie fnancing models to get their pro ects off the ground

BY JESSE WHITTOCK

Independent !lm !nancing has been a staple in the movie world for more than half a century. Back then, !lmmakers began to seek greater creative control outside the studio system and for the !rst time looked for inventive ways to !nance their projects. However, for scripted television, it has historically been a di#erent story, with only a few examples of shows getting o# the ground without a commissioner committing to a decent chunk of the budget. As streamers have reduced their spend over the last few years, some producers have opted to !nance projects themselves. In the U.S., Duplass Brothers Productions,

the makers of Togetherness and Room 104, have been among some of the key advocates for going it alone. The company’s founders Mark and Jay Duplass argue that breaking free of dependency on streaming !nancing o#ers both better opportunities for returns and “no creative boundaries”. The company recently fully !nanced and retained the rights to shows such as the YA series Penelope, which was licensed to Net"ix for the U.S. and has Fremantle attached as international distributor. Other companies are now looking at taking the same approach or !nding other innovative indie models.

Alexander Rodnyansky’s development company AR Content

recently used an indie !lm model for the upcoming TNT limited series Debrie!ng the President, starring Joel Kinnaman. The LA-based out!t is also planning on using a similar structure for its next TV project, The Specialist, based on author John Shirley’s action-thriller series of the same name. Shirley’s novels, published under the pen name John Cutter, inspired the 1994 Warner Bros. !lm The Specialist,

starring Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone.

There are a growing number of private !nanciers and indie producers who also believe in the model, including Amplify Pictures, the company based in LA and Amsterdam and led by former Amazon scripted executive Joe Lewis and ex-Net"ix executive Rachel Eggebeen. It used an indie !nancing model for its Emmy-winning sur!ng doc series 100 Foot Wave, which is licensed to HBO, and has been spending much of 2025 attempting to apply the model to scripted. Deadline understands at least one show on its slate has come very close to fruition this year, although nothing has yet gone into production.

“The thing I !nd the riskiest is developing a show and going to pitch it in a traditional way,” says Lewis. “You can deliver a genius showrunner and a great idea, and it still won’t go. That’s the thing that turns my stomach.” He admits it has been “slow progress” selling the model to partners and adds that “it’s taking less time to explain.”

Others are going the same way, with Better Call Saul star Rhea Seehorn having recently boarded Swiss producer Katja Meier’s TV series $hare as an executive producer. Seehorn joined the project after seeing it at Denver’s SeriesFest, which is fast becoming a hotbed on the indie scene.

Meier says she was repeatedly told by production companies that the female protagonist in $hare was too old. She ignored requests to make her younger and instead made the pilot independently.

The series is now in pre-production. “We’re independent !lmmakers and storytellers who create our own opportunities,” Meier says. “We didn’t wait for permission – we just went out and made the female-powered story we wanted to see on screen.” ★

Penelope

Rhea Seehorn

Many industry executives look back at the $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Paramount (then Viacom) against YouTube in 2007 as a signpost of an era when linear broadcasters and online video platforms just couldn’t play nice, let alone share the same space.

Paramount had accused the online video platform of illegally streaming its shows, and it took seven years and millions of dollars in legal fees before a settlement was reached. Public discourse between U.S. studios and tech giants then became more collegial but discontent remained. Behind closed doors, network execs cursed the growing power, and seeming lack of accountability, of streamers, while many of those at Net !ix, YouTube, Prime Video and their kin still saw their linear counterparts as dinosaurs nearing extinction.

As time wore on, relations thawed further and it became no longer uncommon for streaming services to be o"ered as bundles through pay-TV operators, or to gain prominence on TV set interfaces. Still, for a whole plethora of reasons, the relationship remained uneasy. However, this year, with the TV ad market in terminal decline and streamers facing subscriber saturation and slowing growth, it appears both sides have almost completely buried the hatchet and are preparing for a future in lockstep. In 2025, top execs from both sides have been shaking hands on partnerships that previously felt unimaginable. A tipping point has been reached, and as Guy Bisson, research director and co-founder at U.K.-based Ampere Analysis, observes, “You can be at the center of it, or beholden to others.”

The deals started with a landmark pact struck between Net !ix and French commercial network TF1 at Cannes Lions earlier this year. Hailed as a “new kind of partnership” by Net !ix co-CEO Greg Peters, the agreement was the equivalent of NBC or ABC handing over its output, including live channels and sport, to a streaming service.

Beginning in mid-2026, this will be the biggest experiment in television content distribution in some time. Whether the move is about Net !ix’s push into ads, gaining a better foothold locally or retaining subscribers—or all three—is yet to be discovered.

A slew of similar agreements followed that June announcement, including Prime Video and France Télévisions partnering locally. This

New World Order

For years, streamers and terrestrial TV networks were at each other’s throats. ut in a world now defned more by aggregation than competition former rivals are teaming up and the industry is bracing for the impact of change.

BY JESSE WHITTOCK ILLUSTRATION BY VICTOR KERLOW

sees !ve of the pubcaster’s key channels and some 20,000 hours of content from its streaming o"ering France.TV sitting on the Amazon streamer. France Télévisions CEO Delphine Ernotte Cunci called it a “historic step forward in strengthening the visibility of France.TV’s public service o"ering, enabling all audiences to rediscover and discover the unique richness of France.TV in new environments.”

France.TV now sits as a rail on the Prime Video France homepage, a sign of the future, right here, right now. What this means for France’s producers and rights holders is also a live question.

Variations on a theme

These French mega-pacts aren’t the only examples of networks and streamers playing nice. Net #ix has also struck a deal to bundle with Middle Eastern juggernaut MBC in the MENA region—similar to its pacts in the U.S. and U.K. The rationale there appears to be that MBC’s recently launched aggregator MBCNOW is emerging as a market leader and Net #ix rival. So, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Disney+, meanwhile, has signed branding and content sharing agreements with the U.K.’s ITV, Germany’s ZDF Studios and Spain’s Atresmedia. The House of Mouse is integrating Hulu into Disney+ and launching it as an international title, while bundling new sports streamer ESPN together with rival Fox One in the States. More examples of unexpected partnerships feel certain to emerge.

While the nature and business rationale behind each partnership di"ers, they’re broadly part of what Ampere terms ‘diagonal integration’. This is where the broadcaster, faced with a TV ad market in terminal decline, leverages the reach of streaming rivals. In exchange, the streamer—usually a global player—gets the programming expertise of their linear partner, reducing their need to spend on local originals and providing it with a means of distributing local news. With potential regulatory !ghts to come, this is a potential boon and is a way of circumventing content quotas and other obligations that European countries want to establish.

There’s a growing sense among market watchers that the future is

“For broadcasters, leveraging that local reach of Net ! ix and other big streamers for local distribution makes absolute sense.”

GUY BISSON

forming in front of our eyes. “We are right on the cusp of the gates opening towards more of these deals,” says Ampere’s Bisson.

“Not a one-way deal”

With change comes uncertainty and much debate has followed the Net#ix-TF1 deal at festivals and conferences of late. Are the rights holders of the shows now being carried on additional platforms being compensated? Will linear network ratings be impacted? Who is paying who what? These are just some of the questions on industry execs’ minds. In the analyst community, the rationale partnering stacks up.

“For broadcasters leveraging that local reach of Net #ix and other big streamers for local distribution makes absolute sense,” says Bisson. “It also makes absolute sense for Net #ix—it’s not a one-way deal. Net #ix gets loads of quality local content that, even with its huge budgets, it couldn’t possibly hope to make. This really is a model for others.”

He adds that Ampere research shows streamers are currently commissioning at “75% peak TV” level—a !gure that’s unlikely to increase, and

so partnering with the biggest local players is an easy way to stock up on new content.

“Streamers are still 25% down on originals,” he says. “We’ve not come back from that and we’re not going to, but the interesting thing about these deals is they make your own originals spend slightly less important.”

As for Net #ix’s local regulatory position, there’s another potential upside. Global streamers are unlikely to ever step into the waters of local news programming, preferring to leave that to terrestrials and public service networks. As such, some regulators and industry counterparts argue it is then only fair they should pay into a pot that ensures local players have the resources to continue with their news output. However, French Net #ix subscribers will be able to access TF1’s news programming and Prime Video viewers can log on and watch news net France Info right now, helping the streamers’ cause when it comes to crossing regulatory hurdles. Even an “incremental” audience streaming news could be a “strong point” against regulation, says Tom Harrington, head of television at Enders Analysis. “If they can demonstrate that young people have watched news from a platform that they would not have otherwise watched, it’s helpful,” he adds.

Net #ix and TF1 are staying largely

rom left Netfix s reg eters and T s Rodolphe elmer.

Delphine Ernotte Cunci

tight-lipped on the speci!cs of their agreement, with TF1 declining to comment on this article, while a Net "ix spokesperson sticks to the facts after being quizzed on the impacts of the agreement. “Our distribution partnership with TF1 begins in summer 2026, and we'll be sharing more details as we get closer to launch,” they say.

As for the reason the Net "ix-TF1 agreement will take a year to kick into gear, we understand it’s down to Net "ix ingesting more than 30,000 hours of TF1 programming and readying the !ve linear channels. One source with knowledge of the deal says the process is about bringing the two di#erent streaming propositions as close together in video quality and user experience as possible. “Net "ix is not relying on TF1 at all here,” they say.

Dan Rayburn, the U.S.-based streaming industry analyst, notes that Net "ix execs have been determined to qualify the pact as “experimental” and not as the precursor to dozens of similar deals—at least not in the short term. “Right away, people thought Net "ix was getting into the live TV linear business and would be cutting deals left and right,” he says. “Net "ix made it very clear that a deal like this is to learn, and part of the reason it is in France is because of the demand and the relatively small footprint. They called out and set proper expectations of the market. Three years down the line, maybe they cut another deal like that.”

Other informed sources have characterized the Net "ix and TF1 deal as “opportunistic” and resultant of TF1 CEO Rodolphe Belmer’s

close relationship with the streamer’s top brass. The French exec was on Net "ix’s board between 2018 and 2022 when he ran pay-TV player Canal+, and he has remained tight with Reed Hastings and co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Peters ever since.

What we can say about these deals is streamers are framing them as partnerships that create value for the local market. They also see them as a continuation of long-standing business relationships forged through years of licensing and acquiring content. Broadcasters approach them as a new window to reach audiences that they’re struggling to meet alone.

Disney’s trio of deals with major European free-to-air broadcasters follows the assumption that they are a positive sign for the future.

“We’re proud of our longstanding relationships with free-to-air partners across Europe to both license and acquire TV shows and movies,” says a Disney spokesperson. “These recent agreements are designed to give audiences access to even more great local stories on streaming, while continuing to support investment in local production and bene!t the broader ecosystem.”

Disney’s deals range in size from select shows to hundreds of hours, highlighting that there is no one-size-!ts-all model for diagonal integration. Enders Analysis’ Harrington calls the ITV agreement in the U.K.—which sees ‘Taste of’-branded sections carried on the other streamer’s platform—“a very limited deal that could basically be seen as marketing.” In essence, ITV viewers can watch the likes of Andor, Only Murders in the Building and

The Kardashians via a rail on ITVX, with an ITVX rail launching on Disney+ with shows including Mr Bates vs the Post O!ce, Love Island and A Spy Among Friends. Both sides will regularly sit down and explore what can be added. Deadline understands titles will rotate every eight weeks on average.

“We believe there is a mutually bene!cial relationship here and we can reach free-to-air audiences in larger markets,” Disney+’s General Manager for EMEA Karl Holmes said back in July. ITV content chief Kevin Lygo called it a “mutually bene!cial alliance”, while Holmes added that “there will be lots of di#erent models that achieve a similar outcome” in the future, comments that came prior to Disney announcing its deals with ZDF Studios and Atresmedia.

Complicated rights situation

Given we’re headed to MIPCOM, where more TV rights have been traded than anywhere else, the issue of compensation from the agreements has already arisen and no doubt will again within the walls of the Palais and opposite the Brown Sugar bar in the early hours of the morning.

When the TF1 and France Télévisions deals were announced, we are told several international TV distributors, particularly in France, reacted with alarm. To them, this was a terrestrial network handing over their content to a streamer and removing the opportunity to secure a domestic second window. In theory, this could reduce the long-tail value of the content and even undo funding plans if a domestic second window deal had been baked into the !nancing. Ironically, it is often a global streamer that buys that second window to bolster its local content catalog.

As one source at a major distributor says: “If you’ve got to provide de!cit !nancing and some of that came from the second window, you’d get a

“The real power lies with who controls how people watch, pay and interact with content.”

TOM HARRINGTON

streamer to help with the !nancing. If it’s a TF1 show already carried on Net"ix, you’re not going to get another service paying a premium for it.”

Sellers we’ve spoken to for this piece, all of whom wish to remain anonymous, say their investment in series is completely contingent on knowing what rights they control. Should one of those terms be ignored or changed, there’s an expectation of reimbursement. “It has to be compensated somewhere,” says one distributor. Another adds: “This is about continued consolidation and whilst we’re seeing certain genres continue to uptick in AVOD, which in a way has become another secondary tier, losing that level of relationship is really tough, as you know what that buyer wants.”

Despite one distribution source calling the deals “uniquely complicated,” most people we’ve spoken to expect an agreement to be reached on compensation—and it is likely, in certain cases, that participation rights have already kicked in. Terms and conditions of contracts are often updated between longterm trading partners and, provided everyone feels fairly treated, it’s unlikely anyone will take the matter too far. In fact, one source says that if streamer carriage deals guarantee a second-window sale, it makes !nancial projections on new shows easier.

For some agreements, the situation is simpler. It’s worth noting, for example, that Disney+’s partnership in Germany is with ZDF Studios, the production and sales arm of German

pubcaster ZDF. “Our license agreement with Disney+ is a normal distribution transaction and concerns ZDF !lms and series in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland,” says a ZDF Studios spokesperson. “All rights holders will be remunerated correctly, and no other rights are a#ected.” Streamers also say that cash generated from the deals will maintain or even increase the volume of content for broadcasters’ SVOD services.

The future

Ultimately, the changing landscape and evolving relationship between networks and streamers is about futureproo!ng. Net"ix wants to be in the living room and terrestrials want to keep the lights on and expand their digital footprints. Their deals have come against a backdrop of a post-peak TV era where terrestrial television is in decline and the new normal is consolidation. Paramount, only recently sold to Skydance, is now rumored to be looking to snap up HBO Max parent Warner Bros. Discovery. Canal+ is completing its $2 billion takeover of Africa’s MultiChoice, and sports streamer DAZN is now the owner of Australian pay-TV giant Foxtel, which Bisson says is another example of diagonal integration at work. Who knows who else is gearing up for a big move.

Over in Europe, the Berlusconi family’s MediaForEurope (MFE) has !nally taken control of Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1 Media as part of its plans to create a European giant that is capable of standing toe-to-toe with Net " ix and its kin. Soon after the protracted takeover process ended, Enders Analysis’ François Godard issued a note that said MFE “!nds itself in a stronger position to talk to streamers about content deals in the follow-up of this summer’s announcements. In sum, the merger… is a welcome jolt to the European television industry.”

Looking further into the future, Godard’s colleague, Harrington, says: “The real power lies with who controls how people watch, pay and interact with content.” Here, we’re talking about a bunch of unknowns: What role AI search and Google might play, the possibility of ‘super aggregator’ apps, and newer technologies that we can’t yet even envisage. This is where we’re headed, many believe.

The industry has an uncertain few years ahead, but for now an era of harmony between streamers and networks has broken out. This may be an over-simpli!cation, but at least we’re unlikely to see a broadcaster ripping a page out of the Viacom playbook and taking a streamer to court any time soon. ★

Child’s Play

Kids megabrands are booming thanks to shows such as Bluey, CoComelon and Peppa Pig, but what are the potential pitfalls for other competing brands?

BY MAX GOLDBART ILLUSTRATION BY PAIGE PETERSEN

It’s been nearly a decade since Joe Brumm’s little-known Australian children’s series Bluey took the Asian Animation Summit by storm in Brisbane, Australia, and BBC Studios Kids & Family Managing Director Cecilia Persson remembers the moment fondly.

“We all congregated around it,” says the exec, who was an working at WarnerMedia’s children’s division at the time. “Straight out of the gate there was this incredible, emotional storytelling and at the same time you could see that Bluey was speaking to both kids and parents on their level.”

The show follows Bluey, a loveable and inexhaustible blue heeler (aka Australian Cattle Dog) puppy, and her life with her dad, mom and little sister Bingo. In each episode, Bluey uses her limitless energy to play elaborate games that unfold in ways that bring her family and neighborhood together. When Bluey debuted at the Summit in 2016, buyers quickly saw the show’s potential to become a global kids brand and were eager for a piece of the action.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and BBC ultimately co-commissioned Bluey in 2017 and, a few years later, BBC Studios’ inked a landmark deal licensing the show to Disney globally, while retaing distribution and merchandising rights. That deal is viewed as a stroke of commercial genius in the sector and was a key driver in helping BBC Studios achieve record revenues last year. Rumors persist Disney will attempt a megabucks buyout at some point. It turns out that loveable pups really do pay.

Nowadays, Bluey is recognized as a juggernaut brand for both kids and adults and its status as the most-streamed show in the U.S. is touted regularly.

While children’s entertainment

brands always have potential to grow big, shows like Bluey, Peppa Pig, CoComelon and, more recently, Net!ix feature "lm KPop Demon Hunters, appear to have reached even starrier heights in the post-pandemic era. Net!ix’s bi-annual ‘data dumps’ are now bedecked with children’s TV shows, merchandising opportunities are greater than ever thanks to streaming and platforms like YouTube can create global behemoths at an astonishing rate. But with budgets in the kids’ content space more challenged than ever, will the rising tide continue or is some content being left behind?

Emily Horgan, a former Disney executive and current kids media consultant, cannot discuss the genre without swiftly citing the impact of streaming and YouTube.

“The streaming wars are "ve years old now and they are entering their ‘childhood era’,” says Horgan. “Up until now it was about "nding marquee entertainment shows like House of Cards or The Mandalorian, but that overfocus was unhelpful for kids’ content. These shows don’t pop straight away–Bluey took ages to build–so now is a big moment for kids brands.”

As they now look to prioritize subscriber retention, streamers are better realizing that family viewing

“Straight out of the gate there was this incredible, emotional storytelling and you could see that Bluey was speaking to both kids and parents on their level.”

is crucial to keeping the lights on, Horgan explains. These shows are often watched repeatedly, so placing the most popular kids’ shows front and center of a streaming platform is critical.

Refresh and reinvent

A key ingredient for success in this space is, say most execs, the ability to become part of a child’s everyday routine.

“Little kids have Peppa Pig in their life from mealtimes to playtime to bedtime,” says Esra Cafer, senior vice president, global brand strategy & management at the brand’s owner, Hasbro. “She’s a part of the family. This level of resonance and trust is something that takes a very long time to build.”

Another key ingredient, according to Hasbro, is to reinvent when the time is right. The company recently embarked on what Cafer describes as “the biggest thing we’ve done in storytelling for 20 years” by introducing Evie Pig, Peppa’s younger sister, to

audiences. In a world of gloomy news headlines, Hasbro felt a cute cartoon piglet was just what the world needed.

Evie’s introduction to the world was a result of 18 months of top-secret planning: The newest Peppa addition was given a gender reveal, appeared on the cover of U.K. magazine Grazia and was discussed on national breakfast television. Evie was also ‘born’ in the Lindo Wing at St Mary’s Hospital—the same place where Kate Middleton gave birth to her children—after which a town crier announced Evie’s arrival into the world.

According to Cafer, Evie content has so far created more than 30 billion impressions across social platforms, and there is plenty more rollout to come in 2026.

“I suspected this would be news as these characters are famous, but the press reaction is something we would never have anticipated,” says Cafer. “This was both a beautiful thing and also something that we worked really hard on.”

Horgan praises Hasbro for making a “fundamental change to a brand’s DNA, which I respect a lot because if you don’t get it right you screw it up.”

Evie Pig’s birth story showed how much can be achieved when one throws some reinvention into the brand recipe and it’s perhaps no wonder that Hasbro held on tightly to kids brands such as Peppa Pig and My Little Pony, when it sold "lm and TV studio eOne to Lionsgate in 2023. Merchandising potential can be staggering when

Bluey

CECILIA PERSSON

you introduce a new character or shake up a brand.

Peppa Pig currently has deals in place with the likes of Walmart and Toys “R” Us, and the latter is now closely eying the content space. Four-time Emmy winner Kim Miller Olko, the president of Toys “R” Us Studios, is set to deliver the opening keynote at this year’s MIP Junior, where she will discuss “brand and content strategy—from embracing AI, early testing on YouTube and TikTok, to initiatives that explore the intersection of mental health and play.”

Brands are also constantly looking to attract fans in new territories. Bluey was recently dubbed into Zulu, Afrikaans, Swahili and Nigerian Pidgin, marking what BBC Studios described as a “signi!cant step in making quality children’s programming re"ect African voices.”

Yet no territory feels more crucial right now than Korea. Industry vet Norman Grossfeld is the creator of the iconic Pokémon “Gotta catch ’em all” tagline and has nurtured some of the biggest brands in the last three decades. In a bid to tap into young people’s love for Korean content, Grossfeld joined Seoul and LA-based studio Aanaxion to run its K-content label, Konfetti Studios. The company will kick o# its slate a slate that includes preschool series Hugglebops.

job. “They were all started up by indies and creatives outside of the studio system, which gives them that magical spark.”

Grossfeld’s timing couldn’t be better. At the time of press, KPop Demon Hunters has become Net"ix’s most viewed !lm ever with more than 236 million views—a record-breaking feat. “K-content is driven by a creative vision for what the target audience is,” says Grossfeld. “It’s not been watered down by studio notes to try and make it ‘something for everybody.’”

Net"ix’s decision to launch KPop Demon Hunters straight to streaming did raise question marks around a potential missed opportunity in the cinema space, but Sony Pictures Animation managed to secure a short theatrical run for its singalong version, which had an estimated $19.2M opening weekend (although Net"ix didn’t want to o$cially report numbers). It delivered Net"ix’s !rst No. 1 box o$ce win, and knocked Zach Cregger’s Weapons o# of its box o$ce perch.

Bluey and CoComelon are both gearing up to launch movies in 2027 and will be hoping a theatrical release will add another layer of success. In the same year, Moonbug’s CoComelon will join Bluey on Disney+, moving from Net"ix after the high-pro!le deal was announced earlier this year.

1 Peppa Pig

2 CoComelon

3 KPop Demon Hunters

4 Paw Patrol

5 Bluey

lesser-discussed element of the runaway success of KPop Demon Hunters has been the sharp rise in the number of people watching the YouTube channels that promote Net"ix and Sony Pictures Animation’s K-content. Indeed, anyone determined to make their brand a success in the kids’ space knows they have to take YouTube seriously thanks to the platform’s huge reach with younger audiences.

Nicolas Eglau, Moonbug’s EMEA and APAC chief, knows all too well the power of YouTube. CoComelon, he says, eschewed the traditional kids brand path by starting life on

the Google-owned platform and building from there.

“The traditional model was big brands starting out as feature !lms and then going pay-TV or free-toair or streaming, but we reversed that, starting with YouTube then Net"ix, and then linear broadcasters,” says Eglau. “I still believe that CoComelon revolutionized the industry. The future is these blockbuster brands.”

Hasbro’s Cafer says there is “no cannibalization” of Peppa Pig’s linear audience even though YouTube is a cornerstone of its strategy, but the social video platform has certainly created huge

“K-content is driven by a creative vision for what the target audience is. It’s not been watered down to try and make it ‘something for everybody’.”

ructions in the traditional children’s entertainment sector. “Kids are in charge of their schedule now, and we have the opportunity to program to them around the clock with no barrier to entry and no fee,” says Grossfeld of YouTube.

At the recent Annecy International Animation Film Festival, producers lamented the di!culty in nurturing shows in a traditional way thanks to children’s predilection for YouTube coupled with increasingly "nancially strapped broadcasters. Monetizing content on YouTube is also tricky, made even harder

by the 2020 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which disabled personalized ads for kids’ content and forced all creators to designate their videos as “Made For Kids.” Horgan says the “Made For Kids” label sees any revenue gained from a piece of YouTube content to fall by up to 70%.

“The irony is that the biggest brands of original IP are coinciding with a time when funding has never felt more challenged,” says Horgan. This is, she adds, a stark contrast to the “golden age of kids linear TV” around 15 years ago when shows like Paw Patrol, Hey Duggee and PJ Masks were

huge hits, making funding for kids content easier to source.

“There is also a problem in that if you want to be big on YouTube you need to be able to make a global play, but when public broadcasters commission, they want to lock in rights at a local level and that makes it much harder to build franchises. YouTube is now the front page of the kids’ internet, so this creates a catch-22.”

BBC Children’s Director Patricia Hidalgo says she is “horri"ed” by the vast decrease in animation commissioning over the past few years in the U.S. “We are a global industry and if Disney, Amazon

and Net#ix are pulling out then that is one less [type of] co-producer for all of us,” she says, as a U.K. parliamentary inquiry into the ailing children’s TV sector gets underway.

But looking ahead, Hidalgo strikes an optimistic note, and also notes how important these megabrands are to the survival of traditional kids TV commissioners such as the BBC.

“They are unicorns,” she says. “They come along every 10, 15 or 20 years and just blow up. It’s a blessing that we still have them. If we didn’t, the industry would have dwindled much faster.”

JIMMY FALLON'S BRIGHT IDEA

Jimmy Fallon’s latest for NBC sees him teaming with business supremo and reality star Bozoma Saint John. With the likes of The Apprentice and Shark Tank now long-established, it’s been a moment since a new business-y format came through. As it hits the international market, it’s proof-of-concept time for On Brand with Jimmy Fallon.

By Stewart Clarke

It’s been a busy year for Jimmy Fallon

He kept up with hosting duties on The Tonight Show as late-night TV $irted with a meltdown, and headed to Cannes with marketing superstar and Real Housewife Bozoma Saint John to meet the advertising crowd and get them behind their new show. As it launches internationally, Fallon & Saint John tell Deadline about staying On Brand.

September was a strange month for Jimmy Fallon. On the one hand, he launched his new reality show On Brand with Jimmy Fallon and he successfully took The Tonight Show on the road to Detroit. However, his long-term latenight future was questioned after ABC pulled his friend and rival Jimmy Kimmel o# the air after pressure from FCC chair Brendan Carr and local station groups. President Trump said that Fallon would be “next”. Kimmel has since been reinstated and is back on air.

Fallon says that he isn’t changing his schtick. Whichever way the cards fall, the comedian, actor, SNL vet and talk show host’s move into creating and hosting shows outside of late-night is starting to look like a smart move.

In business parlance, Fallon is diversifying. He already has the rebooted version of Password, which was recently renewed for a third season at NBC, and That’s My Jam, a music-themed gameshow inspired by a segment on The Tonight Show, and is working on another pilot based on well-known IP.

On Brand with Jimmy Fallon is his latest venture. His on-screen business partner is Bozoma Saint John, the marketing exec who has sat in the C-suite at Net$ix as well as Apple, Endeavor, Uber and PepsiCo. She has also brought her own brand of powerhouse energy to The Real Housewives of Beverly

Hills since joining the Bravo reality show in its 14th season.

In On Brand with Jimmy Fallon, contestants join the ‘On Brand Agency’ and design campaigns for household name brands including Dunkin’, Kitchen Aid and Therabody. Fallon hosts and Saint John is the agency’s chief marketing o!cer, as the participants create earworm jingles, big-ticket activations, memorable commercials and must-have merch. The winner will see their work used in the real world and collect a cash prize.

For Fallon, it is a gear change from the day job. He celebrated a decade on The Tonight Show last May and the relentless nature of latenight means more than 2,100 episodes have aired on NBC since he took the hotseat, with north of 4,000 guests.

Strike Up The Brand

In the context of unrelenting debate about late night, On Brand with Jimmy Fallon is a welcome diversion for the star. Talking to Deadline,

the comedian and host rummages around his o!ce to unearth a laptop that he opens to reveal the original pitch document for a show idea called Branded. That was the starting point for what became On Brand with Jimmy Fallon

The reality competition show attempts to seamlessly put brands front and center. The challenge for Fallon, Saint John and the producers is making it feel natural. “It can’t feel like an infomercial,” says Fallon. “No one would watch that. It would be boring after "ve minutes. One of the tricks is making the show interesting and fun, gamifying it, and seeing the personalities of the contestants. You have got me doing the hosting, but then you need the smarts and someone that knows this business, so enter Bozoma, who has done it all and can give great advice.”

The format spoke to Saint John’s marketing DNA. “It’s one of those things where you think: I should have come up with this,” she says of the format. “That’s the way good ideas should feel, like you could have come up with them. That’s what makes brilliant marketing.”

On Brand In Cannes

While On Brand with Jimmy Fallon is inextricably linked to the advertising and marketing game, there is a whole other side of the media business gearing up to sell the idea around the world.

Hannah Mabruk, SVP, format sales & production at NBCUniversal Formats, which is part of the Universal Studios Group, is leading that charge. Her team knows Bozoma Saint John and

the other Real Housewives because they sell that format, which has been remade in dozens of territories—resulting in the likes of The Real Housewives of Lagos and The Real Housewives of Amsterdam. They also sell the SNL format and Fallon’s That’s My Jam. At MIPCOM, NBCU Formats will be getting behind On Brand. The vibe of the format is warm and supportive rather than mean

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills

The stakes are always high when launching a new show, but for Marketing Association Hall of Famer Saint John, there is added pressure. She and Fallon were in Cannes at the Lions advertising and marketing fest in June, getting brands on board. She may have been on the Côte d’Azur, but it was home turf in the sense of speaking directly to the professionals in her industry.

“I was very clear,” she recalls of her message to the marketing folk. “My reputation is at stake. I have spent 25 years building my brand as one of the best marketers in the world. I can’t have my reputation dashed because something goes sideways and doesn’t feel smart, doesn’t feel creative, doesn’t feel interesting, doesn’t feel like the industry.”

Saint John says the trick is to make a show that works for the mainstream, but feels real to the pros. “I can’t risk anything that would feel inauthentic to the marketing community and then not also be entertaining to everybody else,” she

and cutthroat, says Mabruk. “Two ideas are selected for proof of concept, and then the rest of the competitors split into teams to support those. Everybody’s working together. It feels a bit like some of the workplace comedies that you would see on NBC, like The Offce and Parks and Recre-

says. “As a person who spent a lot of time doing very serious work, I don’t take this lightly at all.”

Saint John and Fallon bounce o! each other. Deadline can’t get a word in as the video call begins and she tells Jimmy the gift he sent to celebrate her engagement to actor Keely Watson has arrived (it’s a special kind of West African pepper soup that nods to one of Jimmy and Bozoma’s "rst-ever meetings). The comedian and host, and business/reality TV supremo make for an energetic double-act—a good sign for their show.

“We would talk to each other, and we would be like, ‘Look at what we’re making,’” says Fallon. “The winner of this gets their idea put into the world after the show airs. It will be in Dunkin’, it will be on a billboard in Times Square for Marshalls. I don’t think that’s ever been done with a TV show, and to think of something new is pretty hard to do. Everything’s kind of been done.”

ation, with that kind of warmhearted tone.”

Jimmy Fallon and Saint John were pressing the fesh with advertising folks at Cannes Lions earlier this year. Mabruk reports that international branding and marketing agencies, as well as producers with a background in commercials, have been in touch about the show.

Bozoma Means Business

“I am always very fascinated by the moments in culture or in business when there’s a turning point,” says Bozoma Saint John. She has been around for several such moments.

“When Apple acquired Beats Music, it was like, OK, how do we turn iTunes, this big powerhouse, into streaming? I was heading up marketing to do that. When I was at Uber, it was a moment when Uber started taking over the planet, and it was also hitting some tough corners. I was the chief brand offcer and helped navigate that.”

At Netfix the cultural moment concerned how flms and TV are served up to people. With so much content out there, it started to defne itself as “the one who’s going to give it to you and create an algorithm so that you can fnd it for yourself,” she says.

The belief is that On Brand can carve out its own moment. “The music competition shows were a change in the way that we think about A&R in the music business,” Saint John says.

“All of a sudden, everybody thinks they can identify who the next great singer is. Well, you’re about to do the same with On Brand. You’re going to feel very empowered that you understand how to create big creative ideas that can propel companies into the stratosphere.”

“It is speaking

to a lot of people and offering a lot of solutions,” she says. “For broadcasters, it is content that they can co-invest in with advertisers, because we know for advertisers, the 30-second ad might not be enough anymore. Advertisers want to be inside of the entertainment as much as possible and this show does that organically.”

One challenge in terms of setting up local versions is that the rules governing how brands and advertisers can work with broadcasters differ from one

country to the next. Each international version will need to be calibrated accordingly.

Timing, meanwhile, is everything. “The big business competition reality formats like Shark Tank and The Apprentice have been around for a very long time, and we’re often discussing with buyers how they would love to fnd the next show in that space,” Mabruk says. Internationally, the show will be marketed as On Brand and pitched as a big show for buyers’ peak timeslots.

Left: The Palais in Cannes decked out for MIPCOM; Right: Hannah Mabruk.

Bozoma Saint John

Jimmy Fallon and Bozoma Saint John with Pyper Bleu in On Brand with Jimmy Fallon

Late-Night Mayhem

It was a simpler time when Fallon was promoted from Late Night to The Tonight Show in 2014.

Fallon replaced Jay Leno, who had his own battles with the likes of David Letterman and Conan O’Brien, and the networks still jostled for eyeballs and ad dollars. There wasn’t, however, the current level of corporate mayhem and maneuvering or a president regularly giving his take on social media.

The last few months have been nothing less than earth-shattering for America’s talkshow hosts. CBS announced that it was axing The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in July just as parent company Paramount was being acquired by David Ellison’s Skydance, which set the tone. Two months later, Disney’s ABC inde!nitely suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! and all hell broke loose.

Amid a freedom of speech debate and with pressure on Disney, Kimmel returned to the airwaves on September 22 after what ABC described as several days of “thoughtful conversations”. In his monologue that night, Kimmel thanked his other late-night hosts for the support, namechecking Colbert, Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Seth Meyers and Fallon.

There has never been greater scrutiny on late-night. Deadline spoke to Fallon after The Late Show was canceled, but before Kimmel was suspended. The question for all talk show hosts, and comedians, is whether there is a chilling e"ect when regulators, corporate bigwigs and politicians weigh in on their words? Will hosts reign in their creative instincts?

“I don’t think you can ever do that,” says Fallon. “I think I haven’t changed. I stuck to the same show that I was doing. Everyone does their own thing, and you have got to keep doing your thing. It was shocking with Stephen. I’m going to miss him. I didn’t see it coming—I didn’t know anything was going on. I still don’t really know all the details, but he was super fun to play with, and he’s a genius. I’ve known him since The Colbert Report, and I’m sure he’ll do something great next.”

Fallon was on Saturday Night Live between 1998 and 2004. Lorne Michaels’ long-running comedy also regularly takes criticism, particularly from President Trump. Fallon says SNL faces the same issue as the talk shows. “You just have to know where to go with it and still be edgy,” he says.

Fallon also says that he has had no negative feedback from NBC on his late-night performances. “We still have good, edgy monologues, and nothing has stopped that,” he says. “I haven’t gotten any notes so far. Knock on wood.”

Saint John has never worked in late-night, but she o"ers a business and marketing take, which can be summed up as ‘don’t mess with the brand.’

“The piggyback to Jimmy’s answer is that all of us have lived through so many di"erent

Gal Gadot & Reese’s Pieces

If late night TV is currently the stuff of mainstream news bulletins and party politics, the actual viewing numbers remain a workaday concern at an industry level. Linear numbers are down across the board. In a digital age, however, The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon has gotten on the front foot, with 100 million followers across social media and over 9 billion views across platforms. “It takes years to build up that trust and get that following,” says Jimmy Fallon. “I’m into all that stuff. I’m into the internet. I like to look at the trends.”

cultural shifts and one thing that is always dangerous for brands, whether personal or business, is when you try to shift your brand ethos to match the culture. That’s why Jimmy cannot do that. He can’t change his brand ethos, because if he did, it would fail, because it wouldn’t be him any longer. If he blows with the wind, then no one can trust him. That’s what real brands that stand the test of time are,

because we can trust them. We trust that they are going to be the same, whether you have one president in o#ce or another.”

Fallon & Saint John For President?

Mention of that other business format, The Apprentice, leads naturally to what a hit NBC reality show can mean for its host, given Donald Trump’s ascension from the series to the White House. What kind of POTUS does Saint John think Fallon would make?

“First of all, we’d have the best international relations,” she says. “Jimmy is a connector. He likes to see things and be like, ‘Oh, that’s a good thing, and that’s also a good thing. Let’s put those two things together.’ Jimmy would not only be president of the United States, but chairman of the UN and foreign relations, the whole thing.”

Fallon’s take on Saint John as leader of the free world? “Boz would be a great president, because she’s a leader and you respect her. There’s something that she has when she walks into the room. Everyone looks and everyone listens.” Saint John, with her marketing head screwed on as ever, shoots back: “By the way, Jimmy, I’m gonna use that in my campaign.”

NBC’s Schedule Gamble

The pair’s new show will play twice weekly in the NBC schedule, which Fallon thinks is a risk, and one he is right behind. He says that Pearlena Igbokwe, the Universal Studio Group boss who added NBC to her portfolio in January, was trying a new “experiment” with scheduling.

“We’re going Tuesday nights after The Voice, which is a great lead-in, and then Friday at 8 p.m. the same week, but not a repeat,” Fallon says. “Can you keep the audience from Tuesday to Friday at 8 p.m.? It’s a risky move and I think it’s brilliant.”

On Brand is produced by B17 Entertainment,

al adot samples her frst ever Reece s Cup on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon

From top: Pyper Bleu, Elijah Bennett and Bianca Fernandez in On Brand with Jimmy Fallon; Mahiri Takai; Jill McVicar Nelson, Scott Murphy, Fallon and Saint John in the “Dunkin” episode.

The online world is, however, hard to predict. Fallon has created his fair share of viral moments, but they were not always the ones he was expecting. “You can’t really guarantee what’s going to work,” he says.. Sometimes you come up with something and think everyone’s going to love it and it fops. Then you hear that everyone’s talking about how The Rock never ate a candy bar the star ate candy for the frst time in 27 years on Fallon’s show]. You go, ‘That’s what everyone is talking about!’ I did a whole song and dance, I played the guitar, I changed costumes, and no one cared. All they want to know is, has Gal Gadot ever tried Reece’s Pieces.”

Fallon’s Advice As SNL Crosses The Pond

SUniversal Television Alternative Studio in association with Fallon’s prodco Electric Hot Dog. It is a long way from the dating reality competitions that are in vogue around the world and is somewhere in a space where Shark Tank meets The Apprentice meets Project Runway. For Fallon, it is “more of a thinker type of show, an ideas show, but also an experiment. It’s a move.”

Saint John notes there is a play-along element that’s important. “This is an exercise in idea-making,” she says. “This is a creative pursuit, and everyone on the planet has a bit of that, some just happen to be better than others. You can participate, you can have an idea of your own, or you can say, ‘That idea wasn’t great, I would have done it like this.’”

Face Of The Brand

Fallon’s face adorns a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream !avor ‘The Tonight Dough’ and he recently fronted an event for Google. The point being, he is well-versed in working with brands. The Tonight Show works with the likes of Ford, which is why the host was in the Motor City "lming an episode at the Detroit Opera House the same week that Deadline speaks with him.

“It’s part of the job,” he says. “We do integrations every now and then and I love them.” Being upfront is key, he adds. “Everyone is doing commercials, and it’s like, just be honest and tell people. You’ve got to pay the bills. Our rule on the show is just let me write it. If you give me that freedom, trust me, I’ll give you the best ad. I love those challenges. We’ve done integrations with everyone, from Audible to Patron tequila. We actually did toilet paper, and my thing was, ‘When you put your roll on, does the paper go over or under?’ That sparked a giant debate.”

Noted Host

Fallon is a note-taker. As we talk he is scribbling away and often refers back to these aide memoires. He claims a recent one is for a new type

aturday Night Live was an obsession for the young Jimmy Fallon. He wouldn’t go to parties as a youngster until the end credits had rolled. “Friends would get mad at me,” he recalls. “They’d be like, ‘I’ll put a TV set in the corner of the room.’ I’d go, ‘No, I gotta watch it myself, really study it… and then I’ll be at the party at one o’clock.’” Sky in the U.K., which as part of Comcast is a corporate sibling to NBC, is working on its own version of the late-night sketch comedy series. Sky’s unscripted boss Phil Edgar Jones has said he wants the British pay TV outft’s take on SNL to bring “chaos” and “noise” to the screen.

As Sky’s talent scouts scour comedy clubs and the internet for talent for the U.K. show, it is the talk of the town in British comedy circles. Fallon was on SNL from 1998 to 2004 and he shares some advice with comics dreaming of getting onto SNL UK. “If you get lucky and get cast, I would just focus on the show,” he says. “Don’t think about the next move, or if you are going to be a movie star from this. Don’t treat it as a launching pad, treat is as the end game. This is the prize: Saturday Night Live UK. If you concentrate and make that show the best, and be the best performer on that show, other things will come, but that’s a different conversation. Treat it like the destination that it is.”

There’s some practical stuff too. “Work on impressions, be musical and be up to date,” Fallon says. Sky’s U.K. version will be produced by UTAS UK and Broadway Video and launch in 2026. It is set to become the highest profle international version of the show, which has been remade in China, Germany, Italy and South Korea.

of Italian-American garden gnome, and given that this is the man behind the Warby Parker sunglasses that you can spin in your hand (Spinnies) or even !ip (Flippies), he may not be kidding. On Brand, meanwhile, has made it all the way from notepad to pitch doc to its real proof of concept stage, a full series.

The Traitors was the last big breakout format and the hope for Saint John, Fallon and NBC is they are capturing the zeitgeist with their new show as it launches in the U.S. and as the international launch kicks o# at MIPCOM Cannes.

“I feel like in this day and age, so many people are posting on social media and they are already in the [branding] business,” says Fallon. “They know what they should post, because that is their character; that is their brand that they are making on Instagram or TikTok. People in general, around the world, are interested in branding.”

In a recent appearance on Stephen Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast, Fallon talked about his all-consuming drive to be on SNL before he was 25. That was duly achieved. Then he made some movies and has notched over a decade on The Tonight Show, while getting some other shows up and running along the way. Now 51 years old, what does the next quarter of a century hold?

“Who knows what the next move is,” he says. “Right now, it’s On Brand. I’m not used to hosting this type of show, as The Tonight Show is so di#erent, and Password and That’s My Jam are also di#erent. Here, I was channeling my Padma Lakshmi, you know, I was Top Chef-ing my way through it.”

Lakshmi fronted Top Chef for 19 seasons and Fallon hopes he has created something with similar staying power. “Right now, it’s still the unknown, but once brands see this, we are going to get bigger and crazier ideas,” he says. “Boz and I were saying, ‘This is a new toy for brands, and it’s a new sandbox.’ Let’s see how far we can take it. Who knows, but right now I’m negotiating Season 15.”

If not a rebrand, On Brand is pushing Fallon’s trademark persona deeper into new corners of TV. The same is true of Saint John. In terms of awareness and positioning, and given the febrile nature of late night, that might be the smartest brand strategy of all. “It is a di#erent ball game for me,” says Fallon. “I loved it.” ★

Heidi Gardner, Colin Jost and Michael Che at the Saturday Night Live news desk.

allon fronts a feet of Ford Mustangs while performing “My Girl”.

The African King

The story of landmark South African series Shaka iLembe reveals a history that has “been underserved in almost every way”

BY JESSE WHITTOCK

“At the beginning, I thought we were digging a deep hole for ourselves, as people feel so passionately about this character,” says Angus Gibson, the director and co-creator of South Africa’s biggest-ever production, Shaka iLembe

The character in question is King Shaka, or Shaka kaSenzangakhona, the most famous of the Zulu kings who ruled in a pre-colonial era. A hugely important "gure in South Africa’s Zulu culture, he has often been portrayed in Western media as a brutal warlord, a contrast to the tough military and political leader that most scholars agree he was. The desire behind the making of the series was to right that wrong.

Gibson, Desireé Markgraa! and Teboho Mahlatsi—the

experienced trio behind Shaka iLembe production house Bomb! Productions—knew the project would become career-de"ning.

They wanted to tell a King Shaka story that South Africans felt was their own, and to wash away decades of pre-colonial history they didn’t recognize.

“This story was deeply important to us because African history has been underserved in almost every way,” says Markgraa! “There is very little television or "lm that explores the history of this rich and compelling continent—the very cradle of humankind. Telling this story felt like the "rst step in helping to change that: To create something beautiful that Africans everywhere could connect with.”

The founders of Bomb! have built a reputation for creating "lms and

TV shows that placed an African eye on storytelling. Gibson co-directed the late Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-nominated Nelson Mandela biography, Mandela: Son of Africa, Father of a Nation, Teboho made Silver Lion-winning short Portrait of a Young Man Drowning and Markgraa! was a co-producer on the multi-award-winning doc series Amandla!: A Revolution in Four Part Harmony. The trio also made Yizo Yizo, a visceral and honest late1990s South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) drama series set in a Johannesburg township school. Still, taking on Shaka would be an entirely di!erent challenge. Gibson recalls how the original idea was to create a pre-colonial "lm or series "rst, covering di!erent narratives about largely obscure "gures from across Africa.

However, M-Net, the South African pay-TV channel owned by African content giant MultiChoice, suggested focusing on the Zulu king—by far the most prominent historical "gure from South Africa’s pre-colonial era.

There had been previous attempts to tell his story, or at least his part in the story of Western settlers in Africa. SABC, then owned by South Africa’s apartheid government, released Shaka Zulu back in 1985, but told the story largely based on the writings of British traders who had interacted with Shaka, and through #ashbacks of Henry Francis Fynn, a settler with an important role in South African history who will appear in Season 3 of Shaka iLembe

Out of the U.S. more recently, a $90 million Showtime series titled King Shaka, which counted Training Day director Antoine Fuqua among its executive producers, was canned before its release because of to cost-cutting measures. Production in the KwaZulu-Natal province shut down 12 days before wrap, a devastating blow for the

From left: Lungani Mabaso with Lemogang Tsipa and Fanele Zulu. Below: Nomzamo Mbatha.

“This story was deeply important because African history has been underserved in almost every way.”

DESIREÉ MARKGRAAFF

South African creative community. Its unexpected demise made MultiChoice’s show, which airs on M-Net’s Msanzi Magic channel, even more critical.

Consulting the king

Initial trepidation about taking on Shaka coincided with the onset of the pandemic. Having already spent several years in development, the global production freeze allowed for an even deeper period of research. Historians, academics and family descendants, even the late Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini, who gave his blessing, were consulted, and every painting and available written source was studied. That led to two outcomes: a TV series that is far more historically accurate in terms of clothing, hairstyles, language and political dynamics than anything before, and the idea that Shaka iLembe would not just be about the man himself, but the people around him.

Once M-Net had given the go-ahead for what is the biggest-budget production in the company’s history, Gibson moved

to hire the two people he envisaged playing Shaka and his in"uential mother, Queen Nandi—relative newcomer Lemogang Tsipa and Nomzamo Mbatha, the actress and activist known internationally for roles in Coming 2 America and Bruce Willis’ !nal !lm Assassin. “I had to go down the route of auditions, but I knew who I wanted,” says Gibson. “That was a non-negotiable in my head.”

As well as portraying the one historical !gure she’d always dreamed of playing, Mbatha boarded as an executive producer. “For me, it was important to be part of something that fully told the history of our beginnings,” she says. “Bomb! has always shown an understanding of the television landscape in South Africa, and Africa at large. This was a period of history when we were kings, so how did we explore that and "esh that out? Both of my roles were daunting tasks, very laborious in the best of ways.”

The choice was made to tell a story about Shaka’s rise to leader of the Zulu Kingdom and his eventual assassination, taking in the !gures who would de!ne his reign. Senzo Radebe was cast as Shaka’s estranged father, King Senzangakhona, with the likes of Thembinkosi Mthembu, Dawn Thandeka King and Sthandiwe Kgoroge playing other leads. Ntando Zondi is the young Shaka. Season 1, which looks at Shaka’s journey into manhood and Queen Nandi’s role in his rise, launched in June 2023 and immediately broke viewing records, with 3.6 million viewers in its !rst week—the most ever for a MultiChoice channel. The production created more than 8,000 jobs and drew more internet searches than any other TV show in South Africa that year. Across the continent, Shaka iLembe played on Mzansi Magic and other local M-Net channels, in French-speaking territories

on Canal+—which has just taken control of MultiChoice—and in South Africa on Showmax, the streamer that has the backing of NBCUniversal and Sky. MultiChoice has called Shaka iLembe a “love letter” to South Africa’s nature, wildlife and the history of the KwaZulu-Natal region. Shaka iLembe went on to set the record for most drama category wins at the South African Film and Television Awards in 2024, and Season 2 quickly began !lming, with 16,000 jobs created this time, as Bomb! told the story of how Shaka consolidated his power in early 19th century Africa as the new king, and started building one of the continent’s most powerful empires in the KwaNobamba region of what is now KwaZuluNatal province.

After another hugely successful run ended on August 30 this year, Deadline revealed that MultiChoice ordered a third and !nal season, which will air in 2026. The !nal season will explore Shaka’s enemies trying to undermine his rule and the arrival of Francis Fynn and British colonizers.

“In Season 1, Shaka has to win the people over, in the second season he is going on the journey with them, and in the third he gets ahead of them,” says Gibson. “I want you to look back on him and recognize what a genius he was, and to acknowledge his "aws. He certainly was brutal, and he alienated people, but he was a visionary.”

The ”Tom Cruise bible of marketing”

When we speak with Gibson and Mbatha via a Zoom call, they’re !lming a large set piece. Mbatha says the scale is “much, much bigger” than before, adding: “The set feels completely new and really speaks to the testament of the vision coming to life.”

Extras and crew often turn up to

set on non-working days, she says, as she outlines how the leads feel a shared sense of history in the making with the magnitude of their performances. Wearing a stunning "ared Zulu headdress known as an isicholo, worn by married women to signify status, Mbatha giggles as she talks about the stars using the “Tom Cruise bible of marketing” to sell the show, “going to malls, kissing the babies and hugging the mamas, and understanding the tangibility of it all.”

She adds that for African production and storytelling of this scope, this level of personal investment is vital, especially when compared with other recent projects about Africa. For example, “Black Panther was an incredible project that made its mark, but from the African narrative, it’s not something we can truly relate to,” she says of the Marvel hit. “Shaka iLembe has a closeness to the people.”

Gibson picks up on the point. “We wanted to completely reverse the lens and the recognizable world to be African, so when the settlers come in Season 3, they are the exotic things, not the other way around,” he says.

Does he feel Shaka iLembe has achieved those lofty goals? “I had the expectation of half an audience that loved the project and half that felt we’d got it entirely wrong and had no right to tell the story, but it has been extraordinarily a#rming,” says Gibson. “In the context of Africa, there is an outpouring of deep appreciation of the project and people feeling they’ve seen a representation of their past they can celebrate.”

Now it’s a case of how far it can go. Gibson recalls how execs at one major U.S. cable network loved a screener of the show, but didn’t think a drama shot almost entirely in the Zulu language could resonate with the audience. “We need some courageous broadcasters over there,” he says. “We’ve got one here.” ★

Mae Martin

From Feel Good to Wayward, the comedian talks teens, trauma and truth

BY STEWART CLARKE

Mae Martin is not into chit-chat. After the soul-baring series Feel Good, the Net!ix stand-up special Mae Martin: SAP, and hit podcast Handsome, fans think they know the real Mae and want to dive straight in. “People come up and trauma dump—and I’m into it,” they say. “I’m not good with small talk anyway, I want to get deep.” Martin speaks with a mix of humor, warmth and livewire energy. Their work has dealt with, and often found the funny within, life’s awkward or existential moments. “With stand-up, it was such a huge turning point in my career when I started talking about real stu"—my life and addiction and pain,” they say. “People were suddenly totally engaged and laughing more. It’s really gratifying and validating to say the things that you’re embarrassed about and then have other people say, ‘Yeah, me too.’”

Deadline talks to Martin in Toronto where they grew up, and it’s a full circle moment. Years before, they were #lming outside the movie premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival with a camcorder, or they were getting autographs from stars such as Liev Schreiber. This time Martin was on the other side of the barrier at the festival for the world premiere of Wayward, the Net!ix series they created, exec produced and starred in. “We #lmed the show here,” Martin says. “It’s really about adolescence and I associate Toronto with my teens. That was the backdrop for all my misadventures.”

The limited series is about the

multi-billion-dollar troubled teens industry, and speci#cally the Wayward Pines Academy in the town of Tall Pines. It is an institution that promises “to solve the problem of adolescence.” Donning some formidable glasses, Evelyn (Toni Collette) runs the school and, it transpires, maybe the whole town. The viewers’ entry point is through Abbie (Sydney Topli"e), whose parents send her to the school, and Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind), her best friend who attempts to rescue her; as well as via Alex (Martin), a newly arrived cop, and his heavily pregnant wife, Laura (Sarah Gadon).

The Abbie-Leila relationship is based on that of Martin and their childhood best friend, who was taken to a school for troubled teens.

The memory served as inspiration for the series. Martin describes Wayward as “at heart a love letter to teen friendship.”

The school’s origins are cultish, an area that fascinates Martin.

“Cults are a useful metaphor for the complicity that we all have and what we’re willing to turn a blind eye to in order to have a comfortable life.”

Martin’s previous series Feel Good, for Net!ix and Channel 4, was semi-autobiographical and over two seasons traced the relationship between Mae and George, played by Ghosts star Charlotte Ritchie. It also delved into Mae’s past and their own teen years. If Feel Good was comedy with a powerful dramatic arc, Wayward turns that formula on its head and is largely a drama with some lighter moments along the way.

“I was keen to properly build tension,” Martin says about that radical gear-shift. “I really wanted to make sure that the funny moments were character-driven and truthful, and that any horror and pain was really earned.”

Given Martin has had a successful career as a stand-up comic and comedy writer, was it hard to reel in the laughs for Wayward? “I feel like my inner clown is very close to the surface,” they say. “As I get older, I think, ‘Is it just a series of coping mechanisms? Am I funny really, or is that just a way of interfacing with the world?’ I’m still !guring that out.”

Action Points

When pressed on their dream role, Martin says they want to be the next James Bond. Maybe the clues were there all along. In Feel Good, Martin’s character tells their agent: “I’ve always wanted to be John Wick.” In Wayward, a pumped-up Martin plays cop Alex Dempsey, who cracks some heads and is seriously deep in the action. “I’m clearly living out some fantasy and I don’t know who keeps letting me do it,” they say. “I have perpetual imposter syndrome about acting, but I really fell in love with it making this show and getting to work with Toni Collette, Sarah Gadon and the cast. I gave myself license to really go for it. It was really fun to get out some aggression and to play that character with all his "aws.”

Martin was urged to dye their hair darker so that Alex could be taken more seriously. And that character is a serious one. He has a darkness and yet also yearns for a happy family home

in a picture-perfect setting, which Tall Pines, ultimately, is not. For Martin, this role felt like more of a traditional acting gig where they are inhabiting a !ctional character, as opposed to Feel Good where they played a version of themselves.

Martin pinpoints a crucial scene just over halfway through the season. “It’s a sex scene between a trans cop [Alex] and his eight-months pregnant wife [Laura]. That representation would have meant a lot to me when I was young. It’s such a di#erent thing to see: An eightmonths pregnant woman who’s fully clothed and this trans guy.”

For Martin, the fact that Alex was a trans man and “that wasn’t the most interesting or important thing about his character” in the series, was signi!cant in the series. “What that means is that, if you’re not preaching, or making it such a linchpin of the show, you can actually be more subversive. Narratively, there is so much going on in this scene.”

Martin shares a chunk of screentime with Collette, who serves up a masterclass in chilling villainy as a school and community leader who majors in manipulation. In the wrong hands, Evelyn could have been a pantomime baddie, but Collette delivers something more complex. “She really got the assignment,” says Martin. “Where it could have been a sort of mustache-twirling villain, I think you feel that Evelyn really believes in what she’s doing and just lacks self-awareness and is some kind of narcissist.”

Wayward Adolescence

Feel Good and Wayward are both produced by Objective Fiction. A

creative through-line from those shows, via the SAP stand-up special, is a focus on teenage years and their legacy. “In Feel Good there was an adult processing their teens and then with SAP I was similarly driven by nostalgia and trying to make sense of it all,” says Martin. “I’m trying to make sense of how visceral those years were for me; all of those !rsts are so intense. In your teens everyone is a mess, but you also know who you are.”

With Wayward, Martin is hopeful that audiences will re"ect on their own adolescence. “I’d like people to think about their own teens. We should absolutely be listening to young people more. I don’t think we’ve ever really known what to do with teenagers. We sexualize them, we market to them, we deride them, we treat them like children, but we expect them to be adults. We so desperately need that next generation to save the planet that it’d be good to empower them a little bit.”

For Martin, it was important that the young cast of Wayward such as Topli#e, Lind and others felt empowered amongst seasoned performers such as Collette, Gadon and Patrick J. Adams.

“We were already editing the

“It’s really gratifying and validating to say the things that you’re embarrassed about and then have other people say, ‘Yeah, me too.’”

show when I watched [Net"ix’s U.K. drama] Adolescence. There is an episode with around 200 kids in that school, but if you give them that responsibility, or trust people with their characters and their intuition, then they really step up. It was important to me, that [the young cast] felt like they had ownership over the emotional worlds of their characters.”

Next Steps

Post-Wayward, Martin has a stand-up tour in the o$ng and projects with Feel Good co-creator Joe Hampson in the works. “I miss working with him and we’ve got a couple of things in development that we’re pitching because we’re desperate to write something funny again,” they says. “We have some good ideas and I’m just trying to lure him out to LA.”

Martin is also eyeing roles in work created by other writers. “I’ve never been in a movie and I’d love to act in someone else’s thing and to play someone really di#erent.”

They continue: “I’d love to do an Elliott Smith biopic and play him or even play River Phoenix. I’d also love to play a villain or do a kids’ movie.” That might be called keeping your options open, but considering Martin has written comedy and now drama, releases music, writes books, co-hosts a popular podcast and has also started selling their artwork, these ambitions don’t feel lofty. Maybe Bond isn’t such a stretch. ★

From left: Toni Collette, Mae Martin and Sarah Gadon in Wayward

MAE MARTIN

Playing the Blues

Donnie Wahlberg and Sonequa Martin-Green are headed to Cannes for the world premiere of Boston Blue, the upcoming offshoot of Blue Bloods

BY STEWART CLARKE

The procedural Blue Bloods ran for 14 seasons and almost 300 episodes on CBS, which gives Boston Blue some big shoes to !ll when it launches on the same network this fall. Continuity comes in the form of Donnie Wahlberg, who reprises his role as Danny Reagan. Wahlberg, whose band New Kids on the Block has an ongoing Las Vegas residency, also serves as an executive producer. This time, Danny is working cases in Boston rather than New York. His new partner is Lena Silver, played by Sonequa Martin-Green, who may be new to the franchise but knows what it is like to work on a high-pro!le spin-o", having starred in Star Trek: Discovery. Like Danny, Lena hails from a distinguished law enforcement family, so they speak the same language. Paramount Global Content Distribution is selling the series, which is produced by CBS Studios and Jerry Bruckheimer Television. Brandon Sonnier and Brandon Margolis—aka ‘the Brandons’ to Wahlberg and Martin-Green— are showrunnners and executive producers. Procedurals remain in demand around the world, explaining why Blue Bloods is premiering at MIPCOM, the biggest international TV market of the year. Here, the duo break down how they are honoring what went before, while serving up something new.

The pilot episode covers a lot of ground. You have to usher in a ton of new faces and explain Danny’s situation. Oh, and there’s a case to solve as well.

DONNIE WAHLBERG: There was a lot to get in there. There is the introduction of a new family. There’s getting Danny from New York to Boston and making sure that makes sense, and establishing new characters. To me, one of the most critical parts of it was making a believable bond between Danny and Lena. We’re planting seeds. Over the lifetime of a show you can watch everything grow and evolve, but to make that super interesting right out of the gate, and do it in a way that sets it up going forward, was a big challenge.

SONEQUA MARTIN-GREEN: This is a character-driven story. I feel that you don’t see that a lot in this genre. And I think that is why, in the foundation of our show, we’re going to be able to have the characters evolve. We#re going to be able to get to know these people, and get to see them change.

The chemistry between Danny and Lena is there from the start. There isn’t that story, which we often see, of partners that take a while to warm to one another?

MARTIN-GREEN: Something that jumped out to me on the page is that there’s a kindred spirit between these two. There are all of these parallels. They both come from these law enforcement families in a big city, they understand what that is and how that’s such a speci!c lifestyle. Their connection is authentic. It just sort of happens and it surprises both of them.

Is that relationship important in establishing why Danny is moving from New York to Boston?

WAHLBERG: I kept saying to the Brandons, the audience is going to have trouble believing Danny would leave New York, but we’ve come up with good reasons why. If he doesn’t gel with Lena, then why would he stay? On the page, there were jokes and one-liners and things that could be interpreted as con!ict, but Sonequa’s interpretation was that they can be this way [and get along with one another] because they see something in each other. They come from similar frames. Her take was so spot-on. I said, ‘That’s the partner he would stay in Boston for.’

What are the key elements from Blue Bloods that viewers will recognize in Boston Blue?

WAHLBERG: You need faith, family and tradition. Just because we move to a new city, it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist there as well, although they might be di"erent traditions and faiths and a di"erent family. Having played Danny Reagan for 14 years, I met so many law enforcement families from around the country of all di"erent backgrounds and faiths, and there are so many who related to the Reagans. Hopefully they will now relate to the Silver family.

That also speaks to the idea that while this is a cop show with crimes and police work, it is also a family drama.

MARTIN-GREEN: I love that it is actually a family drama and the backdrop is law enforcement. We get to see more than one area of law enforcement, from the crime scene to the DA’s o#ce, but with any quality story what’s really bringing people in are the characters. That’s really what makes it memorable and that’s what turns it into legacy, which is what we had with Blue Bloods. That’s why it went to 14 seasons. The faith, family and the traditions kept people going, and

that’s why they were so upset when it left the air. I appreciate that Donnie and the other EPs, and then obviously our showrunners, the Brandons, knew that if we were going to continue this TV legacy, we have to keep faith, family and tradition at the heart of it.

And we see a new take on the family gathering around the dinner table.

WAHLBERG: It’s the $rst time that Danny’s not familiar with the table. It’s a [Jewish Sabbath] Shabbat dinner and he’s probably experienced some of that in New York, but it’s a new family, and it’s a new dynamic. Danny usually just says what he wants and how he wants at the table. He’s respectful, but he doesn’t hold back. Now it’s a di"erent world to navigate. It’s very interesting and fun to play. It gives me a new challenge in trying not to blurt out whatever’s on Danny’s mind, but it still has to be him.

MARTIN-GREEN: We get to meet this family through the eyes of Danny Reagan. He becomes a proxy for the audience because we get introduced into this multi-ethnic, multi-faith family that observes Shabbat. One of the things I loved about our version of family dinner was the fact that this family practices the Sabbath and also has this Christian in!uence through the grandfather (Ernie Hudson as Reverend Peters). I just think that’s phenomenal. It was a big deal to see that. I feel that that took some courage to do.

Was it challenging for you, Donnie, to juggle being an exec producer on Boston Blue, and star as Danny, a character you’d played for 14 seasons on Blue Bloods?

WAHLBERG: Before shooting it was not challenging, because I wasn’t $lming, I was just giving my ideas, thoughts and in!uence, and looking

for ways to build this. Then, on set, I’m an actor and I want to respect my fellow actors. I want to be in the soup with them so it feels like they’re working with someone who shares their passion for the craft.

MARTIN-GREEN: I felt such a degree of ownership over Captain Burnham by the time we $nished the $ve seasons that I did [of Star Trek: Discovery]. I can only imagine what that ownership would feel like if it had been 14 seasons. And I know what it is to be number one on the call sheet and then also be a producer, and I know that sometimes it’s a really $ne line to walk. It’s been exciting to be able to come into a supportive position knowing what it entails.

How are you striking the balance of keeping the original Blue Bloods fans happy but also creating a new world?

MARTIN-GREEN: All of us are calibrating this based on the understanding that we’re building on a seriously strong foundation, the TV legacy of Blue Bloods. I know what it is to be in a newer iteration of a TV legacy [after Star Trek: Discovery] like the back of my hand. We’re paying homage to what came before, to Donnie and all those who built the foundations. Then we’re branching out on our own and trying to $nd our individuality and our uniqueness.

When you’re launching an offshoot of a series that many people loved, does it help that you’re both used to working in

established fandoms? Sonequa with Star Trek and The Walking Dead, and Donnie with Blue Bloods and, of course, New Kids on the Block?

WAHLBERG: Everything services everything else. Me being in a band for 40 years and being in the music business has taught me how to deal with personalities in a di"erent way. Then, becoming an actor has taught me how to deal with my bandmates in a di"erent way. There is a delicate dance of meeting certain expectations of the audience, of honoring certain things that they’ve come to appreciate and expect, and also taking them forward. Because of the nature of my band, because of the nature of Blue Bloods, because, for Sonequa, the nature of the Star Trek legacy, we come from a place where you respect what’s come before.

Do you listen to your fans or tune that out somewhat?

WAHLBERG: There are people who say: ‘The fans don’t get to decide this and that.’ Well, they get to decide a lot. They don’t write the scripts, but they’ve invested their time and dedication. We work from a place of respecting the fanbase and then $nding ways to take what they love and move it forward so that we’re not doing the same episode every time for the next 20 years, or the same concert. Otherwise, why do you even bother doing a spin-o" ? It’s something that we’re both accustomed to and I think it’s prepared us both to be in this situation. ★

Donnie Wahlberg and Sonequa Martin-Green in Boston Blue

Marian Keyes Is Having Her TV Moment

Marian Keyes is one of the most successful Irish novelists of all time, but her work has not been the stuff of TV or streaming series—until no he s ea s to eadline du ing flming o The Walsh Sisters.

BY STEWART CLARKE

There’s an eight-part Net"ix adaptation of Marian Keyes’ novel Grown Ups in the works, but when Keyes speaks to Deadline, it is from the set of The Walsh Sisters. The series is for Ireland’s RTÉ and has already been snapped up by the BBC in the U.K. Set in Dublin, the series follows siblings Anna (Louisa Harland), Rachel (Caroline Menton), Maggie (Stefanie Preissner), Claire (Danielle Galligan), and Helen (Máiréad Tyers) as they navigate the peaks and troughs of their late 20s and 30s. The sisters have in-jokes and handme-down resentments, but stick together amid heartbreak, grief, addiction and parenthood. Mammy (Carrie Crowley) and Daddy (Aidan Quinn) complete the family.

It is inspired by several of the books in a series about the sisters, who were introduced to readers in the 1995 novel Watermelon (which is not part of this adaptation). “I’ve lived with the family a long time because I’ve written seven Walsh family books now and to see them actually embodied by real people is very emotional,” says Keyes. “They’ve absolutely captured each of the people that I created.”

The Walsh Sisters is billed as “a comedy about serious things.” That tag that could apply to much of Keyes’ work. On the surface, her books might look frothy, but they delve into relationships and

heavyweight issues with an authenticity and deft humor that has won her a legion of fans and shifted more than 35 million copies.

The author explains how life experience has shaped her work as well as the characters we meet in the series, notably Rachel. “I’m in recovery. Thirty-one years ago I went to rehab. I really didn’t think it would happen to somebody like me. I was a young woman, I had a degree, and I was middle class. I just thought addiction belonged to people on the margins. Then it dawned on me, if it could happen to me, it could happen to anyone. I’ve taken that attitude to Rachel’s story. There are no guarantees of a happy ending, of a happy sober life, you know.”

Preissner plays one of the sisters and was the lead writer on the series, penning four of the six installments. “I wanted to be honest as much as I could be to these texts,” she says. “They were written in the ’90s and I said these are very heteronormative and there’s a lot of fatphobia in them. Marian said if she were writing them now that would be di!erent. And I know that [is true], because I can see how her writing has evolved. What I’m trying to do here is capture the spirit of the texts.”

“Marian is so smart, because she’s able to write something like Rachel’s Holiday and call it that, and have a pink fip-fop on the front of it and have it in book shops at the airport. If it was called ‘The Girl with the Needle in Her Arm’, and it had a black cover, everyone would be like, I’m not taking that to Spain. She hides the vegetables in the sauce. The character of Rachel has never had anything really bad happen to her. That opens up all these conversations. Maybe people who aren’t brutally damaged can have addiction problems. Maybe I have an addiction problem.”

STEFANIE PREISSNER, Writer/Actor (Maggie Walsh)

“Coming from a house of sisters myself, we’re big fans of Marian Keyes and we have read all the books. This is one of the f st obs e done in my own voice. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to act at all, because I use accents as a little bit of a cheat to get into a character and kind of transform.”

LOUISA HARLAND, Actor (Anna Walsh)

With Ireland and the U.K. accounted for, Australian streamer Stan has pre-bought the show, which is produced by Cuba Pictures and Metropolitan

Pictures. Cine"ix Rights has distribution and will be embarking on a sales push at the MIPCOM Cannes market.

Keyes says that she was not bothered if her books didn’t make it to the screen. And yet, she is happy that that is now happening. “The books were enough by themselves,” she explains. “They didn’t need another medium to validate them. It used to bother me when people said: ‘Why haven’t any of your books been made into #lms?’ I wanted to say: Well, ‘A) that’s nothing to do with me, but B) the book is #ne, read the book.’ But having said that, I really am pleased with The Walsh Sisters. It just feels so accurate. The whole feel is very Walsh family.” ★

From left: The Walsh sisters Máiréad Tyers (Helen), Danielle Galligan (Claire), Stefanie Preissner (Maggie), Caroline Menton (Rachel) and Louisa Harland (Anna).

“Claire has a really big heart, but she also has a really big mouth. She can be very easily misunderstood or dismissed. I grew up in an era where there was the idea that you can have it all as a woman. It was great, that’s a gift, but it means we do it all, and we have to not have a sweaty upper lip while we’re doing it. Claire is stuck in that mode, trying to be her own person, and be a good mother, but constantly feeling like she is not.”

DANIELLE GALLIGAN, Actor (Claire Walsh)

“Stephanie’s script honors what Marian does so well because she taps into some really dark subject matter, but in such an accessible, relatable and comic way. That was really important with Rachel, because, from my experience, addiction is presented to us in such a stereotypical way, and Rachel is a threedimensional human being. She’s focused, vibrant, and she’s relatable, unpredictable and impulsive. She’s struggling. We have such a stigma around addiction and mental health in this country. It was really important to be really nuanced in how I embodied her.”

CAROLINE MENTON, Actor (Rachel Walsh)

“Stephanie and I spoke a lot about the tone of the piece. A lot of the books are bestsellers and they’re books that people take on holiday, so you’re not doing Ken Loach, but we wanted to honor the truth, and we want to make sure that the drama feels real. I need to believe the stuff I am directing, even the comedy.”

IAN FITZGIBBON, Director

“I lived back and forth in Ireland as a teenager. Living here was probably the birth of my acting career because once ived in a o nt e ion, and na , over a summer as a teenager, I got the accent down. Then we moved to Dublin, and then I was getting slagged for being a ‘culchie’, which is slang for a country person, so I had to learn the Dublin accent real quick.”

AIDAN QUINN, Actor (Daddy)

“I think we’ve moved a little bit away from the Helen in the books. We’ve leaned more on [her] alternative sides of Helen. In terms of the light and darkness, all these characters feel completely paradoxical. They can be very inse u e and e y onfdent at the same time. A lot of what Marian does as an author is [create] omen ho a e a ed and ho are interesting, who do the wrong things and do the right things.”

MÁIRÉAD TYERS, Actor (Helen Walsh)

Shock Value: Andy & Barbara Muschietti

Pennywise, the world’s creepiest clown, is returning to the screen in HBO Max’s IT: Welcome to Derry Andy and Barbara Muschietti, the Argentina-born producer-director pair behind the hit movies and now the series, tell us how they are making horror jump out of the small screen.

BY STEWART CLARKE

Season 1 of IT: Welcome to Derry is only just about to launch yet Barbara and Andy Muschietti are already thinking about what comes next. With two It movies that have grossed north of a billion dollars under their belt, they are extending the universe into a series and already have plans for subsequent seasons.

Born in Buenos Aires, the brother and sister run two production labels, Double Dream and Nocturna, and their work spans blockbuster to indie fare. Guillermo del Toro helped them get their hit feature Mama up and running, and the pair says it is now their turn to discover new blood. Andy, meanwhile, is still on board Batman project The Brave and the Bold “We are moviegoers,” Barbara says. “We see movies of every size and we grew up with

movies of every size, and we want to continue telling stories that can be done on di!erent sized budgets.”

Their story is not just movies. Next up is IT: Welcome to Derry, a series and prequel to their "lms. The origin story of the series dates

back to when It: Chapter 2 was being made. Bill Skarsgård—who plays the killer clown Pennywise and also Bob Gray, his human alias—was talking to Andy Muschietti, who was directing.“ Bill and I were fantasizing about the character of Bob Gray and an origin story,” Andy says. “There was an enthusiasm to go back and explore the complexities of this character.”

What started out as an idea for a movie ended up as a nine-part series that will stream on HBO Max from October. As with the "lms, the inspiration is Stephen King’s 1986 novel IT, about a group of kids terrorized by IT, an evil entity that transcends generations and manifests itself in the form of Pennywise. The creepy clown is a horror staple, but King’s version is surely the most iconic. Bringing terror to the "ctional town of Derry (which is situated in the real-life U.S.

IT: Welcome to Derry

“It was very exciting to explore what the ’60s were in America, and what fear was and what kids were afraid of. It was the Cold War... You can’t imagine the state of paranoia.”

ANDY MUSCHIETTI

state of Maine), there is, as with all great horror characters and monsters, a curiosity about Pennywise’s backstory.

“We never did TV before, but there’s a bunch of TV shows that mean a lot to me and I appreciate the format, having a bigger canvas to tell a story, and the impact that has on audiences,” says Andy. “Our love for the book, and the vacuum created by all these mysteries and question marks in it, mean you end up, as a reader, not understanding everything, including the mystery of IT. What is IT? What does IT want?”

IT has been adapted for the small screen before, with Tim Curry as Pennywise in the 1990 miniseries for U.S. network ABC. Muschietti’s series takes a di!erent tack, drawing inspiration from a series of "ve sections of King’s novel dubbed ‘The Interludes’, which delve into the history of Derry and a series of catastrophes that occur every few decades when IT awakens.

King endorsed the series when it was announced: “I’m glad Andy Muschietti is going to be overseeing the frightening festivities, along with a brain trust including his talented sister, Barbara. Red balloons all around!”

The Muschiettis developed the series with Jason Fuchs who, along with Brad Caleb Kane, serves as showrunner. Andy directs several episodes. He and his sister exec-produce through Double Dream. Other EPs include Skarsgård Fuchs, Kane, David Coatsworth, Shelley Meals, Roy Lee and Dan Lin, while HBO Max and Warner Bros. Television produce.

Deadline is a spoiler-free zone, but su#ce to say that before the opening credits roll in the "rst episode of IT: Welcome to Derry, there is a scene that is destined to live long in the memory. It is both graphic and ingenious and sums up the tone and ambition of the series.

“We wanted to raise the bar higher in terms of shock value,” Andy says of the scene. “It’s about a self-imposed mandate of opening with an event that is shocking enough that you put the audience in a position where nothing is taken for granted, where nothing is safe in this world. You’re immediately putting people on the edge of the seat. We needed a strong opening. One of the things I love about this scene is the build-up. Of course, it has a big, graphic and shocking conclusion, but the build-up is something that was important.”

Nuclear Families

On screen, the titular town in IT: Welcome to Derry is a painstakingly constructed slice of

American life in the early 1960s. It is also shown in the series’ remarkable credits. These start with di!erent illustrations of down-home life that gradually give way to drawings of "res, mayhem and syringes plunged into eyeballs as a saccharin-sweet song from sisterly duo Patience and Prudence plays.

In the series, there’s a nearby military base and secrets seep out of that facility, and seemingly every corner of the town. Fear of nuclear war and its e!ects are close to the surface.

“It was very exciting to explore what the ’60s were in America, and what fear was and what kids were afraid of,” Andy says. “It was the Cold War and kids in school were performing drills in case of a nuclear explosion. You can’t imagine the state of paranoia. People were asking, ‘Is there going to be a nuclear explosion tomorrow? What are we going to do, will there be people with birth defects?’ It was very exciting to think of those ripples.”

With Season 1 yet to drop on streaming, there is no o#cial order or news of subsequent runs. But the Muschiettis hope to welcome people to Derry over several seasons. “There is an intentional bigger arc that will open,” Andy says. “My intention with this was to create a story that is a little bit like an iceberg under the water all through Seasons 1, 2 and 3. There will be an expansion in the mythology and more answers to the big questions.” The plan is to go further back in time, he reveals. “The second season will be in 1935. At the end of Season 1, we are hinting at the reason why we are going to tell the story in two more seasons and backwards.”

Horror, Heart & Humor

Andy says he "rst saw 1967 horror-comedy movie The Fearless Vampire Killers at age six, and by 11 he was delving into the likes of Sam Raimi’s horror classic Evil Dead. His sister is a couple of years older. Both were seasoned horror watchers from a tender age. Talking to the pair reveals a depth of knowledge and love for genre fare. Evil Dead, for example, taught Andy how to incorporate di!erent tones and humor into stories, something evident in his movies and the new show.

“I understood the power of humor in horror, not necessarily for comedic purposes, but to get people on board, to get them thrilled in a di!erent way,” he recalls. “There’s a very special feel when you see something that has a level of comedic sarcasm to it, and that becomes

imprinted on you. It’s inevitable for us to infuse some humor in our work. The other side of that equation with IT is the book. It has horror, but it had heightened emotions, and also humor.”

There is a focus on the horrors created by humankind in the series, as well as those emanating from the supernatural. “The fog in Derry is not just a literal construction, it talks about how we often turn our backs to what’s going on and try to forget, to put things under the rug,”

Andy says. At this point, Barbara chimes in: “What is de"nitely part of human behavior, and it’s absolutely horri"c, is the ability we have to not see horrors as they’re happening.”

Banking on Horror: Double Dream & Nocturna

The Muschiettis have two labels. Double Dream, which has a deal with Warner Bros., and Nocturna. The latter was created last year with Skydance and is thusly connected to the studio system, more so after Skydance’s high-pro"le merger with Paramount. Nocturna’s raison d’être, however, is a focus on indie-$avored genre movies that exist outside of mega-budget studio franchises.

“Nocturna gives us some $exibility, and it is more for things that are maybe edgier,” Barbara

1 Barbara and Andy Muschietti. 2 Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise in It: Chapter Two 3 From left: Luke Beattie, Redden Callaghan, Tom Hulshof and Taylour Paige in IT: Welcome to Derry

explains, adding that in the time it takes to get a blockbuster movie up and running they can also work on a number of smaller budget projects.

“For example, it took three or four years to get The Flash out and in the meantime there are so many more stories that we need to tell, and that we want to help other people tell.”

The Muschiettis were given a leg up by Del Toro, who liked their 2008 horror short Mama and helped get the 2013 feature-length version of the movie away. The !lm, starring Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Megan Charpentier and exec produced by del Toro, grossed a whopping $146 million o" $15 million in production costs.

The Muschiettis now !nd themselves in a position to !nd and boost talent. “Barbara did a huge deal for Mama, creating a co-production with Spain, Canada and the U.S. We were partnered with Guillermo, who was basically the godfather of the project, and he introduced us to Universal, and with all those pieces together, the movie was done,” Andy says. “We want to continue that tradition. With very big movies, it is harder to give an opportunity to new !lmmakers, but with smaller budgets, you can do that, and we didn’t want to let the opportunity of bringing new !lmmakers to the scene go.” ★

The Brave and the Bold

Kirill Sokolov & Jeremy Slater

One flm about to come out of Nocturna is They Will Kill You Russian writer-director Kirill Sokolov (Why Don’t You Just Die!) is helming from a script he co-wrote with Alex Litvak. New Line is co-fnancing and releasing the pic, which stars Patricia Arquette, Zazie Beetz, Heather Graham, Myha’la and Tom Felton. The flm follows a woman who answers a helpwanted ad for a housekeeper in a New York high-rise. There is, it transpires, a history of disappearances in the

Movies

building, which houses a mysterious community.

In keeping with its indie sensibilities, Barbara says Nocturna moved fast, reading the They Will Kill You screenplay in December 2023 and flming by the following September: “We shot it in South Africa last year and we are very much near the fnish line. It’s a lot of fun. It’s horror-comedy-action, and a great mixture and balance of those three. It’s something people will walk

Andy directed The Flash movie. Warner Bros. hoped it would race to big box offce, but it failed to deliver amid middling reviews and as its star, Ezra Miller, made the wrong kind of headlines.

Also in the DC Universe is The Brave and the Bold, a new cinematic take on the Batman story. It is based on Grant Morrison’s comic book run in which Batman has a son, Damian. It is the stuff of Reddit chatroom gossip and there has been speculation that Andy, who was attached to direct, is no longer on board. He is, however, very much still in the game.

“The Brave and the Bold is in this table of projects,” he explains. “As people know, there’s a second Batman movie being produced so The Brave and the Bold potentially will not happen until sometime later, because obviously DC doesn’t want to release two Batman movies at the same time. Because they’re doing the second Matt Reeves movie with Robert Pattinson, I think some time will have to pass before The Brave and the Bold starts.”

He confrms, however, he is on board when it does get up and running. “Absolutely, but given the timeframe, I think it might be down the line, and we will do a movie in-between.”

Robert Pattinson as Batman.

out of with a smile on their face, and it’s what the world needs right now.”

The pair reveal they are also working on a project with The Strangers writer-director Bryan Bertino and another with scribe Jeremy Slater, whose credits include Fantastic Four, The Umbrella Academy and Moon Knight “We are working with Jeremy, who’s an amazing writer and who’s making his debut as a director with us on a script he wrote,” Barbara says. “It’s called The Summoner and it’s a supernatural horror with bits of humor.” 4

4

Argentina: Horror-Tango

The Muschietti siblings grew up in Buenos Aires and want to return to Argentina in a professional capacity, but not at present. The government of Javier Milei, Argentina’s far-right leader, has enacted a controversial plan to defund the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA), which is the country’s national flm body.

Barbara says: “Right now, Argentina is going through its own very diffcult times with cinema because the current government has basically decimated the National Cinema Institute, which was basically the main provider of funds.”

Andy has a movie he wants to make there, but it will have to wait.

“We’re very connected culturally to Argentina because we were born and raised there,” he says. “There are so many stories to tell and one in particular that I really wanted to do. But, you know, it’s like, when will that happen? That’s probably not now.”

The movie in prospect has a distinctive Argentinian avor. “It’s a story of my own and set in the 1930s. It combines the culture of tango with some supernatural presences, and there is another part that’s connected to the social and political background. It’s an action-horror movie and it would be black and white.”

1 A street scene in Derry. 2 Barbara Muschietti on set. 3 The creepy girl in the shop window.

& 5 Andy Muschietti on set for IT: Welcome to Derry

Welcome to our annual selection of the most scorching titles headed to MIPCOM this year, Deadline’s The Hot Ones. Our editorial team, with years of experience and knowledge about what sells globally, has carefully researched and selected the projects we expect to drive the chatter on the Croisette and far beyond. MIPCOM may be as much a co-production forum as a trading space these days, but it’s still the main place for the world’s TV makers to discover what their counterparts are doing, and what the biggest new shows are likely to be. In the following pages, you can read our pick of scripted, documentary and formats titles from some of the industry’s top distributors. Let’s go.

MINT

BBC STUDIOS

Length: 8 x 60’

Producers: Fearless Minds, House Productions Network: BBC

u tu ing the me de la me o young mo ie di eto s is a aison d t e o ilm so it ill ha e delighted the team to ha e seen Scrapper helme ha lotte egan land he f st imetime se ies in the o m o Mint.

egan s debut sta ed a is i inson as an est anged athe ho etu ns to ondon to loo a te his daughte and the indie i as a iti al and omme ial su ess n Mint, egan has idened the a e tu e and se u ed a bu y ast in luding a a e T a ting e o man e om en oyle- a ne hi -ho sta oyle a ne

Mint ollo s hannon the na e daughte o the a ea s dominant ime amily des e ately sea hing o lo e in the shado o he gangste athe ylan am iley a ing g o n u ote ted ithin the su eal and iolent onfnes o the amily business things be ome om liated hen an oyle- a ne a i es on the s ene au a ase e is ibben and indsay unan also sta hen it omes to Mint, the has ba ed ha lotte egan s e utation o Scrapper says i ee tudios omme ial di e to o d ama and omedy ho is about to mo e to the to un a uisitions

This is distin ti e he adds t s isually aestheti ally and inemati ally di e ent to any ime d ama you ha e seen be o e You an tell it has ome om a sto ytelle ith an autho ed and inemati flm ba g ound n this autious ma et tudios is een to ba ne oi es ee says audien es ill buy into Mint in a Romeo and Juliet ind o ay hile it also e e ien es elements o The Sopranos with its de i tion o the domesti li e o a ime amily o these easons lus the a t it is being odu ed by

s a - inning Conclave ma e ouse odu tions ee is li ing his li s at the os e t o ta ing Mint to buye s and he om a es the eight- a te to simila d ama Reunion, hi h ust sold to ho time

The a etite is high he adds You ha e got to ha e that good mi ithin you atalog o s e if gen e lays and then some based a ound b oade mo e t aditional set-u s tudios is also ta ing ito s gatha h istie ada tation Tommy & Tuppence to along ith ison d ama Waiting for the Out and W1A eato ohn o ton s latest sit om Twenty Twenty Six.

Queen of Mars

NHK ENTERPRISES

Length: 3 x 89’

Producer: NHK

Network: NHK

ot e e y e- odu tion o ess ta es in a eal-li e o et laun h but then s Queen of Mars is not you e e yday T se ies o this s i-f sho about the ealities o li ing on a s yea s into the utu e s Ta ego o ishimu a a senio odu e in the a anese ub aste s d ama ontent team t a eled to the island o Tanegashima to itness the test-laun h o s ne o et The li t-o as su essul and although an a ident sho tly a te a ds s u e ed the lanned landing on a s s hobos moon by t o yea s ishimu a had his sho et in Queen of Mars ollo s ili ho is bo n and aised on a a s uled by the autho ita ian nte laneta y a e e elo ment gen y ith dis ontent b e ing ili ho is isually im ai ed meets hi aishi oto a young ea thling s ientist The t o ma e a se et a t but on the day o thei dea tu e on a mission ili is st u by disaste

has been in ol ed ith the eal-li e a tian oons e lo ation mission and is de elo ing a u e i- ision ame a to be mounted on the

s a e a t so it made sense o ishimu a to u sue the d ama se ies and in a laimed s i-f no elist Tetsu ga a he landed the e e t a tne o ishimu a it as im o tant to ma e the sho stand out by o using on the a ti alities o li ing on a di e ent lanet athe than the ou ney the e athe than o t aying a s as a g and and nea ly im ossible hallenge om a mode n s i-f e s e ti e this sto y ta es la e in a o ld he e o dina y li e on a s has al eady begun and this setting o e s a e y uni ue balan e bet een s ien e f tion and eality he adds

This an be elt in the a t that many eo le om di e ent ethni ba g ounds s ea in thei nati e languages on this e sion o a s ommuni ating ia eal-time t anslation de i es anted to e li ate this melting ot in the asting and landed on Wilderness sta asa i uda alongside u i in an u -andoming Tai anese a t ess ho sta ed in last yea s et i d ama Born for the Spotlight o that flming has a ed that uni e sal theme o identity and sense o onde o humans li ing on a s is su e to eate a bu hen ta es the sho to buye s at ishimu a says

The s eed o light something humans annot su ass e-

ates signif ant delays in ommuni ation a oss lanets he adds e belie e that the d ama eated by this time lag is both g ounded in e e yday e e ien e and e o es a sense o uni e sal em athy

Kill Jackie FREMANTLE

(Steel Springs Pictures in the U.S.)

Length: 8 x 60’

Producers: Fremantle and Steel Springs Pictures Network: Prime Video (in several European territories plus Canada)

hen athe ine eta- ones is inte ested in and engaged ith a o e t you don t say no emantle ne it as on to a inne hen eta- ones made he desi es no n to not only odu e a e sion o idan T uhen s gon o th ille The Price You Pay but also lay the lead a lead that ould be gende - i ed om the no el

In Kill Jackie eta- ones is a ie i e ho has been li ing a ealthy lu u ious e isten e o the last yea s t a eling the o ld selling fne a t using so histi ated ta loo holes and abo e all t ying to stay anonymous a te es a ing a dange ous ast as an inte national o aine deale ust as li e sta ts to eel a little bo ing

Queen of Mars

it takes a sudden lethal turn when she discovers that The Seven Demons, a squad of the world’s most terrifying hitmen, have been hired to kill her.

Zeta-Jones’ desire to get involved early in the process drove Kill Jackie forward. Assembling a creative team including writer Tom Butterworth (Gangs of London) and director Damon Thomas (Killing Eve) then helped things along nicely, says Rebecca Dundon, Fremantle’s SVP, head of scripted commercial, global drama and commercial & international.

“This was generated in-house and was one that everyone was talking about internally,” Dundon adds. “It felt like it had all the ingredients primed for a market looking for cut-through, it being a distinct, mainstream show that could genuinely appeal internationally.”

Zeta-Jones wanted to play the lead from the start and will star alongside the likes of The Gentlemen actor Daniel Ings. Dundon stresses that changing the protagonist from man to woman in the TV show felt “organic”.

Kill Jackie has been fnan ially pieced together in a distinctly modern way, with Fremantle def it-fnan ing and ime ideo landing a number of key European territories plus Canada early on. Most of the rest of the world is up for grabs, including the U.S., where co-producer Steel Springs Pictures is distributing.

undon says this e e ts the eality o fnan ing emium d ama in the wake of the U.S. labor st i es and fnan ial slo do n

“There is a ceiling on the funding you can raise from international, and the U.S. has slightly constricted in the aftermath of the strikes and Covid” she adds. “So, we are having to be more creative with modelling, looking at new ways and structures of bringing these shows to life.”

The Miniature Wife

SONY PICTURES TELEVISION

Length: 10 x 60’

Producer: Media Res Network: Peacock

Sony is going big on The Miniature Wife in Cannes with a screening in the famed Grand Auditorium at MIPCOM.

Stars Matthew Macfadyen, O-T Fagbenle, and Sian Clifford are headed to the Cote D’Azur and will be in attendance.

In a TV world in which commissioners are often accused of being risk-averse, the series lives up to its high-concept billing, which is one way to pique buyer interest at a MIPCOM market awash in drama. The 10-parter is produced by Media Res and based on the short story written by Manuel Gonzalez about a man who accidentally shrinks his wife.

The series examines the power balance, or imbalance, between spouses. The couple in question are Lindy, played by Elizabeth Banks, and Les, played by Macfadyen. They battle each other for supremacy after the shrinking accident and the understandable relationship crisis that ensues.

A blend of comedy and drama, the show will play on Peacock in the U.S. next year. Sony Pictures Television is on sales duty. Mike Wald, SPT's co-president, distribution & networks, says buzz has been building among international acquisition execs since the studio gave them a sneak peek at this year’s LA Screenings in May.

“Buyers everywhere are chasing bold content that commands attention and delivers marketing muscle,” he says. “With The Miniature Wife, you start with a highconcept idea that is both fresh and wildly inventive, add in huge star power led by Elizabeth Banks and Matthew Macfadyen,

and you have a series that will overdeliver for any service.”

Wald adds that the show could land with various types of buyers. “What makes this series so great to sell is that it is suitable for any audience and that has certainly been e e ted in the ea ly inteest we have seen, from streamers to pay-TV to free-TV.”

Jennifer Ames (Boardwalk Empire) and Steve Turner (Goliath), are showrunners and exec producers. Other cast includes Zoe iste - ones and ofa osins y as regulars, and Ronny Chieng, Aasif Mandvi, Rong Fu and Tricia Black in recurring roles. The MIPCOM crowd will get to see one episode at the market screening.

Little Fucker

YES STUDIOS

Length: 7 x 30’

Producers: Tedy TV

Networks: Yes TV

Little Fucker is a dark, coming-of-age comedy focused on a dysfunctional family’s generational feud. From Tedy, the label behind the original version of Euphoria, the show was created by Ariel Waysman and Viv Majar for Yes TV in Israel.

It follows Shay, a 12-year-old misft e is bullied at s hool and ignored by the adults in his life—until he catches his dad, Yaki, cheating. Shay blackmails him, triggering a father-son feud. Things get complicated when Shay recruits the neighborhood creep for backup and Yaki brings in an ex-cop to smoke out his blackmailer. As their schemes spiral, father and son are forced into an uneasy alliance to save the family from total implosion.

Yes Studios, known for distributing shows including Fauda, is handling international sales. It will launch Little Fucker in Cannes

and ill be sho ing the fnished tape as well as remake rights. It has a solid pedigree in terms of format sales, striking multiple deals for local versions of drama series Your Honor in recent months.

“Little Fucker is an edgy comedy that deals with universal themes of father-son relationships, school yard bullying and family dynamics,” says Sharon Levi, managing director of yes Studios. Drawing inspiration from the suburban black omedies o flmma e and playwright] Todd Solondz, the self-centered characters of Danny McBride, and the chaotic storytelling of the Coen brothers, this series delves into the consequences of a family unraveling when all the rules are broken.

If standing out at a market as huge as MIPCOM is a challenge, having shows with arresting titles is one way to quickly gain attention from buyers. Little Fucker duly delivers, but it is the relatable themes and characters in the comedy that will win over the acquisitions folk, says Levi.

“Due to these universal themes and the wonderfully drawn characters, we anticipate positive es onses to both the fnished series and the format at MIPCOM,” she says. “The format has high potential for remakes in various territories around the world, notably in Europe and North America, where edgy stories tend to resonate well with audiences.”

Ku’damm 77

ZDF STUDIOS

Length: 3 x 60’

Producer: UFA Fiction Network: ZDF

The latest installment in the Ku’damm German drama franchise will have its world

77

Ku'damm

The Miniature Wife

premiere at MIPCOM. Historical family drama Ku’damm 77 follows on from earlier shows Ku’damm 56, Ku’damm 59 and Ku’damm 63. Each one is set in the year contained in the title and follows the Schöllack family and events at a dance school that bears their name.

The Ku’damm in the title of the drama refers to the famous Berlin avenue, Kurfürstendamm, where the series is set. Earlier seasons were praised for their nuanced storytelling, historical detail, and exploration of women’s roles in post-war Germany.

Picking up the family’s story in 1977, the apartment above the dance school now accommodates three generations: Sisters Monika (Sonja Gerhardt) and Helga (Maria Ehrich), their almost adult daughters Dorli (Carlotta Bähre) and Friederike (Marie Louise Albertine Becker), and their mother and grandmother Caterina (Claudia Michelsen).

With three generations living cheek by jowl, the drama that plays out serves as a magnifying glass on the family itself as well as wider society in a vibrant but divided e lin The se ies as flmed in the city.

Annette Hess created the show and has written each season of the drama. One of Germany’s foremost creative voices, Hess was the recipient of Deadline’s f st-e e e man T is u to accolade in 2024. Her other work includes We Children from Bahnhof Zoo for Prime Video and The Interpreter of Silence for Disney+.

The Ku’damm series are all for German pubcaster ZDF, with German powerhouse producer UFA Fiction making the drama. ZDF Studios is handling distribution. The earlier installments sold well, so hopes are high for the new season as the action fast-forwards to the 1970s.

“Ku’damm 77 will stand out

in a crowded market because it doesn’t just revisit history, it reclaims it through the lens of fe e a ed un o gettable women,” says Sebastian Krekeler, deputy head of drama at ZDF Studios. “With its rich emotional tapestry, iconic Berlin setting, and the creative pedigree of Annette Hess, ZDF and UFA Fiction, this season taps into the cultural pulse of the 1970s while staying deeply relevant to today’s audiences.”

Krekeler says the sales strategy is built around highlighting the emotional punch that Ku’damm 77 packs. “We’re targeting platforms and broadcasters that value prestige drama with strong female leads, intergenerational storytelling and a proven track record of audience engagement. Ku’damm isn’t just a series, it’s a brand with legacy and momentum.”

Heated Rivalry

SPHERE ABACUS

Length: 6 x 60’

Producer: Accent Aigu Entertainment Network: Crave

There are several reasons why Heated Rivalry will be one of the most talked-about dramas launching at MIPCOM Cannes. With Heartstopper coming to an end, it appears an ideal time for a new LGBTQ+ romantic drama to take its place, and execs at commissioner Crave consider it one of the biggest bets they’ve made in recent years.

Another big reason is the premise—a steamy gay romance story that follow a pair of professional ice hockey rivals who harbor a secret: Away from the ice where they chase the same scoring records and Olympic dreams, they secretly yearn for each other. Over an eight-year period their se et oman e solidifes into love, as in the original book from author Rachel Reid.

Shane Hollander, the serious-minded captain of the Montreal Meteors, and star and playboy Ilya Rozanov of the Boston Bears are played by Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie,

respectively. Jacob Tierney, the writer and co-creator, predicts the “pull of the casting chemistry” will chime with audiences. “Their connection feels so real, as Rachel allowed for this complicated dynamic that grows over several years.”

Reid is a consulting producer, with Tierney and Brendan Brady from Accent Aigu Entertainment leading the adaptation. The duo is among the hottest TV talents in Canada right now, coming off hits Letterkenny and Shoresy

A Washington Post article on the value of romantic novels had initially triggered them to rush to option what Tierney says are “very, very spicy books” from the ‘MM romance’ sub-genre—novels written by women about gay male relationships. “I was in a blind panic that we would lose out, so I followed Rachel Reid on Instagram and sent her a note asking if there was world where we could option them. She was very excited.”

A pilot was then written on spec before Crave signed up, with the sales arm at it's parent Bell Media initially taking the rights. Sphere Abacus, the U.K.-based sales house that is is part of Bell, now has the rights and will be shopping them in Cannes. “Crave knew that if we ould fgu e out ho to a this, there is an audience that not only wants it, but would be so excited about it—an audience that doesn’t normally speak up,” says Tierney.

Brady adds: “These kinds of books can be dismissed as not having a pedigree to them, but Jacob really encapsulated during the pitch how serious-

ly he was taking it, and that it could be prestige and something extremely creative.”

At the core is the relationship between Shane and Ilya, and while ice hockey is a relatively niche international sport, Tierney says fans are “obsessed” with their book iterations.

Blind Sherlock

Studio TF1

Length: 6 x 52’

Producer: DeMensen

Networks: etfi ,

The idea for Blind Sherlock came from the story of Sacha Van Loo, a blind man who helped the wiretap unit of the Belgian police. Series showrunner Kristof Hofkens was working as a journalist at the time, and his colleague’s story sparked the idea that eventually turned into Studio TF1’s MIPCOM Cannes drama launch.

Hoefkens and his co-writer aa ten ab i io o fn ho along with director Joost Wynant made the widely sold drama The Bank Hacker, later met with Van Loo. They discovered he’d helped crack hundreds of cases over a 12-year period, including once identifying the exact Eastern European village a suspect came from purely based on their wiretap accent.

After “talking for hours,” as Hoefkens recalls, they were convinced a blind protagonist was the twist needed to reinvent the crime genre. The wheels went into motion to fnd a blind lead which ended with the casting of Bart Kelchtermans. Frank

Heated Rivalry

Little Fucker

Lammers also stars alongside y eg l a a a

The se ies set in the ut h o t ity o otte dam he e iolen e and ime a e es alating sees oman e tens el hte mans e uited to oin a s e ialist i eta ing oli e team Though he s s e ti al his heightened senses and unique ability to unde o e hidden details om the i eta s astonish his olleagues and make him indisensable o e e as he del es dee e in the iminal undeo ld he e e ien es e sonal th eats and is aught in a eb o da se ets

hat e eally li e about the emise o this sho is that it is a o sho ith a e y une e ted he o says y anhae e the s i ted hie at e ensen u so iety has a na o ision o hat talent means nly no mal eo le ount but as oman the lind he lo demonstrates, there’s a hero inside o e e yone

The ay the se ies add esses disability ma es it e y distinti e om a ed to othe se ies and it is handled in a really sensiti e and mode n ay adds amille u euble inte national T and digital dist ibution at tudio T hi h ill be shoing it in annes et i has ta en ights to the enelu egion ith atta hed

ba tende stal ed by a ustome he st u a f st-loo deal ith the global st eame to eate ne sho s o e e his ne t o e t as al eady in the o s at the and ith ani ay nte tainment a ent o Half Man ma e am To odu tions atta hed as the international distributo annes ill see it laun h globally

The se ies as e unde stand due o an ea lie elease but as delayed due to Baby Reindeer te that eo le sta ted as ing hat i ha d add s ne t o e t ould be e alls athy ayne o dist ibuto ani ay ights

and ots o eo le ill ant to go day-and-date and eole ant to ommit ma eting dolla s says ayne That s the indi ation e e getting

Empathy

BETA FILM

Length: 10 x 60’

Producer: Trio Orange Networks: Crave, Canal+

o e man ights ll othe s a e a ailable ith tudio T tageting u o ean sales as some othe te ito ies emain un omo table buying non- nglish-language inte national s i ted u euble says anothe mao o us ill be sho ing the o mat ights ith se e al othe u o ean d ama titles ha ing been de elo ed ab oad e ently The e is eally st ong otential o ema es she says That s a o e o ou st ategy t tudio T ill al eady ha e laun hed a t aile The se ies ill also ha e eatu ed in a uni ue digital u ont that the T -o ned odu tion and sales house has hosted o e e ent ee s The goal is to eate a bu be o e the ma et says u euble

Half Man

BANIJAY ENTERTAINMENT

Length: 6 x 60’

Producer: Mam Tor Productions

Network: BBC, HBO

i ha d add s ne t o e t a te Baby Reindeer as al ays going to d um u ma o inte national bu and Half Man is doing ust that ollo ing the une e ted mega-su ess o his et i hit about a stand-u omedian

The lot ollo s add and amie ell as t o est anged b othe s uben and iall ho ha e a su ise eunion in lasgo otland that esults in an elosion o iolen e The audien e a e ta en ba th ough thei li es om the s th ough to the u ent day as the sto y un olds tua t am bell and it hell obe tson lay uben and iall in thei younge yea s ots o sho s about elationshi s a e about siste s but this is a eally inte esting sto y told om a male e s e ti e says ayne t s o e ul and on onting i st loo s at the se ies g e gas s as add s e iously thin ame om Baby Reindeer bulked out o his ole as the t oubled uben eo le ha e anted to no hat he s been doing i ha d is a uni ue talent ite e o me odu e and auteu ho ta es his time hile the sho as o iginally de elo ed o the ui ly oined as a o- odu e and deals a e in la e else he e notably ith tan in ust alia eo le ha e no n Half Man is on ou slate and buye s ha e ead the s i ts and ommitted to the sho says ayne

The su ess o Baby Reindeer and that othe ma o itish et i hit o e ent yea s Adolescence, ha e only heightened inte est he e They ele ated the inte est British stories told in limited series o mat that a e on onting and di e ent says ayne ani ay ights ill ha e a t aile at as la ge ma eting am aigns i o at the

en h-language d ama Empathy e lo es the de ths o mental illness t tells the sto y o u anne lo en e ong a iminologist-tu ned- sy hiat ist ho goes to o at a sy hiat i institute in ont eal anada The e she be iends an int iguing se u ity o f e o time Thomas gi ol and meets a a iety o atients ith om elling sto ies ong s edits in lude Can You Hear Me hi h as i ed u by et i and she has eated and itten Empathy, and is also sho unne The se ies as di e ted by uillaume one gan and bo ed on ell edia s anadian st eame a e eason as odu ed by T io ange in ollabo ation ith a e a ent om any ell edia and as i ed u by en h ay-T giant anal hi h layed it as an o iginal on home tu t then boa ded eason as a o- odu e ma ing the f st time anal and a e ha e a tne ed in this ay

Beta Film has taken distribution rights and the signs are good ahead o the big sales ush at The d ama s oo ed the udien e a d at e ies ania ba in a h he e it be ame the f st en h- anadian se ies to lay in the e ent s inte national om etition t also got a e- boost by laying at the esti al de la i tion de a o helle in e tembe “Empathy is su h a a mhearted and unique series, it stole ou hea ts instantly says li e a he t eta ilm s hie dist ibution o f e ith g eat sensiti ity and om a om assionate yet honest e s e ti e the se ies e lo es the to i o mental

Blind Sherlock

Half Man

health, without falling into cliches or reinforcing stigma.”

Beta Film handled international sales on another Longpré project, Audrey’s Back, which took top honors at the 2022 edition of the Canneseries drama festival. The distributor sold that show to Canal+ and Italian pubcaster RAI among others, and hopes are high for Empathy

“We are very proud to once more collaborate with Florence Longpré,” says Bachert. “Through smart dialogue and a brilliant cast, Longpré, the creator, writer and star of the series, thoughtfully reconciles light and dark moments of human life, bringing tears of joy and sadness to the viewer’s eyes.”

RIOT WOMEN MEDIAWAN RIGHTS

Length: 6 x 52’

Producer: Drama Republic Networks: BBC, BritBox

Riot Women is the latest drama from British scribe Sally Wainwright, whose writing achieves that unusual trick of being both heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. At the center of this one is a sto y about f e omen in the middle of their lives in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire, who decide to form a punk-rock group, initially for a local talent competition. However, facing issues such as marital concerns, complex family dynamics and menopause, they fnd they ha e mu h mo e to say or shout, about.

Joanna Scanlan, Tamsin Greig, Lorraine Ashbourne, Amelia Bullmore and Rosalie Craig star in the six-part Drama Republic series, which was inspired by Wainwright’s “long-standing interest in portraying the lives of women in midlife and the challenges they face,” says Valérie Vleeschouwer, managing director of distributor Mediawan Rights. The series is also a nod to classic British musical series Rock Follies of ’77, which Wainwright had watched as a teenager. Wainwright even learned to play the drums herself during the research for the show.

“Her hallmark lies in creating

complex female characters, with writing that is both realistic and profoundly humane,” says Vleeschouwer. “Riot Women promises to be a series with universal and powerful themes, blending warmth, humor and emotion as it explores the strength of friendship, the liberating power of music, and the resilience of women in midlife who refuse to be silenced or to ‘act their age’.”

Vleeschouwer adds that “unlike crime dramas or historical series, which can rely on plot or context, Riot Women depends on the authenticity of the performances and the actresses’ ability to convey universal emotions.”

Alongside the actresses playing the main band members are Taj Atwal, Chandeep Uppal and Macy Seelochan, who play riotous backup singers. Further cast includes Anne Reid, Sue Johnston, Peter Davison, Claire Skinner, Mark Bazeley, Amit Shah, Natalia Tena, Olwen May and Thomas Flynn. Notably, the series features original songs from Brighton punk duo ARXX. The BBC commissioned the show for the U.K., with BritBox taking Canada and U.S. rights. Mediawan Rights, which is shopping the show with the participation of Entourage Ventures, will be seeking to strike deals elsewhere. Given the pop-

ularity of Wainwright—her credits include Happy Valley, Last Tango in Halifax, Gentleman Jack, Renegade Nell and Scott & Bailey—this has a pedigree for wide sales, as networks and streamers continue to hunt for shows with female appeal.

The ‘Burbs NBCUNIVERSAL

Length: 8 x 60’

Producers: Universal Content Productions, Fuzzy Door, Imagine Entertainment Network: Peacock

The ‘Burbs, a contemporary retelling of the 1989 comedy movie starring Tom Hanks, Carrie Fisher and Bruce Dern, is a nostalgic nod to the past and, for some buyers, potentially a key title in their platform's future.

Universal Content Productions is the studio making the series alongside Seth MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door and Imagine Entertainment, the Ron Howard- and Brian Glazer-owned production house that made the original movie. The show is even shooting on the same Los Angeles location as the flm at the ba lot of Universal Studios Hollywood. MacFarlane and Glazer are

among the exec producers and ana lsen the ite o the flm directed by Joe Dante, will serve as co-executive producer.

This time round, Celeste Hughey is the creator and showrunner, overseeing a high-quality acting cast that includes Keke Palmer and Jack Whitehall as the leads, and the likes of Mark Proksch in an ensemble supporting cast. The action has been moved to contemporary times, but the plot is largely the same as the flm t ollo s a young ou le in present-day suburbia who have reluctantly relocated to the husband’s childhood hometown. Their world is upended when a new neighbor moves in across the street, bringing old secrets of the cul-de-sac to light, and new deadly threats shatter the idylic illusion of their quiet little neighborhood.

“The combination of the series’ all-star creative team, a stellar ensemble cast led by Keke Palmer and Jack Whitehall, and built-in brand recognition, positions this dark comedy for broad appeal,” says Michael Bonner, president of NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution. “We expect particularly strong interest from buyers who are seeking fun, character-driven series that blend sharp humor and suburban intrigue in a format that can drive consistent viewership.”

There’s a sense among some buyers that imported comedy remains a di f ult buy but onne notes NBCU has been on a hot streak, with single-cams such as The Paper and St. Denis Medical and comedy-dramas such as Hacks, Based on a True Story and now The ‘Burbs all selling well. “These titles are resonating with buyers around the world, proving that smart, well-executed comedy remains a globally viable genre,” says Bonner.

He adds that The ‘Burbs has already been pre-sold to several territories after it was softlaunched earlier in the year. NBCU sales staff are treating their trip to Cannes as the full launch. “There are numerous ongoing client discussions for the series as well,” says Bonner. “We are expecting to fnali e a numbe o these onversations at MIPCOM.” ★

The 'Burbs

Riot Women

GordonSecretRamsay’s Service

FOX ENTERTAINMENT GLOBAL

Length: 14 x 43’

Producer: Studio Ramsay Global Network: Fox

Traitors-esque mystery formats are all the rage at present and the trend has extended to Gordon Ramsay.

For the latest spin-off of his ever-popular range of food formats, which launched on Fox in May, the celebrity chef has tapped into his little-known love of the military and counterintelligence to go undercover in what is arguably his favorite battleground… failing restaurants.

Fox’s Gordon Ramsay’s Secret Service follows the well-trodden path of the Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares formula but throws in a bit of espionage for good measure. Ramsay ventures into each restaurant under the cover of night and with the help of a secret sou e gathe s unflte ed e iden e of the major issues facing each establishment. By the time Ramsay reveals his identity, it will be too late for staff to cover up their culinary crimes, and they can then take drastic measures to improve.

Fox Entertainment Global (FEG) President Prentiss Fraser tells us the idea f st eme ged om Ramsay’s desire to “take a proven ‘rescue’ format and give it a fresh, investigative twist.”

“It was developed as the next ‘turn of the wheel’ for Gordon Ramsay and these shows,”

Fraser explains.

Fraser says the show “keeps the DNA” of hit Ramsay franchises such as Kitchen Night-

mares and 24 Hours to Hell and Back, but with Secret Service he is adding an “entirely new investigative layer” that has proved so popular for The Traitors and various other guessing game challengers.

“It was important to develop the idea that the audience plays along with this new format,” she explains. “The reveal moment was a big part of the new format development—it’s a built-in twist that raises stakes and delivers drama. Both Gordon Ramsay and Studio Ramsay’s trademark wit and intensity are balanced with genuine heart, surprise, humor and tension from the undercover investigation ”

The “insider twist” keeps things “freshly marketable” when FEG pitches to buyers, Fraser says, adding that the show has so far sold in more than 60 markets, while its spring launch on Fox saw it become the No. 1 new cooking series of the year on American broadcast and cable.

Going forward, Fraser hopes Gordon Ramsay’s Secret Service could be a precursor to similar spin-offs.

“The ‘secret investigation’ framework can be applied to other sectors beyond restaurants,” she adds. “There’s clear potential for formats in hospitality, hotels, even retail.”

Celebrity Sabotage

ITV STUDIOS

Length: 6 x 60’

Producer: Lifted Entertainment Network: ITV

The game-within-a-game format feels buzzy in today’s

market and ITV Studios has landed upon one with a bit of scale, fun and star appeal.

Lifted Entertainment, the creator of Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway and I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, are therefore hoping Celebrity Sabotage will make a splash in Cannes.

The show brings together contestants who believe they are competing in a reality game show to win a prize. But hidden away in a secret HQ, a group of celebrity saboteurs are watching their every move, carrying out missions designed to disrupt their success. The more sabotage missions completed undetected, the greater the prize—but if a celebrity saboteur is caught, the contestant a es a di f ult de ision Diego Rincon, creative director at Lifted, says the team spotted an opportunity to work up a big new hit of this ilk after ITV’s stalwart Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway was rested.

“We are always on the lookout for the next big Saturday night entertainment format,” says Rincon. “We know there are lots of strategic reality formats across the board, but what people love on a Saturday night is to laugh, have a good time and watch something that is heartwarming.”

To that end, Celebrity Sabotage has landed celebrities including Masked Singer host Joel Dommett, former Love Island fnalist Olivia Attwood and comedian Judi Love, who have natural chemistry and “don’t hold back” in throwing themselves into the game, says Rincon.

Having local celebrities to tap into hands buyers the opportunity to easily adapt the format for their own territories, says Mike Beale, managing director of ITV Studios Creative Network, who says format sales will be prioriti ed o e fnished ta e

“We can add more celebs and other mechanics in each territory,” he adds. “Celeb content doesn’t necessarily travel globally as fnished ta e so e ould hope to see localized versions of these spoof reality shows. Channels can have a lot of fun with this. We’re certainly having fun with marketing.”

And in a troubled market, Beale

reckons there is a still plenty of desire for formats like Celebrity Sabotage. “No commissioning editor is sitting at a desk around the o ld not anting to fnd the next big hit show,” he adds.

The Inheritance ALL3MEDIA

Length: 12 x 60’

Producer: Studio Lambert Network: Channel 4

For its latest Traitors-esque caper, Studio Lambert headed to a different country estate, set up an even deeper mystery and enlisted not one but two top on-screen talents to share hosting duties.

The Inheritance launched a few weeks back on Channel 4 and All3Media International is now hoping to sniff out some deals, especially with U.S. buyers, at MIPCOM.

It’s hard not to be attracted to a gameshow in which superstar Liz Hurley plays a deceased country manor owner. In The Inheritance, 12 strangers arrive at a grand English country estate, lured by the opportunity to inherit a chunk of a fortune. The fortune belonged to that glamorous benefactor, The Deceased, who has left video messages for the players from beyond the grave. To release money from The Inheritance, players must work as a team to complete a series of challenges. To win the game they must persuade all others that only they should be entrusted with the money.

Rob Rinder plays the Claudia Winkleman/Alan Cumming presenter role with aplomb and Studio Lambert used all its nous gained on working on shows like The Traitors when it came to casting.

“We looked for people with inter-

Celebrity Sabotage

esting relationships with fairness and money, perhaps through a divorce, a business deal or even an inheritance itself,” says Studio ambe t hie eati e o f e Tim Harcourt. “But we were also looking for team players and grafters and those who had interesting takes on what they felt fairness looked like in team environments.”

In a crowded market, Harcourt says it is a given that Hurley and Rinder will make the show attractive to buyers, but he says there is mo e to it than that The talent of course helps it to stand out, but we hope the fact that is touches upon the explosive notion of what is fair will make it compelling once people come to it,” he adds.

Conversations with U.S. buyers have begun with a “positive reception,” Harcourt says, and he reckons The Inheritance would work well as a companion piece for networks that already show The Traitors or The Apprentice, “as well as buyers who missed out on The Traitors and want something with the same human drama.”

Along with The Inheritance, All3Media International is also selling Trespasses, the Gillian Anderson-starring adaptation of Louise Kennedy’s love story set against the ba d o o The T oubles in eland

Reality Kings On Safari

WARNER BROS. INTERNATIONAL TV PRODUCTION

Length: 60-minute format

Producer: WBITVP Netherlands Network: Videoland

Reality Kings on Safari leans on a similar formula to earlier format Reality Queens of the Jungle, in which female reality stars turn their back on

creature comforts to take part in an off-grid competition. Local versions of that show have been made as a afeld as e many India and Spain, so Warner Bros. nte national T odu tion is ho e ul its laun h o Reality Kings will land well at the market.

“Reality Kings on Safari taps into the same drama, intensity and competition that makes Reality Queens of the Jungle such a success,” says André Renaud, Global o mat fnished sales at T t s the natu al ollo -u as it b ings some o eality T s most recognizable male personalities, stripping away their home comforts to compete and win their own cash prize.”

The se ies is on t end enaud adds: “What stands out is how it fuses two of today’s most bankable d i e s The high-o tane d ama o in uen e eality ith the spectacle of survival. As the men fght to in lu u ies o thei team, and to stay in the game, they also battle their own egos to survive.”

Reality Kings on Safari was originally made by T ethelands o lo al st eame ideoland. In that version, the reality T sta s e e ta en on a ild adventure in Kenya, but it was not the Instagram-friendly trip to which they are accustomed. Instead, it was life in the rugged wilderness with all devices left behind The o mat e ui es them to be divided into two camps, and the o e all mission is to fnd their way back to civilization, with hallenges along the ay The trials are a mix of physical games and tactical challenges that variously test strength, teamwork and

strategic thinking. Cast can also win luxuries for their teams that make life more comfortable.

“Broadcasters will love the format because the structure is lean the on i ts a e o gani and it’s easily cast from a readymade pool of talent willing to put everything on the line to win,” says Renaud. “Audiences will love the unflte ed ente tainment as egos clash, alliances shift and personalities crack under pressure. It’s the perfect choice for anyone wanting to scratch their reality itch and build on talent they have already made household names.”

Match My Ex

SEVEN.ONE STUDIOS INTERNATIONAL

Length: 24 x 30’

Producer: Madame Zheng Network: Joyn

Match My Ex puts the latest spin on the dating format, and this time it’s the past that’s dictating the future.

The e man o mat natu ally set in a luxury villa, sees famous former lovers playing matchma e o thei e - ames s they i t ith ne singles and face unresolved feelings, their previous lover chooses their dates and oversees emotionally charged ‘Match Check’ challenges, which test the dynamics of the new pairings. Every fourth e isode ulminates in - ight where singles without matches face eviction.

“You’re always attached to the person you want to cut the strings of, but they’re playing the pup-

pet master,” says Jelka Below, exec producer of streamer Joyn’s o iginal e sion The e a e still emotions like jealousy that exist. You want to move on, but someone holds you back.”

While you can expect the usual dating o mat f e o s auous a ties and oolside ings Below says more therapeutic moments provide a different level of “realness” with their former spouse, adding: “We give them the chance to work on their past with that person, which makes for su e inte esting T

oyn s i e esident o ontent eation ho eality lisabeth Sofeso says the program has been “one of the most successful reality shows of the year,” and worked particularly well for young women. She adds Match My Ex has “a very special concept compared to other formats,” with the dynamics creating “explosive d ama and good eality T ight from the start.”

Madame Zheng, the Munich-based company behind the show, is already developing a second season for Joyn. Below says sticking to the key format beats, focusing on relationships and emotions, and strong casting choices are crucial, though the e s no e ui ement to elicate the famous faces of the DACH region version.

“It’s very important to have these structured elements to the format, otherwise it feels like a big mess of people who are coming out of relationships,” she adds The main d i e is emotions, so go for real relationships. ut the e o t in you asting that drives the show and doesn’t need lots of producing.”

The o iginal Match My Ex saw strong social media engagement in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. “Big reality stars were talking about the show,” recalls Below.

odu tion alues an al ays be scaled up or down, meaning Match My Ex is one of the mo e e ible o mats on o e in Cannes. Joyn’s Married at First Sight and Stranded on Honeymoon Island o ieben at edia stablemate e en ne Studios International will be distributing the series in Cannes.

Reality Kings on Safari

Breaking Bread With Tony Shalhoub

LIONSGATE

Length: 6 x 60’

Producer: Lionsgate

Alternative Television Network: CNN

Big stars like Stanley Tucci and Eva Longoria have led something of a revival of the celebrity-led food travelog of late and no f e-time mmy inne Tony Shalhoub is getting in on the act too.

Lovers of television will be familiar with Shalhoub from roles ranging from the eponymous lead in USA Network’s Monk, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and NBC’s Wings, but in Breaking Bread with Tony Shalhoub he is taking on something entirely different.

The CNN series sees Shalhoub embark on a mouthwatering journey around the globe to make and break bread with local bakers, top chefs, home cooks and others. With each bite, he takes viewers along for an adventure, while creating deep connections

with communities and exploring his own past.

The show feels like it has all the winning ingredients of a hit travelog and had been percolating with Shalhoub for quite some time, according to Tania Jacobson, SVP, alternative television, international for Lionsgate.

“When Lionsgate met with him to talk about some different ideas, this one oated ight to the to she says. “He has such a passion for food, culture and history, and then for how all these things interlink. Tony has been amazing to work with. He is super invested in these stories, and he has been e y authenti ally in ol ed

Given its “strong history in the gen e ith the li es o Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico and Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, Jacobson feels CNN is the perfect partner. “Not only is CNN investing in these kinds of stories, but internationally we think these global uni e sal sto ies eally esonate she adds.

Jacobson is hopeful about Breaking Bread’s prospects at MIPCOM and says she will particularly be looking to sell to the territories in which Shalhoub appears in the show, such as Latin America and France.

MIPCOM also gifts an opportunity for Lionsgate to shop projects on which it is “working as a 360-deg ee om any by both odu ing and distributing the project, which has become more of a reality after it acquired eOne’s unscripted assets nearly two years ago, Jacobson says.

On the scripted side, Lionsgate is also selling the likes of MGM+’s Robin Hood epic and USA Network’s John Grisham adaptation The Rainmaker.

Untitled Earth, Wind & Fire Film

FIFTH SEASON

Length: 1 x 90’

Producer: Sony Music Vision Network: N/A

If you fancy a break from the MIPCOM sales chatter, you could do worse than heading outside to the Fifth Season yacht and checking out some of the tailor-made Earth, Wind & Fire Spotify playlists expertly compiled by Questlove.

In one of MIPCOM’s more innovative techniques of recent times, the Oscar-winning director has made playlists of his favorite tracks for each of Fifth Season’s sales executives, and this will be a nifty jumping off point for them to promote his new feature.

Questlove, who won an Oscar for Summer of Soul, is behind what Fifth Season SVP Acquisitions Kate Laffey terms the “defniti e histo y o the band that b ought e tembe oogie onde land and et s oo e to the world.

s one o the f st la bands to have mass crossover appeal, Earth, Wind & Fire imbued their music with unrelenting positivity and displayed Black joy and e ellen e to the o ld the do s synopsis reads.

Questlove has used his smarts and in uen e to gain on e-ina-lifetime access, including to Stevie Wonder, the Obamas and Lionel Ritchie, along with Marilyn White, the ex-wife of Earth, Wind & Fire founder Maurice White, who offers a unique spotlight on the man behind the music.

“They have achieved so much because of Questlove’s access to au i e s estate says a ey “Maurice died 10 years ago, and this is a moving story about his life. He was abandoned by his mother and gained resilience from that, but he was also a very inse u e e son

At the same time, the doc doesn’t hold back from also celebrating the commercial success of Earth, Wind & Fire. “The concerts they put on were so big says a ey nd the enegy and costumes they brought

just proved they really wanted to engage audiences with these ama ing e o man es

Spotify hasn’t only been used to juice up Fifth Season’s musical knowledge as data from the music platform was also leveraged when compiling the top territories to target.

Along with North America, Laffey says Earth, Wind & Fire had huge followings in Japan, Korea, France, Germany, Brazil and Argentina. “They toured a lot, so this is a very commercially broad flm she adds

The flm is unli ely to be gi en a theatrical run, but Fifth Season is targeting streaming services or the “premium marquee market on linea a ey says

Investigation Shark Attack

CINEFLIX RIGHTS

Length: 6 x 60’

Producer: inefi Network: National Geographic

The 50th anniversary of Jaws hands networks around the world an unprecedented opportunity to spotlight those most feared creatures, sharks.

“Jaws is still the cultural reference point when people think about sha s says Tanya la e o at eo and ine i s Investigation Shark Attack. “Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, I saw f sthand ho it sha ed ou olle ti e ea o the o ean

Yet with Investigation Shark Attack at eo and ine i a e aiming to myth-bust and i things on their head by exploring real human encounters from a shark’s perspective.

From Maui’s massive reef to a Florida beach known as the shark bite capital of the world, each episode zooms in on a different geographic hotspot. Then, using an interactive Shark HQ, four of the world’s leading experts deconstruct local encounters to determine why sharks mistake humans for prey. Harnessing these forensic investigations, the team leverages the latest science to reveal superpower adaptations and migration patterns that have been taking place for eons. Drone

Three Are the Champions

Breaking Bread With Tony Shalhoub

footage also proves just how o ten sha s a e nea humans without incident.

la e says the sho s basi structure “borrows from a truecrime investigation, only the suspect is the motive, and the ea on is the sha ost sha se ies o us on the i tims Thei sto y thei t auma she adds e too a di e ent approach and told the story om the sha s oint o ie e never name the victims or include their testimony. It’s not because we don’t recognize the impact of these encounters on people, but because this series is about unde standing the sha s beha io ine i and at eo ha e a close relationship, having partnered on the long-running Mayday: Air Disaster/Air Crash Investigation o de ades la e as therefore given leeway to dive in, building a database of every sha en ounte sin e and analy ing the atte ns lo ation species, time of year and severity o ea h atta

The esult she e ons ma es Investigation Shark Attack stand out from the crowd, coming a few months a te T tudios too the Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters gamesho to ma et ha s ha e al ays sti ed a imal mi o ea and as ination ith the un no n and so the sha gen e ontinues to be a proven success internationally,” she adds u uni ue ta e on the series offers something different in that it’s the science behind an atta hi h e thin ill eally resonate with audiences.” ine i ights is also selling The Walsh Sisters at the ada tation o a ian eyes bestselling novels starring Derry Girls’ Louisa Harland.

A Season with Isabella

Rossellini

ESCAPADE MEDIA

Length: 1 x 60’

Producer: Elephant & Cie Network: Ciné+ OCS

A Season With Isabella Rossellini is a portrait of the Oscar-nominated star. The daughter of actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini, her on-screen career includes roles in David Lynch classic Blue Velvet and more recently Edward Berger’s Oscarwinner Conclave. She has also had a long modeling career, gracing the cover of Vogue times The flm ta es in the associated glitz and glamor, but also a more recent chapter in the star’s story, running a farm in ell o t e Yo

o umenta y flmma e a ian Lacombe is behind the proje t hi h s a ade edia ill laun h inte nationally at eo le no di e ent things about Isabella,” says Lacombe. aybe they no about Blue Velvet, and the younger generation all no about Conclave,” a ombe said eo le in ashion no he You may emembe when she was on the cover of Vogue several months in a row. eo le ho no about sabella and he a m may not e en no how famous she is as an actress. You obably no things about Isabella, you've seen her face. Here, you will learn about the different parts of her life.”

Access is all-important in the o ld o do umenta y flmma ing and Rossellini says that she let Lacombe capture her at home and o he flmed e e ything

says the star. “Sometimes, some sets were closed to her. We did an advertisement for Lancôme he e she flmed the e a ation but it as di f ult to flm me interacting with the other stars o an me li e ulia obe ts o Amanda Seyfried. When we did a series for HBO called Julia, she was not allowed on the set, but in the li e oh a he s flm La Chimera, she was allowed.” a ombe s flm sho s the die ent sides o ossellini s o

The actress says, having seen the fnished do she is g ate ul to the flmma e although she had nee elt om elled to s ea about the di e sity o he o and interests. “I'm an actress when m in flms am a model hen o ith an me o ogue she says. “Then I run my farm and manage it. I connect my own dots no that eo le might follow one aspect or another of my life, but I don't feel to the need to e lain mysel to anyone t as a ian that as inte ested in seeing the many facets and interests in my life.”

Taylor

BLUE ANT STUDIOS

Length: 2 x 60’/1 x 90’

Producer: Sandpaper Films

Network: Channel 4

The global fascination with Taylor Swift continues unabated following her mammoth two-year Eras tour, meaning distributor Blue Ant Studios has a very good chance on the inte national ma et ith this doc, Taylor What sets it apart from the

li es o the et i s do

Miss Americana is the fact the show acts as “a macro lens that reveals as much about America as Swift herself,” according to Lilla Hurst, Blue Ant’s global head acquisitions & content strategy. -based and a e ilms the docs house led by Susannah i e and en y inge has o used on i t s -yea a ee as a performer, a period that has seen her transcend the realm of pop star to become a cultural icon. Hurst says beyond this, the t o- a te as s hat the i t phenomenon actually is and what is that says about the U.S. and nations plural.”

i t s le el o ame is emaable, being the highest-grossing live musician of all-time, the wealthiest female musician ever and record holder of the highest-g ossing on e t flm Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour om The ne flm aims to e lain e a tly ho the -yea -old ennsyl ania nati e a hie ed this much at such a young age.

A contributor line-up of music indust y inside s s mega ans scholars and psychologists help build the picture, along with video om eight hou s o ootage ta en early in Swift’s career when a Rolling tone ou nalist s ent a ee with her and her family.

e loo at ho she has s aled the dizzying heights and managed to survive, and what price she has aid to ee this le el of prominence,” says Hurst, who ill be in annes selling the sho be o e e iting lue nt to ta e a sabbati al yea in he has done a brilliant job of wearing her heart on her sleeve, but at the same time protecting herself.”

Taylor

Investigation Shark Attack

Hurst landed the production for Canada-based Blue Ant after Sandpaper’s Price, a long-time industry friend, told her about it 18 months ago. Since launch, former Lightbox exec Price and 9/11: The Falling Man producer Singer have focused on pop ultu e fgu es su h as i t and other lightning-rod characters like self-proscribed misogynist nd e Tate and a en ead the me i an oman ho as t ied and found not guilty of murdering her boyfriend. Earlier this year, another Sandpaper doc, A Deadly American Marriage, as named the st eame s most- at hed unscripted movie of 2025. lue nt has t o e sions on o e at ith o iginal broadcaster Channel 4’s order being o the t o- a te The international cut runs to 90-minute to cater for those slots. Sounds like it’s time for buyers to “Shake It Off” and get their check books out.

Heist: Robbing the Bank of England

BOSSANOVA MEDIA

Length: 2 x 60’

Producers: Soho Studios Entertainment, Homecoming Studios, Krempelwood Network: Hearst Networks EMEA

Heist: Robbing the Bank of England is the latest o- odu tion bet een itish producers Ian Lamarra and John a a ho un oho tudios

Entertainment and Homecoming Studios, respectively. It’s also the second collaboration of theirs involving British journalist and flmma e a el The ou

The t o- a t do ollo s the extraordinary story of the 1990 robbery of over £290 million million no lose to billion than s to in ation in bond e tif ates and T easu y bills in the ity o ondon s fnan ial dist i t This is the biggest heist in history, and no one has heard of it,” says Farrar.

Staged to look like a random mugging of a courier, the robbery as in a t a so histi ated heist that ould ultimately in ol e the o isional the e Yo mafa and the olombian a tel Multiple players alleged to have been in ol ed e e mu de ed and much of the money has never been recovered.

“It’s an international story that just happens to start in England,” says ama a The an o ngland is he e the obbe y too place, but the story takes you a oss the o ld

The ou b othe o ouis Theoux, fronts the story, just as he did ith ama a and a a s T crime doc The Playboy Bunny Murder hi h lue nt tudios launched at MIPCOM Cannes in This really felt like a real natural successor to The Playboy Bunny Murder,” says Lamarra, ho notes it has been di e ted to a e the eel o a uy it hie crime caper.

T aditional heist do s a e about the lan o the heist he eas in our story the heist element is uite sim ly a man ith a ni e to a teller’s throat, and it is actually about the sto y o hat ha ens next,” adds Farrar.

em el ood the ontent fnan ie is also atta hed ha ing

o ed ith a a and amaa in the ast ea st et o s EMEA’s Crime + Investigation channel is the commissioner and aul eaney s ossa o a ill be selling rights to all territories not al eady tied u The se ies ill soon launch on C+I, meaning the e ill be atings data a ailable to provide context for buyers in Cannes.

Heaney says there is “certainly a need o the t o-to- ou - a t boxset.” In this case, he says ossa o a e e ts ut-th ough than s to a a s no -ho in access and Lamarra’s “expertise and experience” in talent-led doc o e ts eaney ill be ta geting deals in the ust alia and Germany “for starters,” he says. “We have high hopes.”

Secrets Declassifed with David Duchovny

A+E GLOBAL MEDIA

Length: 10 x 60’

Producers: Nutopia, GroupM Entertainment Network: History

This is eal li e X Files, pure and simple,” says A+E Global edia e uti e i e esident Head of Programming for Global Content Sales and International Liz Soriano of ec ets ec ss fe with David Duchovny. “It’s an investigative history series about crazy and bizarre government activity from long ago. David ta es us th ough ith the same curiosity and obsession for the truth that X Files ans ill no and love.”

u ho ny ho made his name as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder opposite Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully in Fox drama The X Files, as announ ed o Secrets

ec ss fe earlier in the year alongside ne uns i ted se ies from the likes of Henry Winkler and ing hames as net o The isto y hannel leaned dee into talent-led docs.

The myste y and une lained phenomenon genre has become a s e ialism o ou s ith sho s from Laurence Fishburne, William Shatner, Dan Ackroyd and anny T e o says o iano a id Duchovny is the next in that line.”

The se ies hi h debuted on isto y in the in il sees Duchovny looking into black sites, st ange ea ons a my syo s tests, dark Cold War science and unholy allian es bet een goernments and cults.

The e o man e in its time slot drove us to rank as the number one ente tainment net o on able says o iano The e as tremendous success in total ie e s agedInternational History channels have begun to premiere the sho a ound the o ld but ill be sho ing the ost- ayT e lusi e indo s in annes hat e tell buye s ho ant to luste sho s is Secrets Declass fe really does complement series in the mystery and unexplained space,” says Soriano. “If you’re a digital streamer that has a title for the genre, this is a great complement to the lineup, and these sho s a e eally built to repeat.”

The se ies omes om ane oot s ondon-based uto ia in asso iation ith ou ntetainment oot u ho ny and ou s i ha d oste a e among the exec producers. uto ia is best no n o sho s such as Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, The World According to Jeff Goldblum and Shark Beach with Anthony Mackie: Gulf Coast on et i so e tainly has the pedigree in the talent-led doc se ies s a e The mo e into the unexplained phenomena space comes as Soriano says appetite for the genre has become “insatiable,” adding, “When you look at the isto y o t olio it ma es u a thi d o the ontent That is signif ant and s ea s to ho mu h audien es ant it

The t uth as u ho ny ould say himself, is out there. ★

Heist: Robbing the Bank of England

ec ets ec ss fe

With David Duchovny

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SPAIN ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS

BY ALBERTO RODRÍGUEZ

BASED ON THE BOOK BY JAVIER CERCAS

DIRECTED

ÁLVARO MORTE / EDUARD FERNÁNDEZ / MANOLO SOLO