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GLOBAL WINS RIGHTS TO NTV DRAMA REAFFIRMING the growing international popularity of Russian content, Global Agency has secured the worldwide rights for Aria Of The Doomed, the NTV Russia-produced series portraying the lives of women in the Stalinist camps. “The unfolding saga about human kindness and strong spirits facing the most unimaginable ordeal in the most inhumane conditions will touch everyone’s heart,” said Timur Weinstein, general producer of NTV. The historical drama, which covers the period 1938 to 1945, sees Olga Pavlova (Darya Ekamasova) and Sofia Ter-Ashaturova (Ekaterina Guseva) meet on a convict train. With Olga having been arrested as a spouse of an enemy of the state, and Sofia detained after a report from an anonymous informant — a common practice during the Stalinist purges — the women have to find the strength to survive terrible cruelty in the prison. Izzet Pinto, founder and CEO of Global Agency, said: “We are delighted to be partnering with NTV, Russia’s leading channel, for their engaging and emotional period drama. Our goal is to deliver this epic content all around the world, and we hope Aria Of The Doomed will win the love of audiences globally.”
Aria Of The Doomed (Global Agency)
22 Media aims to score early to feed appetite for sports 22 MEDIA International, the new boutique distributor specialising in sports-based factual content is currently focusing on soccer-themed shows, according to the company’s Peter Dunits. The launch catalogue includes Zig Zag’s The Next Jamie Vardy and Goalhanger Films’ Keane & Vieira: Best Of Enemies. Dunits hailed the insatiable appetite for football-based content — especially in the run-up to the 2018 FIFA World Cup. “I’m in Cannes to licence shows but also find new titles that tell the story behind the story,” he said. “I’m looking for titles that show how footballers train, what they
eat, their lifestyle, the politics around the sport.” According to Dunits, one of the biggest obstacles to sports content reaching mainstream schedules is that it is often presented as one-off series that broadcasters aren’t able to schedule. “What I’m doing is aggregating content that they can air as part of strands,” he said. There are some huge companies in the sports rights sector such as IMG and Pitch International. “But the advantage of being a boutique is that you can respond very quickly to new opportunities, for example around branded content. It’s also true
22 Media International’s Peter Dunits
that some smaller producers like the personal attention and faceto-face service boutiques offer.”
ZAFARI, the latest show from Denmark’s Ink Group, about diversity in the animal kingdom, has “Hollywood in its DNA”, according to Claus Tomming, Ink’s managing partner. “Created by David Dozoretz, who is known for his work on Star Wars and Mission Impossible, it has a Disney-style movie quality. Zafari is the story of a secret valley at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro filled with animals magically born with the skin of other animals. It’s not just about inclusion — but celebrating difference,” Tomming said.
Bard and Vegard’s Norwegian tales AFTER creating a popular talk costing 30m, the cross-country show as well as conceptual music ski champion who crashed his videos including The Fox, which car while drunk then ran away, has been watched close to 750 and the Justin Bieber water million times on YouTube, brothers Bard and Vegard Ylvisaker, known to their millions of fans as Ylvis, have just completed a TV series called Stories From Norway (7 x 26 mins). Each episode is based around real incidents: “There’s the diving board built by a local council that was supposed to cost 1.5m kroner but which ended up Vegard (left) and Bard Ylvisaker MIPTV News 2 • 44 • 10 April 2018
scandal,” said Bard. “Our way of telling the story is to create a demo with actors and real experts who are interviewed for inserts, then we go back and forth until we feel that we’ve nailed it.” “We always tell the story straight, and then draw the humour from what we create around it,” Vegard added. Stories From Norway is also available as a format. Negotiations are currently at an advanced stage with several territories.