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BritBox Signs UK Programs From Sphere Abacus

Best-of-British streamer BritBox has bought a package of programs from Sphere Abacus, the UK-based sales house making its debut at MIPCOM in its current guise. Package contains Travels With Agatha Christie with Sir David Suchet from Soho Studios and Two Rivers Media. Suchet is currently on the ground with Sphere Abacus in Cannes, as our report earlier today noted. Also acquired by BritBox are Jon and Lucy’s Odd Couples, The Murder of Sandra Rivett, Breaking Dad: Britain’s Unlikeliest Drug Dealer, Agatha Christie: 100 Years of Poirot and Miss Marple (aka Agatha Christie: 100 Years of Suspense), Diana: The Interview That Shook the World and Susan Hill’s The Small Hand: A Ghost Story (1 x 94’) produced by Awesome and Two Rivers Media. BritBox takes rights for the U.S. and Canada.

Beta Sets Globo Co-Pro ‘Discipline

Germany’s Beta Film and Brazilian...

Als erstes Projekt einer jetzt geschlossenen mehrjährigen Zusammenarbeit arbeitet Beta Film mit der führenden Mediengruppe Lateinamerikas bei der Crimedrama-Serie „Discipline“ zusammen.

Christian Gockel, EVP International Operations bei Beta Film (Credit: Beta Film)

Beta Film hat mit Grupo Globo, führende Mediengruppe in Lateinamerika, eine mehrjährige Partnerschaft abgeschlossen.

Wie Beta Film heute mitteilt, wird als erstes gemeinsames Projekt im Rahmen dieser Zusammenarbeit die achtstündige Crimedrama-Serie „Discipline“ entwickelt.

Schöpfer der Serie sind Konrad Dantas und Showrunner Felipe Braga, die zuvor bereits bei der preisgekrönten Netflixserie „Sintonia“ zusammengearbeitet haben. Das Duo leitet auch einen Writers Room, in dem derzeit die Drehbücher entwickelt werden. Ihm gehören auch Duda de Almeida, Davi Kolb und Tamiris Hilário an.

Als Produktionsfirmen sind Dantas‘ KondZilla, Bragas Lb Entertainment und Beta Film an Bord.

Christian Gockel, EVP International Operations bei Beta Film, sagt über das Projekt: „Beta und Globo freuen sich, die Aufmerksamkeit auf eine Region zu lenken, in der...

In a groundbreaking move, European powerhouse Beta Film and Grupo Globo, the biggest production force in Latin America, have inked a multi-year partnership, kicked off by development on ‘Discipline,’ from Konrad Dantas and Felipe Braga, the creative team behind “Sintonia,” Netflix’s biggest hit in Brazil.

“Discipline” marks Beta Film’s first series outside Europe, but head Jan Mojto has always been alert to new creative hubs, entering Central and Eastern Europe years before most competitors, a move now reaping rewards.

Created by writer-director-producer Dantas, founder of KondZilla, owner of the biggest YouTube channel in Latin America, and Braga, “Discipline” will be produced by KondZilla, which has also won an International Emmy, a Latin Grammy and three Cannes Lions, and Lb Entertainment, co-headed by Braga, for Globo, Beta Film and Janeiro Studios, the newly established production boutique led by former Beta Cco Koby Gal Raday.

Globo has exclusive rights in...

Rio De Janeiro — Top Brazilian production company Gullane Entretenimento will make a feature-length doc and the third season of an animation series about Brazilian Formula One racing driver Ayrton Senna, company directors Fabiano and Caio Gullane told Variety.

Produced by Gullane for Netflix, the highly anticipated “Senna,” a bio drama TV series helmed by Vicente Amorim and Julia Rezende, is due to open late this year. Designed for global audiences, “Senna” is the highest-budgeted Brazilian series ever.

Doc “Senna Kart – A Pura Competição” (“Senna Kart – Pure Competition”) depicts the beginnings of Senna’s career, when he competed in the South American and World Kart Championships. Gullane and Canal Azul will produce the doc which is helmed by Pedro Rodrigues and due to be lensed in the second half of this year. It will have a theatrical release.

Gullane and Gloob, a Globo pay-tv channel, are making “Senninha na pista maluca,...

Lb Entertainment, behind “Sintonía,” Netflix’s biggest Brazilian hit, has signed a first-look deal with Universo Online (Uol), the biggest news website in Brazil which had 99 million unique users in March 2024.

In a groundbreaking swing for Brazil, but in line with the deal struck in 2022 by Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment and The Washington Post, the Brazilian strategic partnership will expand Uol’s brand of storytelling to all forms of filmed entertainment.

Owned by Folha de São Paulo, Brazil’s No. 1 and best-respected newspaper, Uol has a 78% Internet reach, only bettered by Google and Facebook, according to company estimates. It is renowned for the depth, rigor and time spent of its investigative journalism.

Headed by Felipe Braga and Rita Moraes, Lb Entertainment (formerly Los Bragas) created and produced pioneering Netflix Brazilian sitcom “Samantha” (2018) and co-created with KondZilla “Sintonia,” Netflix’s biggest Brazilian hit which has now run to five seasons.

Dystopian thriller “Leave the World Behind” was the most-watched film — and title overall — on Netflix globally in the second half of 2023, while anime-inspired live action series “One Piece” led on the TV side among individual series seasons.

The data comes from Netflix’s second edition of “What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report,” reflecting viewership on the streamer from July-December 2023 covering 99% of all viewing on Netflix. Subscribers across the world watched about 90 billion hours of Netflix in the second half of 2023, compared with 93 billion hours in the first half of the year.

Netflix released its first big data dump, covering the first half of 2023, last December. In the second report, released Thursday, the company has added runtime and views (total hours viewed divided by runtime) and separated films and TV series, syncing it up with its weekly Top 10 and Most Popular lists.

“Leave the World Behind,” Netflix’s No. 5 most popular movie of all time,...

Seriesmakers, a joint initiative of Series Mania, Europe’s biggest TV festival, and European film-tv powerhouse Beta Group, has revealed the 10 top-notch project lineup of the second edition of its novel and high-powered mentoring program for filmmakers making their TV creator debut.

This year’s Seriesmakers features in development drama series from Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald (“George Blake”), behind “The Last King Of Scotland,” and from Finnish director Mikko Myllylahti, who burst onto the scene co-writing with Juho Kuosmanen the latter’s “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Makki,” a 2016 Cannes Un Certain Regard winner.

Also in the mix is the highly courted Kaouther Ben Hania, a double Oscar nominee for the “compelling, ambitious hybrid” “Four Daughters,” said Variety, in the doc category and the “The Man Who Sold His Skin” (2020), Tunisia’s entry in international feature.

In all, however, nine of the ten directors winning berths this...

Japanese anime series took four of the top ten places in streaming service Netflix’s latest global chart of non-English-language shows. The top title of the week July 24-30 was Brazilian teen crime drama series “Sintonia,” in its fourth season.

Japanese animation series have long been key audience drivers in Japan and other parts of Asia. But their popularity – last year animated films filled four of the top five places at the Japanese theatrical box office – and their reach have been significantly expanded in the era of multi-territory streaming.

“Baki Hanma: Season 2” made its debut in the Netflix weekly chart in second place, with 6 million views worldwide and some 33 million hours watched. The streamer said that the action-crime series appeared in the top ten rankings of 80 countries. Adapted from a popular manga (comic book), the animated seroes is already headed for a third season.

“My Happy Marriage” placed sixth in...

Although a few movies have been dominating Netflix’s film charts for weeks, the Top 10 English film chart for the week of July 24 had a new entry in the action-comedy “Hidden Strike,” starring Jackie Chan and John Cena. Meanwhile, “The Witcher” returned to first place for TV. Read on for this week’s analysis.

Directed by Scott Waugh (“Need for Speed”), “Hidden Strike” was produced independently and sold to Netflix for worldwide streaming rights, a wise purchase considering that the film received 22 million views since quietly hitting the streamer last Friday. It was the #1 watched movie in roughly 50 territories worldwide, and made the Top 10 in 73 countries. Oddly, the United States was not one of them, since that honor went to “They Cloned Tyrone,” which received 11.1 million views worldwide in its first full week on Netflix, enough for third place.

See Grab the popcorn and sound off in our movie forums...

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“The Witcher” Season 3: Volume 2 debuted to the top spot on Netflix’s most-watched TV list.

After the first half of Henry Cavill’s last season as Geralt also premiered at No. 1 on the list in July, the second installment of Season 3 also climbed the list by logging 7.8 million views since its July 27 debut. With its two-part release, “The Witcher” Season 3 has now brought in 47.7 million views since initially premiering on June 29.

Behind “The Witcher” on the list, “Sweet Magnolias” Season 3 took the No. 2 spot with 5.3 million views, while “Too Hot to Handle” Season 5 came in third place with 3.2 million views and “The Lincoln Lawyer” Season 2 took the fourth spot on the list with 3 million views this week. As Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” continued to dazzle at the box office,...

“Bird Box Barcelona” remained the most-watched film worldwide on Netflix, even as “The Out-Laws” and the newly released “They Cloned Tyrone” dominated the Top 10 English film chart for the week of July 17. Read on for this week’s analysis.

Normally, Netflix’s English language films have the biggest audiences across the globe on a weekly basis, but with 19 million views, “Bird Box Barcelona” was the most-watched film in much of Latin and South America, as well as Spain and ten other European countries, plus a good portion of Asia as well.

Because of that, the “Bird Box” prequel ended up faring better than the #1 English language film, “The Out-Laws,” starring Adam Devine, Nina Dobrev, Pierce Brosnan and Ellen Barkin, which continues to be quite popular with 12.1 million views last week. “The Out-Laws” was in the Top 10 for 93 countries, but only #1 in four European countries, as well as Israel.

See Grab...

“Sintonia” is a Brazilian crime drama television series that was created by Felipe Braga and KondZilla and premiered on Netflix on August 9, 2019. Set in a São Paulo favela, the series revolves around the lives of three teenagers who strive to achieve their dreams while navigating the complexities of friendship amidst a backdrop of music, drugs, and religion.

“Sintonia” is a highly stylish series that exudes realism and, above all, a strong sense of personality. It does not aim to please everyone, as it presents a raw depiction of life in Brazil and offers a daring glimpse into the lives of its people, with their unique stories and bold experiences.

This series is filled with music, rhythm, and ambition, making it an undeniable success.

Sintonia

The show features a talented cast including Bruna Mascarenhas as Rita, Christian Malheiros as Nando, and Jottapê as Mc Doni. Additional cast members include Douglas Silva,...

Bird Box: Barcelona, the NFL docuseries Quarterback, the third season of Sweet Magnolias and Jamie Foxx starrer They Cloned Tyrone are among the new projects debuting on Netflix in July

Bird Box: Barcelona is a Spanish-language spinoff of the 2018 Sandra Bullock-starring thriller. The film, written and directed by Alex and David Pastor, picks up after a mysterious force destroys Earth’s population and follows survivors as they seek to escape visible threats. The movie, which stars Mario Casas and Barbarian breakout Georgina Campbell, is meant to be the first of a series of films to expand the Bird Box universe.

The eight-episode Quarterback, Netflix’s first partnership with the NFL and produced by Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions, features unprecedented access to Patrick Mahomes, Kirk Cousins and Marcus Mariota both on and off the field during the 2022 season as the NFL allowed the quarterbacks to be mic’d up for every single game,...

Netflix will add plenty of action films and summer classics in the month of July. From “Bridesmaids” to “Jumanji” (1995) and “Kick-Ass,” the streamer’s selection kicks off the beginning of the month with options for many. “Star Trek” fans will have some films to choose from, as will fans of “The Karate Kid.” Anime fans can look forward to “One Piece,” “Baki Hanma: Season 2: The Tale of Pickle & The Pickle War Saga,” “Bastard!! – Heavy Metal, Dark Fantasy -: Season 2,” “My Happy Marriage” and “Record of Ragnarok” Season 2 Episodes 11-15.

Those looking for new Netflix originals can check out the “Wham!” documentary,” “Gold Brick” and “The Out-Laws” starring Adam Devine, Pierce Brosnan, Nina Dobrev, Ellen Barkin and Poorna Jagannathan. “They Cloned Tyrone,” “Happiness for Beginners” and “Miraculous: Ladybug & Cat Noir, The Movie” provide very different plots and adventures. And library favorites arriving to streaming range from “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish...

Do not adjust your phone screen. You are not experiencing deja vu. Netflix’s list of new releases for July 2023 does indeed look quite a bit like last month’s.

That’s because the biggest new arrival this month is the conclusion of The Witcher season 3 on July 27. It seems like only 29 days ago that The Witcher season 3 premiered. And that’s because it was! Now Henry Cavill’s arc as Geralt of Rivia is set to officially end with this batch of three episodes. Get ready for the Liam Hemsworth era, Witcher fans. Other Netflix Original series of note in July 2023 are The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 on July 6, Sonic Prime season 2 on July 13 and the animated comedy Captain Fall on July 28.

Meanwhile it’s a big month for Netflix’s original movies department. Adam Devine-starring comedy The Out-Laws premieres on July 7. That will be followed by Bird Box...

Alia Bhatt, Gal Gadot and Jamie Dornan stars of Netflix’s action adventure Heart of Stone will be taking part in a very special event! The Tudum: A Global Fan Event live stream will be broadcast live in front of thousands of fans in São Paulo, Brazil, to audiences worldwide this weekend on 17th June.

Heart of Stone marks Alia Bhatt’s Hollywood debut and will stream exclusively on Netflix globally from 11th August 2023.

Icymi

As Alia says, “We can’t wait for you to see what we have in store!”

Netflix fans everywhere are invited to tune in live to YouTube.com/Netflix to watch the exciting two-hour event featuring the leading actors of Heart of Stone along with more Netflix stars and creators from across the globe.

Tudum, inspired by the sound you hear just before a series or film starts on Netflix, is also the biggest Netflix event worldwide,...

Rio De Janeiro — In Brazil, where the majority of the population are of African origin, persons of color are traditionally under-represented on above-the-line TV and film production. This, however, is gradually changing.

For the past years, Poc talents, as well as residents from the impoverished urban areas, LGBTQ and indigenous people, have gained ground in the still white-male dominated production sector.

The diversity drive resisted four years of an extreme-right government and ironically benefited indirectly from it, in the view of director and screenwriter Janaina Oliveira, vice-president of local Association of Black Audiovisual Professionals (Apan).

As the Bolsonaro administration (2019-2022) withheld coin from government incentives, said 42-year-old Oliveira, indie producers resorted to commissions from the large international streaming companies.

“Netflix, Amazon and the other streaming companies have adopted policies that stimulate diversity in their productions, especially after the Black Lives Matter movement, and they enforced them in Brazil. George Floyd had an impact here,...

The creators of Netflix’s “Sintonia,” one of South America’s biggest streaming show hits, KondZilla and Lb Entertainment (formerly Losbragas), are re-teaming to co-produce a slate of series.

Ending speculation on what is next for KondZilla, a YouTube phenomenon and Lb, both based out of São Paulo, the three series – “After the End,” “A Close Call” and “South” – look set to broaden the partners’ compass from “Sintonia,” the coming of age story of three friends set against the crime and vibrant culture of São Paulo outskirts life, its gangs, thriving music scene, religion and sense of community.

The new series come in at such themes from novel angles, changing the setting or expanding the canvas of favela culture to take in a penitentiary-set drama and a string of major metropoli in the Southern Hemisphere.

The project announcement comes just after Konrad Dantas – KondZilla – delivered a keynote at this week’s Rio2C,...

Universal International Studios has appointed former Netflix executive Tesha Crawford as senior VP of global scripted series.

Based in London, Crawford will report into Uis president Beatrice Springborn and focus on expanding the studio’s scripted slate in the U.K. and Europe. Crawford will be responsible for scouting and packaging new projects for Uis and supporting its portfolio of deals, talent and projects. She will also head up the studio’s U.K.-based creative team.

Crawford joins from Netflix, where she spent the last six years working across international original series and was one of the first content executives hired on the Netflix International Originals team.

The exec started in Latin America, building the platform’s slate of originals including “La Casa De Las Flores” (“The House of Flowers”), “Ingobernable,” “3,” “Coisa Mais Linda” (“Girls from Ipanema”) and “Sintonia.”

She later relocated to Amsterdam to lead the company’s first Nordics series team,...

Heitor Dhalia, one of Brazil’s foremost and most ambitious movie auteurs, director of “Drained,” “Adrift” and “Bald Mountain,” is teaming with Netflix to make “DNA do Crime,” a banner title for the U.S. streaming giant in Brazil, one of its largest international markets.

Described by Dhalia as “one of the biggest series ever produced in Brazil,” the eight-part scripted skein, which goes into production on Oct. 31, turns on a heist of epic proportions, which takes place on the Brazil-Paraguay border.

When federal police officers are called in to investigate, they discover “the beginning of a thread that unravels, like no other, the construction of crime in the country,” the synopsis runs.

“The series will try to open a new paradigm for the genre,” Dhalia told Variety. “It also talks about the tragic flaws in all of us, our deep nature,” he added.

Inspired by true events, “DNA do Crime” is created by Dhalia.

Netflix enjoyed surges in subscriber growth throughout 2020 but the streaming company reported a stark slowdown in new subscriptions during its Q1 2021 earnings report. The company reported that it added 3.98 million new subscribers during the fiscal quarter, sharply missing its own forecast for 6 million new subscriber additions during that period.

Though Netflix beat analysts’ financial expectations, the dour subscriber data caused the company’s stock to drop around 10 percent in afterhours trading. The company’s Q1 subscriber data is a stark contrast to Netflix’s Q1 2020 earnings report, when the company added over 15 million subscribers. The company stated that it had 208 million subscribers at the end of Q1 2021.

While Netflix sharply missed its own forecast for subscriber adds in Q1 2021, a subscription slowdown has long been anticipated. Netflix reaped abnormally large subscriber gains throughout 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, which incentivized many consumers to seek indoor entertainment such as streaming services.

Bela Bajaria has been named global head of television at Netflix as vice president of original content Cindy Holland exits the company after an 18-year tenure.

The move comes as part of an effort to streamline the company’s original content divisions by co-ceo Ted Sarandos. Previously, Holland had overseen all English-language originals for Netflix, while Bajaria was responsible for local-language content for Europe, the Middle East, Turkey, Africa, India, Asia and Latin America.

“Since becoming co-ceo, I’ve wanted to simplify the way our content teams operate – with one global film team led by Scott Stuber and one for TV, which will now be led by Bela Bajaria,” Sarandos said in a statement. “Since joining Netflix in 2016, Bela has demonstrated her versatility and creativity – building out our unscripted team and helping to take our local language slate, which is increasingly important for our members, to the next level. I...

Netflix is unleashing Brazilian zombies in “Reality Z,” its first collaboration with multi-Emmy winning Brazilian production house, Conspiracao. The series will be made available from June 10.

An adaptation of British horror miniseries “Dead Set” by “Black Mirror” creator Charlie Brooker, “Reality Z” is set against the stunning backdrop of Brazilian city Rio de Janeiro, where a zombie apocalypse forces the participants and producers of the “Olimpo” reality show to take shelter in the self-sustaining bespoke set.

Award-winning Brazilian director, screenwriter and executive producer Cláudio Torres (“The Invisible Woman”) took on the challenge to adapt the series by tapping into Brazil’s pop culture and its obsession with reality shows. “Olimpo” is not unlike “Big Brother Brazil,” which snagged an official Guinness World Records certificate when its March 31 episode collected more than 1.5 billion votes.

At first wary of “messing with a classic,” Torres sought inspiration in the Brazilian artistic movement of Anthropophagy.

Already Brazil’s biggest film and TV hub — indeed, after Mexico City, Latin America’s second-largest shoot locale — São Paulo is now launching a production incentive revolution.

The city of São Paulo’s film-tv agency Spcine is readying Brazil’s first-ever cash rebates for international and national productions and international co-productions.

These will be introduced as soon as the Covid-19 crisis subsides, most likely after July, when productions are projected to roll once more in Brazil, says Spcine president Laís Bodanzky.

Feature films, animation, series and global commercials, plus national productions with international market potential (think Netflix series) are all eligible for rebates. Tabbed at 20%-30% of local expenditure, with a minimum local spend of $500,000, the rebates’ cap will depend on the amount of money available and currency exchange rates at the time the final text of the law is released, Bodanzky adds.

São Paulo has already become a production...

Rio De Janeiro — Netflix announced Tuesday April 14, the creation of a 5 million reals ($1 million) fund to support local below-the-line production employees and free-lancers not able to work due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The aid will be distributed by the Brazilian Institute of Audiovisual Content (Icab), an arm of leading industry organization Brazil Audiovisual Independent (Bravi). It will help up to 5,000 workers with one part of the local monthly minimum wage of Us$200. It targets personnel involved in production tasks, such as cinematography, sound, art design, makeup, scenography, and logistics.

The effort in Brazil is part of a Us$100 million worldwide fund Netflix announced March 20.

Brazilian workers can apply on Icab’s website (icabrasil.org) beginning April 28. A committee comprised of Icab, Bravi and Netflix members is due to respond to each application within 10 days.

“We would like to invite other industry players to contribute to the fund, which is designed...

A new apocalypse now haunts Brazilian cinema. It’s one in a string of such upheavals over the past year including an envisaged 43% cut to the 2020 budget of Ancine, Brazil’s huge film-tv agency and motor of movie funding, which is already grinding almost to a halt.

Producers are still waiting to receive approved incentives.

“There are several producers, including ourselves, who have projects that won support from the [Pernambuco] regional fund in 2017 and 2018, but never received it,” says Desvia producer Rachel Daisy Ellis (“Divine Love”).

Independent productions are being strangled by the freeze. “It’s bleeding cinema, it’s bleeding culture. There is a sense of doom, an anemia regarding culture and cinema,” says Karim Aïnouz, director of “Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmão.”

Now, Ancine is under threat of disappearing altogether.

On Feb. 19, a proposal will be voted on in congress that extinguishes existing public funds not ratified by the...

Murder Mystery ranks top in nine including Us; The Disappearance Of Madeleine McCann tops UK.

Local language films and TV shows lead the list of most popular content viewed on Netflix in eight countries outside the Us in 2019.

The streaming platform released the information on Monday (December 30), based on the number of accounts that watched at least two minutes of a film or TV show in its first 28 days of release on the platform. While the number of accounts is not revealed, it does illustrate how local audiences continue to respond to Netflix’s aggressive local language production strategy.

Sacred...

Buenos Aires — Already Latin America’s second most sought-after shoot location, the City of São Paulo’s film-tv agency Spcine is introducing cash rebates for international productions from 2020.

The move, a first for Brazil, is set to be announced Tuesday by Laís Bodanzky, president of Spcine, at Ventana Sur, Latin America’s biggest film-tv market, which kicked off on Dec. 2., organized by the Cannes Festival and Film Market and Argentina’s Incaa film-tv agency. Bodanzky will be joined by Luiz Alvaro Salles Aguiar de Menezes, municipal secretary of international relations, and Frederico Celentano, president of Ade Sampa.

A revolution for Brazil – its first-ever big shoot incentives – the rebates sets São Paulo in line with a growing part of the rest of Latin America.

Six Latin American countries currently offer inward investment production incentives, including Brazilian neighbors Colombia, and Uruguay as well as Chile. Four structure these, like São Paulo, as rebates on spend,...