The series Murder on Lake Garda and the documentary Duffy, two new Disney productions made in Italy, were presented at Series Mania Forum.
A classic whodunit set against the glamorous backdrop of Lake Garda: this is one of the new Disney+ productions made in Italy, announced today, March 25, at Series Mania Forum by Angela Jain, the new (for six months) Head of Content for Disney+ EMEA.
Murder on Lake Garda is the story of two families who, on the eve of a wedding for which they are gathered at Lake Garda, are struck by a murder. The culprit is obviously among them and must be discovered before they strike again. It is a production by The Apartment, a company of the Fremantle group, based on the eponymous novel by Tom Hindle, a Sunday Times bestseller. Six episodes directed by Laura Bispuri, and written by Alessandro Fabbri (Head Writer), Ilaria Macchia, Gianluca Bernardini and Laura Colella.
Another production announced today by Jain is a Spanish documentary series in four episodes: Abandonados. It is the story of three siblings in their forties searching for their biological parents, who abandoned them as children at a Barcelona train station. Written by Anna Punsí and directed by Carlos Alonso Ojea, the series is produced in collaboration with Luminol Media S.L. and with executive production by Carles Porta, Pablo Fernández Masó and Laura Rubirola Sala.
“We want to significantly increase the volume of unscripted commissions,” Jain reveals.
The broad concept of unscripted takes various formats depending on the territory: from documentaries (“we want to produce them in France, based on true stories,” she says, citing Une Histoire de la French Touch, a miniseries dedicated to the movement that revolutionized French electronic music, projecting its underground scene onto a global scale); to formats (especially in the Netherlands), to unscripted thrillers, observational documentaries or reality series in the United Kingdom, where “we are producing a reboot of the well-known show Blind Date.”
Also in the United Kingdom, another important announcement is the production of a feature-length documentary on the life of Welsh singer-songwriter Duffy, who disappeared for a period in 2011 after topping the charts with the song Mercy, and who later revealed that she had been raped, drugged and held captive for several days. “This will be the first time she speaks directly about what happened to her,” says Jain.
Among the recent most successful productions cited by Jain, also the French Bref 2, the ‘return’ of the successful series Bref after 13 years, which today won the award for Best Marketing Initiative for Series, the French thriller, launched in January, Solange, a Turkish comedy featuring a teenage vampire who falls in love with a human
And, still in Great Britain, the return of Rivals and the comedy series Alice and Steve, produced by the makers of Baby Reindeer, Clerkenwell Films Limited.
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