International television market MIPCOM has gotten off to a strong start, with multiple sales announced Monday as the TV industry meeting in Cannes, which runs through Thursday, kicked off.
Beta Film closed a raft of major deals for Sisi, a reboot of the classic royal romancer about teenage Empress Elisabeth, aka Sisi, of Austria, with Mediaset in Italy, Globoplay in Brasil, NPO in the Netherlands, RTL in Hungary and RTVS in Slovak Republic all taking the first six-episode season. Viasat World also grabbed Sisi, which stars Dominique Devenport and Jannik Schümann, for its Epic Drama channel throughout Eastern Europe, Greece, Cyprus and Turkey. Beta earlier closed deals with TF1 for France, VTM in Belgium and Austrian public broadcaster ORF.
RTL in Germany, the commissioning network for the series, has already given the green light to a second season. Sisi will bow in Germany later this year on the streaming platform RTL+ and on linear channel RTL. The period drama, produced by Story House, will have its world premiere at the CanneSeries television festival, which runs alongside MIPCOM, on Monday night.
Documentaries are also proving hot tickets at this year’s MIPCOM, with Banijay Rights on Monday announcing it has acquired global distribution rights to Janet, a Lifetime and A&E doc that promises an “intimate, honest and unfiltered look” at pop star Janet Jackson. The two-part, four-hour documentary will air in early 2022 on Lifetime and A&E.
All3Media International and Starz inked a U.S. co-production rights deal for another highly-anticipated documentary: Ghislaine Maxwell: Life on Trial, an expose of the disgraced socialite who faces trial this year on charges of sex trafficking and the abuse of underage girls in connection with the Jeffrey Epstein affair. Starz will screen the two-hour documentary in the U.S., with Channel 4 airing the show in the U.K.
HBO Latin America has now acquired pan-regional rights for Ghislaine Maxwell: Life on Trial, as well as rights in Australia following a deal with Network Ten. Several European public broadcasters, including Denmark’s DR, NRK in Norway, SVT in Sweden, and Belgium’s VRT have also secured rights for the special. Directed by Erica Gornall (Saudi Women’s Driving School), Ghislaine Maxwell: Life on Trial is produced by Roast Beef Productions (The Square, Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer).
Other deals announced at Mipcom Monday include Studiocanal’s sale of its French dramedy series All The Way Up to WarnerMedia Latin America and Radio Canada, for Warner’s HBO Max service, and Radio-Canada’s streaming platform Ici Tou TV, respectively, as well as the sale of three seasons of children’s animation series Esther’s Notebooks to Italian public broadcaster RAI. RAI also picked up Italian rights to the second season of Studiocanal’s global animation hit The Adventures of Paddington.
On the non-scripted side, Talpa sold its new talent show Avastars, which will launch in the Netherlands in April next year, to MBC Group for the Mid-East, where it will air on MBC channels and on streaming platform Shahid; and All3Media International closed a French deal for its new dating show The Love Trap with TF1 ahead of the show’s domestic launch on Channel 4 in the UK.
Canada’s Media Ranch signed a trio of format deals, partnering with Jimmy Kimmel’s Wheelhouse Entertainment to adapt music video game Just Dance as the entertainment show House Party: Just Dance; signing a co-development deal with The CW for eco-competition format Racing To Survive, and inking with France’s TF1 and Quebecor Content for new Gen-Z and millennial dating show format Love Van.