TV production is growing in Italy, where U.S. streamers are gradually raising their investment levels just as pubcaster Rai, which is still the industry’s main driver, is cutting back.
According to local TV producers association APA, the Italian market in 2022 will generate more than €1.2 billion (1.3 billion) worth of scripted content resulting in double-digit growth. Exports of the country’s high-end shows, such as “My Brilliant Friend,” now in its third season, and upcoming spaghetti Western saga “Django” are also gaining more traction.
But though demand is increasing, the picture for Italian producers isn’t all rosy.
While pubcaster Rai remains the main driver of content in Italy, its 2022 budget has been trimmed by 33 million to 176 million. This is the second year of cuts as it tries to recover following Covid-related ad and tax revenues drops.
Like many of his cohort, producer Rosario Rinaldo, head of TV production company Cross Prods.
According to local TV producers association APA, the Italian market in 2022 will generate more than €1.2 billion (1.3 billion) worth of scripted content resulting in double-digit growth. Exports of the country’s high-end shows, such as “My Brilliant Friend,” now in its third season, and upcoming spaghetti Western saga “Django” are also gaining more traction.
But though demand is increasing, the picture for Italian producers isn’t all rosy.
While pubcaster Rai remains the main driver of content in Italy, its 2022 budget has been trimmed by 33 million to 176 million. This is the second year of cuts as it tries to recover following Covid-related ad and tax revenues drops.
Like many of his cohort, producer Rosario Rinaldo, head of TV production company Cross Prods.
- 4/2/2022
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
After making a splash with “Transparent,” Amazon Prime Video’s Italian original series “Prisma” will keep the navigation of gender identity at its core while catering to a young adult audience and connecting with Italy’s neorealist roots.
“Prisma,” which is currently shooting, is set in the city of Latina, just south of Rome, and its surrounding area, which used to be a swamp until the land was drained under Fascist rule. The area is now known for modernist architecture and fertile agriculture. The eight-episode show is centered around identical adolescent twins Marco and Andrea, who challenge gender norms in different ways, along with their group of friends who are also going through a similar journey.
“Prisma,” which means prism in Italian, is the brainchild of Ludovico Bessegato, who has gained local prominence as showrunner of “Skam Italia,” the Italian adaptation of the Nordic young adult drama that’s made...
“Prisma,” which is currently shooting, is set in the city of Latina, just south of Rome, and its surrounding area, which used to be a swamp until the land was drained under Fascist rule. The area is now known for modernist architecture and fertile agriculture. The eight-episode show is centered around identical adolescent twins Marco and Andrea, who challenge gender norms in different ways, along with their group of friends who are also going through a similar journey.
“Prisma,” which means prism in Italian, is the brainchild of Ludovico Bessegato, who has gained local prominence as showrunner of “Skam Italia,” the Italian adaptation of the Nordic young adult drama that’s made...
- 6/1/2021
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Amazon Prime Video today revealed upcoming projects from its Italian office, including a pair of new original series that have received the greenlight: The Bad Guy and Prisma.
An event held in Rome, which press attended remotely, saw virtual appearances from top Amazon executives including Amazon Studio’s chief Jennifer Salke and Head of European Originals Georgia Brown. Moderating proceedings, Amazon’s Head of Italian Originals Nicole Morganti unveiled several new projects:
Dark crime comedy The Bad Guy revolves around the story of Nino Scotellaro, a Sicilian public prosecutor who devoted his entire life to fighting against the mafia and is suddenly accused of being one of the very men he has always fought against. After being condemned, and with nothing left to lose, Nino decides to pull off a Machiavellian revenge plan.
Giancarlo Fontana and Giuseppe G. Stasi will direct, the project was created by Ludovica Rampoldi, Davide Serino and Stasi and Fontana,...
An event held in Rome, which press attended remotely, saw virtual appearances from top Amazon executives including Amazon Studio’s chief Jennifer Salke and Head of European Originals Georgia Brown. Moderating proceedings, Amazon’s Head of Italian Originals Nicole Morganti unveiled several new projects:
Dark crime comedy The Bad Guy revolves around the story of Nino Scotellaro, a Sicilian public prosecutor who devoted his entire life to fighting against the mafia and is suddenly accused of being one of the very men he has always fought against. After being condemned, and with nothing left to lose, Nino decides to pull off a Machiavellian revenge plan.
Giancarlo Fontana and Giuseppe G. Stasi will direct, the project was created by Ludovica Rampoldi, Davide Serino and Stasi and Fontana,...
- 5/27/2021
- by Tom Grater
- Deadline Film + TV
Production of TV dramas is back on track in Italy after a pandemic-prompted pause just as several hot new Italian shows, such as Luca Guadagnino’s “We Are Who We Are,” are hitting international screens and markets.
Pay-tv platform Sky Italia, which partnered with HBO on Guadagnino’s “We Are Who We Are,” has a slew of shows in various stages, including two very different ancient Rome skeins. One is “Romulus,” the mythical tale of Rome’s founding by twins Romulus and Remus — which was shot in archaic Latin — that will air in Italy in November; ITV Studios is selling it internationally.
The ancient Rome-set series is “Domina,” looking at Roman history from a female prism. Drama stars Kasia Smutniak (“Devils”) as Livia Drusilla, the wife of Emperor Augustus, played by Liam Cunningham (“Game of Thrones”). “Domina” had shut down production in early March but resumed in July and recently wrapped.
Pay-tv platform Sky Italia, which partnered with HBO on Guadagnino’s “We Are Who We Are,” has a slew of shows in various stages, including two very different ancient Rome skeins. One is “Romulus,” the mythical tale of Rome’s founding by twins Romulus and Remus — which was shot in archaic Latin — that will air in Italy in November; ITV Studios is selling it internationally.
The ancient Rome-set series is “Domina,” looking at Roman history from a female prism. Drama stars Kasia Smutniak (“Devils”) as Livia Drusilla, the wife of Emperor Augustus, played by Liam Cunningham (“Game of Thrones”). “Domina” had shut down production in early March but resumed in July and recently wrapped.
- 10/12/2020
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Shooting started Monday in Sardinia on season three of pubcaster Rai’s TV drama “The Hunter” about a Palermo prosecutor with a killer instinct for tracking down top Mafiosi. The widely-exported Italian show is set for a major twist since the lead will transition from a male magistrate to a female mobster hunter.
Rising local talent Linda Caridi, seen recently in Venice fest opener “The Ties” – where she plays the illicit lover who unties a marriage – has been cast as magistrate Paola Romano. During the course of the new season of “The Hunter” she will eventually replace her colleague Saverio Barone, played by Francesco Montanari, and become the new anti-Mafia prosecutor at the show’s center.
Montanari, incidentally, won the best performance prize for that role at Canneseries in 2018 where “The Hunter,” which is sold by Beta Film, made an international splash.
“I am really happy because this third season...
Rising local talent Linda Caridi, seen recently in Venice fest opener “The Ties” – where she plays the illicit lover who unties a marriage – has been cast as magistrate Paola Romano. During the course of the new season of “The Hunter” she will eventually replace her colleague Saverio Barone, played by Francesco Montanari, and become the new anti-Mafia prosecutor at the show’s center.
Montanari, incidentally, won the best performance prize for that role at Canneseries in 2018 where “The Hunter,” which is sold by Beta Film, made an international splash.
“I am really happy because this third season...
- 9/24/2020
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Italy’s Cross Productions, in which Germany’s Beta Film has a stake, is shopping “Wolfsburg,” a high-end TV series which turns on an Italian immigrant who during the 1960s arrives in the German city of Wolfsburg, headquarters of Volkswagen Group, and morphs into a murderous werewolf.
The innovative skein, now in advanced development, is being set up as an Italian/German co-production. Beta included it in its Berlinale Series Market presentation. The plan is to unveil a €1 million ($1.1 million) lavish “Wolfsburg” proof-of-concept teaser/trailer during the Beta brunch at MipTV in Cannes next month.
“The basic idea is to mix genres by having horror, or rather fantasy, intersect with Italian neorealism,” said Rosario Rinaldo, chief of Cross. Cross recently made “The Hunter,” the fact-based show about a Palermo prosecutor with a killer instinct for tracking down top Mafiosi that’s made a local splash after premiering in 2018 at Canneseries and also travelled some.
The innovative skein, now in advanced development, is being set up as an Italian/German co-production. Beta included it in its Berlinale Series Market presentation. The plan is to unveil a €1 million ($1.1 million) lavish “Wolfsburg” proof-of-concept teaser/trailer during the Beta brunch at MipTV in Cannes next month.
“The basic idea is to mix genres by having horror, or rather fantasy, intersect with Italian neorealism,” said Rosario Rinaldo, chief of Cross. Cross recently made “The Hunter,” the fact-based show about a Palermo prosecutor with a killer instinct for tracking down top Mafiosi that’s made a local splash after premiering in 2018 at Canneseries and also travelled some.
- 2/27/2020
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Rome – Canneseries competition entry “The Hunter” is being hailed as a watershed production for Italian pubcaster Rai and certainly stands out as the most innovative show among a Rai content package just picked up by Amazon Prime Video.
About a real Palermo prosecutor with a killer instinct for tracking down top Mafiosi, ”The Hunter” is produced by Rome-based Cross Productions — which is controlled by Germany’s Beta Film — in tandem with Rai Fiction. The 12-episode “Hunter” skein reconstructs the vigorous reaction prompted in 1993 by the 1992 bomb murders of anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. An anti-Mafia effort of unprecedented scope was unleashed that led to hundreds of arrests and marked a turning point in Italy’s fight against Cosa Nostra.
This pivotal hunt is narrated through multiple prisms but mainly through that of young and ambitious provincial prosecutor Saverio Barone, played by Francesco Montanari (“Crime Novel”). His character is...
About a real Palermo prosecutor with a killer instinct for tracking down top Mafiosi, ”The Hunter” is produced by Rome-based Cross Productions — which is controlled by Germany’s Beta Film — in tandem with Rai Fiction. The 12-episode “Hunter” skein reconstructs the vigorous reaction prompted in 1993 by the 1992 bomb murders of anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. An anti-Mafia effort of unprecedented scope was unleashed that led to hundreds of arrests and marked a turning point in Italy’s fight against Cosa Nostra.
This pivotal hunt is narrated through multiple prisms but mainly through that of young and ambitious provincial prosecutor Saverio Barone, played by Francesco Montanari (“Crime Novel”). His character is...
- 4/4/2018
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
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