International production giant Banijay continues to gobble up independent production companies, on Thursday unveiling that it has taken a majority stake in jonnydepony, a boutique TV outfit in Belgium.
Banijay Benelux, which produces such local series as hit soap opera Familie, will fold jonnydepony into its scripted operations.
Set up by Philippe De Schepper in 2015, jonnydepony specializes in high-end drama series, often set up as European co-productions. Recent successes include Finnish-Belgian crime series Transport from Finnish showrunner Auli Mantila, which looks at the underground world of illegal horse smuggling; and the terrorist thriller Blackout, which imagines an attack on a nuclear power plant that plunges all of Belgium into darkness.
Upcoming projects include the high-concept drama Arcadia, a co-production with Dutch TV group Big Blue, which is set in a near-future world where one’s social status is determined by an algorithmic Citizen Score designed to ensure social compliance.
Helen Perquy,...
Banijay Benelux, which produces such local series as hit soap opera Familie, will fold jonnydepony into its scripted operations.
Set up by Philippe De Schepper in 2015, jonnydepony specializes in high-end drama series, often set up as European co-productions. Recent successes include Finnish-Belgian crime series Transport from Finnish showrunner Auli Mantila, which looks at the underground world of illegal horse smuggling; and the terrorist thriller Blackout, which imagines an attack on a nuclear power plant that plunges all of Belgium into darkness.
Upcoming projects include the high-concept drama Arcadia, a co-production with Dutch TV group Big Blue, which is set in a near-future world where one’s social status is determined by an algorithmic Citizen Score designed to ensure social compliance.
Helen Perquy,...
- 1/19/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
REinvent International Sales has inked a raft of deals across its slate of high-concept series, including “Transport” (pictured) and “Enemy of the People,” rolling off of MipTV.
The company has sold both “Transport,” which is penned by Auli Mantila (“Silver Stars”), and the Icelandic comedy series “Ordinary People” to AMC Networks Southern Europe for Spain and Portugal.
“Transport” is an eight-part TV show following a young journalist investigating a chip found in baby food. She crosses paths with an insurance investigator and a bank manager who are both connected to the case. The series stars Emmi Parviainen (“Shadow Lines”), Maria Heiskanen (“Everlasting Moments”), Pirkko Hämäläinen (“Devil’s Bride”) and Geert van Rampelberg (“De Infiltrant”). Miia Haavisto (“Tom of Finland”) and Tia Talli (“Nurses”) at Tekele are producing “Transport.”
“Ordinary People,” which is produced by Glassriver, follows the ups and downs of a friendship between two young women entering adulthood and...
The company has sold both “Transport,” which is penned by Auli Mantila (“Silver Stars”), and the Icelandic comedy series “Ordinary People” to AMC Networks Southern Europe for Spain and Portugal.
“Transport” is an eight-part TV show following a young journalist investigating a chip found in baby food. She crosses paths with an insurance investigator and a bank manager who are both connected to the case. The series stars Emmi Parviainen (“Shadow Lines”), Maria Heiskanen (“Everlasting Moments”), Pirkko Hämäläinen (“Devil’s Bride”) and Geert van Rampelberg (“De Infiltrant”). Miia Haavisto (“Tom of Finland”) and Tia Talli (“Nurses”) at Tekele are producing “Transport.”
“Ordinary People,” which is produced by Glassriver, follows the ups and downs of a friendship between two young women entering adulthood and...
- 4/6/2022
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Finland has responded to a spike in demand for its content with a slew of new series. As revealed by Laura Kuulasmaa, executive director at Audiovisual Producers Finland (Apfi), over 30 will be released this year alone, a 20% uptick on 2018.
“Compared to eight, ten years ago, when there were maybe only five scripted series per year, the increase has been huge,” she tells Variety ahead of French TV festival Series Mania’s “Focus on Finland” showcase.
The Film in Finland cash rebate has facilitated international investments and growth of the budgets, she notes.
Matti Paunio, head of production at the Finnish Film Foundation, adds:
“I think the biggest trend overall is the diversification of subjects and points of view. Scripts and series are more courageous, they take on different genres more often than ever. Production is booming, but apart from the quantity, we are also providing quality.”
According to Paunio, about 47% of writers,...
“Compared to eight, ten years ago, when there were maybe only five scripted series per year, the increase has been huge,” she tells Variety ahead of French TV festival Series Mania’s “Focus on Finland” showcase.
The Film in Finland cash rebate has facilitated international investments and growth of the budgets, she notes.
Matti Paunio, head of production at the Finnish Film Foundation, adds:
“I think the biggest trend overall is the diversification of subjects and points of view. Scripts and series are more courageous, they take on different genres more often than ever. Production is booming, but apart from the quantity, we are also providing quality.”
According to Paunio, about 47% of writers,...
- 3/18/2022
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Only six months after its 2021 edition, Series Mania will be back with a sprawling selection, including the world premieres of Michael Hirst’s “Billy The Kid” (pictured), the Israeli series “Fire Dance” and rap-music-themed French show “Le monde de demain.”
Underscoring the large presence of streamers within the roster, Series Mania will kick off with Netflix’s “Standing Up,” a new comedy series from “Call My Agent” creator and showrunner Fanny Herrero; while Disney Plus’ “Oussekine,” about a tragic case of police brutality in France, will close the festival.
The lineup boasts 58 series spanning from 21 countries. These were chosen from 331 series. The international jury, whose president will be announced later, will comprise of German actor Christian Berkel (“Downfall”), Franco-Belgian actor Cécile de France, Israeli actor Shira Haas (“The Unorthodox”), Turkish creator and director Berkun Oya (“Bir Baskadir”) and French singer-songwriter and model Yseult.
This year’s guests of honor are Michael Hirst,...
Underscoring the large presence of streamers within the roster, Series Mania will kick off with Netflix’s “Standing Up,” a new comedy series from “Call My Agent” creator and showrunner Fanny Herrero; while Disney Plus’ “Oussekine,” about a tragic case of police brutality in France, will close the festival.
The lineup boasts 58 series spanning from 21 countries. These were chosen from 331 series. The international jury, whose president will be announced later, will comprise of German actor Christian Berkel (“Downfall”), Franco-Belgian actor Cécile de France, Israeli actor Shira Haas (“The Unorthodox”), Turkish creator and director Berkun Oya (“Bir Baskadir”) and French singer-songwriter and model Yseult.
This year’s guests of honor are Michael Hirst,...
- 2/17/2022
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
As the industry starts paying closer attention to Finnish films and talent – following the Cannes success of Juho Kuosmanen’s “Compartment No. 6” and Zaida Bergroth’s crowd-pleasing “Tove” – Finnish TV drama is next in line, argued the participants of the Berlinale Series Market Focus on Finland drama showcase. Kuosmanen premiered short-form series “Zone B,” which he co-created, at the Red Sea International Film Festival in December.
“We have seen a rise in Finnish stories, because as content creators and writers, we got to be a little bit braver,” said Minna Panjanen, now behind “Next of Kin”. “The truth is, everyone needs content right now. It’s almost a mathematical impossibility to say what would be the next big thing – we all saw it with ‘Squid Game’. But we need to be braver in order to stand out.”
In “Next of Kin”, set in the near future – the series is...
“We have seen a rise in Finnish stories, because as content creators and writers, we got to be a little bit braver,” said Minna Panjanen, now behind “Next of Kin”. “The truth is, everyone needs content right now. It’s almost a mathematical impossibility to say what would be the next big thing – we all saw it with ‘Squid Game’. But we need to be braver in order to stand out.”
In “Next of Kin”, set in the near future – the series is...
- 2/16/2022
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Icelandic smash hit drama series “Blackport” won on Wednesday the 2022 Nordisk Film & TV Prize, Scandinavia’s top plaudit for drama series writing.
The award was announced on site at the end of an intense first day of conference panels at the Göteborg Festival’s TV Drama Vision, with two of the series’ three writers, Gísli Örn Garðarsson and Mikael Torfason on stage to collect the Nordic TV Drama Screenplay Award, carrying a €20,000 cash prize. They were accompanied by producer Nina Dögg Filippusdóttir. The prize also went to fellow screenwriter Björn Hlynur Haraldsson.
Clinching the Nftf Prize, “Blackport” has scored a remarkable triple, winning the Series Mania Award at the Berlinale Series Market’s 2018 Co-Pro Series competition after an inspired on-stage pitch by Garðarsson and going on to take the top prize at Series Mania last September.
“Blackport” fought off stiff competition from Oscar-nominated Danish director Lone Sherfig’s “The Shift,...
The award was announced on site at the end of an intense first day of conference panels at the Göteborg Festival’s TV Drama Vision, with two of the series’ three writers, Gísli Örn Garðarsson and Mikael Torfason on stage to collect the Nordic TV Drama Screenplay Award, carrying a €20,000 cash prize. They were accompanied by producer Nina Dögg Filippusdóttir. The prize also went to fellow screenwriter Björn Hlynur Haraldsson.
Clinching the Nftf Prize, “Blackport” has scored a remarkable triple, winning the Series Mania Award at the Berlinale Series Market’s 2018 Co-Pro Series competition after an inspired on-stage pitch by Garðarsson and going on to take the top prize at Series Mania last September.
“Blackport” fought off stiff competition from Oscar-nominated Danish director Lone Sherfig’s “The Shift,...
- 2/3/2022
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
“You’re a horse person?” a Belgian stable owner asks Johanna, a young Finnish journalist delving into the discovery of a microchip in a baby’s meat patty at a Helsinki daycare center. Only creator-director Auli Mantila’s own horse affiliations as a qualified farrier may explain in part one of the most singular of entries at this year’s Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize: “Transport.”
This is Scandinavian crime drama, but “ordi-noir,” Mantila told the Nordisk Film & TV Fond newsletter, in that it “happens in broad daylight, involves people with no special talent or trauma, and takes place in locations anyone could just walk in.”
It also addresses a massive but little explored subject, turning on pan-European food fraud which embroils three women: Marianne, a by-the-book bank loans exec forced to money launder earnings of a sinister food import company; an insurance investigator checking the disappearance of a...
This is Scandinavian crime drama, but “ordi-noir,” Mantila told the Nordisk Film & TV Fond newsletter, in that it “happens in broad daylight, involves people with no special talent or trauma, and takes place in locations anyone could just walk in.”
It also addresses a massive but little explored subject, turning on pan-European food fraud which embroils three women: Marianne, a by-the-book bank loans exec forced to money launder earnings of a sinister food import company; an insurance investigator checking the disappearance of a...
- 1/31/2022
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
Helsinki-based Tekele has unveiled the international trailer of its first premium crime drama “Transport”, which is in the running for this year’s Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize for best Nordic TV screenplay. The prestigious award will be handed out Feb. 2 during Göteborg’s two-day TV Drama Vision confab.
Created and directed by Prix Europa winner Auli Mantila (“Silver Stars”), “Transport” is repped by REIvent International.
The eight-part series delves into the criminal activity of horsemeat trafficking and money laundering in Europe. It’s about ordinary people, under pressure, who somehow get involved, while a young journalist investigates the case of a microchip found in baby food. Toplining the show are Emmi Parviainen (“Shadow Lines”), Maria Heskanen (“Everlasting Moments”), Ville Virtanen (“Bordertown”) and Geert van Rampelberg (“De Infiltrant”).
“Transport” is the first major European premium TV show produced by fast-expanding Tekele, founded by seasoned producer Miia Haavisto. Speaking about her Belgium co-production partners Jonnydepony,...
Created and directed by Prix Europa winner Auli Mantila (“Silver Stars”), “Transport” is repped by REIvent International.
The eight-part series delves into the criminal activity of horsemeat trafficking and money laundering in Europe. It’s about ordinary people, under pressure, who somehow get involved, while a young journalist investigates the case of a microchip found in baby food. Toplining the show are Emmi Parviainen (“Shadow Lines”), Maria Heskanen (“Everlasting Moments”), Ville Virtanen (“Bordertown”) and Geert van Rampelberg (“De Infiltrant”).
“Transport” is the first major European premium TV show produced by fast-expanding Tekele, founded by seasoned producer Miia Haavisto. Speaking about her Belgium co-production partners Jonnydepony,...
- 1/24/2022
- by Annika Pham
- Variety Film + TV
Showrun by Oscar-nominated Danish director Lone Sherfig, “The Shift” will battle it out with Series Mania top winner “Blackport” and Canneseries winner “Countrymen” for 2022’s 6th Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize.
Also in contention are Finnish crime drama “Transport” and psychological thriller “Vi y Villa,” an early show from Sweden’s Discovery Plus.
All five titles, however diverse, underscore the strong social issue drive of much upscale Nordic and indeed European drama, affording a snapshot of larger tensions coursing society at large.
Winners of the Nordic TV Drama Screenplay Award, which goes to a show’s main writer, will receive a €20,000 cash prize, announced during the Göteborg Film Festival’s TV Drama Vision, a highlight of the festival, on Feb. 2.
“Good scripts form the basis of our strong Nordic drama series,. Writing talents should be cherished every day and celebrated through script honours and awards,” commented Liselott Forsman, CEO of...
Also in contention are Finnish crime drama “Transport” and psychological thriller “Vi y Villa,” an early show from Sweden’s Discovery Plus.
All five titles, however diverse, underscore the strong social issue drive of much upscale Nordic and indeed European drama, affording a snapshot of larger tensions coursing society at large.
Winners of the Nordic TV Drama Screenplay Award, which goes to a show’s main writer, will receive a €20,000 cash prize, announced during the Göteborg Film Festival’s TV Drama Vision, a highlight of the festival, on Feb. 2.
“Good scripts form the basis of our strong Nordic drama series,. Writing talents should be cherished every day and celebrated through script honours and awards,” commented Liselott Forsman, CEO of...
- 12/14/2021
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
After two weeks of filming in Belgium in September, principal photography for the new eight-episode series is continuing in and around Helsinki. A new 8x50 Finnish-Belgian TV series is now in the making. The project, entitled Transport, is written and directed by showrunner and filmmaker Auli Mantila, best known for having directed The Collector (Finland’s bid for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1997 Academy Awards), The Geography of Fear (2000) and My Friend Henry (2004). The news was first reported by Variety. Transport revolves around the world of food trading, money laundering and the illegal transport of horses along the roads and wires of Europe. In particular, the story follows Johann (played by young actress Emmi Parviainen), a journalist who is investigating the origin of a microchip found in baby food. Alongside Parviainen are veterans Maria Heskanen (playing an insurance investigator), Pirkko Hämäläinen (a bank manager), Ville Virtanen and...
- 10/15/2020
- Cineuropa - The Best of European Cinema
The Berlin Festival’s Finnish Shooting Star 2015 Emmi Parviainen (“Shadow Lines”), seasoned actor Maria Heiskanen (“Everlasting Moments”), Pirkko Hämäläinen (“Devil’s Bride”) and Belgian actor Geert van Rampelberg (“De Infiltrant”) are headlining the eight-part TV show “Transport.” Prix Europa winner Auli Mantila will serve as its showrunner.
Lensing the show is veteran DoP J-p Passi, multi-awarded for the film “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olly Mäki” and second unit DoP on “Chernobyl.”
Veteran producer Miia Haavisto (“Tom of Finland”) and Tia Talli (“Nurses”) of Tekele are producing for Finnish pubcaster Yle. Belgium’s Philippe de Schepper (“Black-Out”) and Jonnydepony’S Helen Perquy, an executive producer on “Tabula Rasa,” are co-producing. Nordic global distributor REinvent Studios picked up the show in February.
Producer Haavisto said “Transport” stands out as a crime drama set in the food trade. “It’s the tale of ordinary people under immense pressure, all of...
Lensing the show is veteran DoP J-p Passi, multi-awarded for the film “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olly Mäki” and second unit DoP on “Chernobyl.”
Veteran producer Miia Haavisto (“Tom of Finland”) and Tia Talli (“Nurses”) of Tekele are producing for Finnish pubcaster Yle. Belgium’s Philippe de Schepper (“Black-Out”) and Jonnydepony’S Helen Perquy, an executive producer on “Tabula Rasa,” are co-producing. Nordic global distributor REinvent Studios picked up the show in February.
Producer Haavisto said “Transport” stands out as a crime drama set in the food trade. “It’s the tale of ordinary people under immense pressure, all of...
- 10/10/2020
- by Annika Pham
- Variety Film + TV
Finland’s Auli Mantila writes and directs.
Rikke Ennis’ REinvent Studios has boarded sales for suspense drama Transport, as Berlinale Series Market wraps up today (Feb 26).
Finland’s Auli Mantila writes and directs. Producers are Miia Haavisto and Tia Talli, of Finland’s Tekele Productions. Haavisto is a seasoned producer who has also worked on films including Miami, Tom Of Finland and Unknown Soldier. Co-producers are Helen Perquy and Philippe de Schepper of Belgium’s jonnydepony.
The 8 x 50’ series will start shooting in September, in Finnish and English. It explores money laundering and food fraud across Europe, particularly involving horse transport,...
Rikke Ennis’ REinvent Studios has boarded sales for suspense drama Transport, as Berlinale Series Market wraps up today (Feb 26).
Finland’s Auli Mantila writes and directs. Producers are Miia Haavisto and Tia Talli, of Finland’s Tekele Productions. Haavisto is a seasoned producer who has also worked on films including Miami, Tom Of Finland and Unknown Soldier. Co-producers are Helen Perquy and Philippe de Schepper of Belgium’s jonnydepony.
The 8 x 50’ series will start shooting in September, in Finnish and English. It explores money laundering and food fraud across Europe, particularly involving horse transport,...
- 2/26/2020
- by 1100142¦Wendy Mitchell¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
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