Duffy performing in 2008. Brill/ullstein bild via Getty Images Disney+ is “ramping up production” across Europe, increasing commissioning for both scripted and non-scripted content, including a high-profile documentary on Welsh soul singer Duffy, a murder mystery set in Italy and a Turkish comedy featuring a 350-year-old vampire virgin.
The streamer’s head of content for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Angela Jain, speaking at the Series Mania TV festival on Wednesday, said Disney+ would be boosting regional production across Europe.
Jain outlined several regional highlights, including a feature documentary on Duffy, the Welsh soul singer who rocketed to global fame with the success of her hit single “Mercy” before dropping out of the public eye. Years later, Duffy posted on social media that she had been abducted and assaulted. The Disney+ documentary from Rare TV and Stellify Media will be the first time she has spoken publicly about her story.
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In Italy, Disney+ has commissioned what Jain called “a classic whodunit” — Murder on Lake Garda —based on the best-selling book by Tom Hindle about a murder on the eve of a glamorous wedding. Fremantle label The Apartment will be producing.
More on the odd side of the spectrum is The Strange Story of Gustav Maier, a supernatural comedy from Turkey, which Jain pitched as “a hilarious love story about a 350-year-old virgin vampire who falls in love with a human.” MGX is producing in Turkey.
In Spain, the streamer has ordered the documentary series Abandoned, which will tell the real-life story of three children who were found abandoned at a city train station. Forty years later they set out to uncover the truth about their parents and why they abandoned them. Luminol Media is producing.
Prominent in its absence from Jain’s commissioning list was Europe’s largest TV territory, Germany, where Disney+ has put multiple planned productions on hold as it reassesses its local strategy there.
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