‘Babylon Berlin’ to Proceed With 5th Season, Without Sky Deutschland

Scott Roxborough
·2 min read
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Babylon Berlin is coming back for a fifth season. The producers and broadcasters behind the award-winning German drama told The Hollywood Reporter Thursday that the 1920s-set crime thriller has not been canceled. Following news earlier in the day that Comcast-owned Sky Deutschland, one of the show’s backers, is shutting down its local originals department, there was speculation that the fourth season of Babylon Berlin, set to air this fall, would be the last.

But in a joint statement, Babylon Berlin‘s producers reassured the show’s fans.

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“ARD Degeto, X Filme and Beta Film [have commissioned] the development of the fifth season of the international hit series Babylon Berlin.” The producers noted the show’s international success — it has sold to more than 140 territories worldwide — as well as its local hit status, drawing more than “55 million digital views” on the streaming service of German public broadcaster ARD.

Directed by Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries and Henk Handloegten, the series follows the investigations of Berlin homicide detective Gereon Rath and his assistant Charlotte Ritter, played by Volker Bruch and Liv-Lisa Fries as they delve into the underworld of 1920s Berlin, a hotbed of crime, sexual experimentation and extremist politics. The series airs on Netflix in the U.S.

Sky Deutschland will not be a producer of the fifth season of the show. The pay-TV group, the German arm of Comcast-owned Sky, announced Thursday that it is shutting down its German originals division. The company cited rising production costs and increased competition from global streamers as reasons for the move. Babylon Berlin was Sky Deutschland’s first high-end original series but the network was always a minority partner, with public broadcaster ARD as the main anchor network. The two networks split broadcasting rights in Germany, with Sky getting the first pay-TV window. It is not clear if Sky will carry the fifth season of the show when it airs.

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