Brazil Soccer Doc With Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Cafu Sells Wide for Collective, Entourage – Global Bulletin

SALES

Collective Media Group and Entourage Sports and Entertainment‘s soccer documentary feature “Brazil 2002: The Real Story,” recounting the story of the 2002 World Cup on its 20th anniversary, has sold a raft of territories worldwide. The film uses six hours of unseen archive material shot by Brazilian soccer player Juliano Belletti during the tournament, and also features interviews with Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Cafu and Gilberto Silva from the World Cup winning Brazil team; and, from the opposing teams across the tournament, David Beckham, Michael Owen, Oliver Kahn, Hasan Şaş and Marc Wilmots as well as referee Pierluigi Collina.

FIFA has taken the film for its own streamer FIFA+, for territories including Asia (excluding Japan), Turkey and New Zealand. This is complemented by deals confirmed by distribution partner Abacus Media Rights including: Canal+ Group for Canal+ Foot and myCanal (France); Sky Deutschland (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg); Sky Italia (Italy, Republic of San Marino, Vatican City, Malta, Capodistria, Montecarlo and Italian speaking Switzerland); DBS Satellite Services (Israel and West Bank); Supersport Africa (for Africa); NOS Portugal (Portugal and PALOPs); Movistar Plus+ (Spain); and Stan Entertainment Pty (Australia).

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The film was previously sold to Sky (U.K.); Front Row Filmed Entertainment (Middle East); and Viaplay Group (for its Viaplay streaming service in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). TelevisaUnivision also announced its acquisition of the film for North and South America (excluding Brazil), as part of the slate of Originals coming to ViX+, also negotiated by Trailer Films.

Two stars of Brazil’s World Cup winning side – Roberto Carlos and Belletti are executive producers alongside Rebecca Knight and Claire McArdle for Collective Media Group, Mark Cowan and Paul Brighten for Entourage Sports and Entertainment, and Luis Ara for Trailer Films, who also is the director and writer of the film with Collective Media Group’s Arianna Perretta as producer.

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Meanwhile, All3Media International has concluded a first round of sales for Story Film’s thriller “Witness Number 3,” led by Nina Toussaint-White. Following its premiere on the U.K.’s Channel 5, the four-part series launched on streamer Paramount+ Australia, and is set to air on TVNZ in New Zealand. In Europe, it has been acquired by premium PBS’s NPO in the Netherlands, TV4 in Sweden, MTV in Finland, Virgin Media in Eire, Turckell’s SVOD service TV+ in Turkey and Turkish-speaking Cyprus and Hellenic in Greece. Additionally, Acorn has signed deals for home entertainment rights for the series in the U.K., Ireland and Australia.

Written by Thomas Eccleshare and directed by Diarmuid Goggins (“Kin”), the drama follows Jodie (Toussaint-White) a young mother and hairdresser, who witnesses a man seconds before his murder. After coming forward to give evidence to the police, believing this is the right thing to do, she is shocked when detectives decide to keep her identity secret, referring to her as Witness No.3. Soon it becomes clear there is more at risk than she could have imagined as a campaign of intimidation to silence her begins.

APPOINTMENTS

Abacus Media Rights has appointed Will Stapley as head of acquisitions across both scripted and unscripted programming. Stapley was previously with TVF International, where, as head of acquisitions and partnerships since 2016, he was responsible for managing and developing the acquisitions and content partnerships strategy across genres. He has acquired more than 2,000 hours of programming from producers across the globe and assisted with deficit financing and co-productions, in addition to advising on international edits and is executive producer on several recent productions.

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Elsewhere, Aileen Gardner has been appointed head of production, Canada, Blue Ant Studios, reporting to Laura Michalchyshyn, CCO and co-president, global production, Blue Ant Media and Sam Sniderman, co-president, global production. Gardner is charged with leading the operations for the studio’s slate of productions in Canada. Zachary Frank is named VP, development, Blue Ant Studios, reporting to Jennifer Harkness, senior VP, unscripted, Blue Ant Studios while working closely with Gardner in Toronto. In this role, Frank will be working with the studio’s team in Los Angeles to further expand its development slate of limited and returnable series with an emphasis on the Canadian, U.K. and American markets.

ANIME

Netflix has set an Oct. 13 stream date and a trailer for sci-fi space horror anime “exception,” based on an original story by Hirotaka Adachi, with character designs by Yoshitaka Amano. The music is composed by Academy and Grammy Award winner Ryuichi Sakamoto. In the series, set in the far future, humanity has been driven from Earth and forced to move its population to another galaxy. Members of a scouting team are sent to search for a planet suitable for terraforming. The crew was created through a biological 3D printer, but a system malfunction causes one of the crew members, Lewis, to emerge in a deformed state. As Lewis turns on his fellow crew members Nina, Mack, Patty and Oscar, a countdown to the end of the mission begins in the frightening darkness of the ship.

MARKET

The Montreal Festival du nouveau cinéma (FNC) has unveiled the projects selected for the second edition of its international coproduction marketplace. The Nouveau Marché, organized in partnership with CineMart, the coproduction market of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, runs from Oct. 6-9 in Montreal in parallel with the main festival and the FNC Forum.

One of the 15 selected projects at the Nouveau Marché will be invited to CineMart 2023. The jury in charge of awarding a CAD$25,000 ($19,070 prize for development support are Quebec director Ayana O’Shun, journalist Scott Macaulay and producer Shrihari Sathe.

The selected projects are:

“Check Me in Another Place” (France)

Director: Matt Porterfield

Produced by: Le Bureau (Gabrielle Dumon)

“Dawn Chorus” (Ukraine)

Director: Mykola Zasieiev

Produced by: Digital Religion (Natalia Libet)

“Demba” (Senegal/United States)

Director: Mamadou Dia

Produced by: Joyedidi (Mama Ba)

“Eka” (France/India)

Director: Suman Sen

Produced by: DW (Dominique Welinski)

“La Duda/The Doubt” (Venezuela)

Director: Solveig Hoogesteijn

Produced by: Films Austères (Juan Carlos Lossada)

“Pilgrim in Wonderland” (Canada/Saudi Arabia)

Director: Maha Al-Saati

Produced by: Nava Projects (Sahar Yousefi)

“Laughing With God” (Canada, Quebec)

Director: Gavin Seal

Produced by: Loaded Pictures (Chaz Beaudette)

“Le Suil Du Jardin” (Canada, Quebec)

Director: Paul Chotel

Produced by: Les Films Rôdeurs (Jonathan Beaulieu-Cyr)

“Milk Powder” (France / Brazil / Germany)

Director: Carlos Segundo

Produced by: Les Valseurs (Justin Pechberty), O Sopro do tempo, Black Forest

“Our Sweet Hell” (Benin)

Director: Katya Aragão

Produced by: Merveilles Productions (Faissol Gnonlonfin, Latigone Goma)

“Sorya” (France)

Director: Denis Do

Produced by: Special Touch Studios (Sébastien Onomo)

“The Defences” (Spain)

Director: Lucía Estévez

Produced by: Cósmica Producións (Nati Juncal Portas)

“The Myth of a Real Man” (Serbia)

Director: Lee Filipovski

Produced by: Dart Film (Natasa Damnjanovic)

“The Surrogate” (Iran, U.K.)

Director: Ali Jaberansari

Produced by: The Lift (Babak Jalali, Gabriel Stevenhagen)

“Theft of Fire” (Palestine)

Director: Amer Shomali

Produced by: Intuitive Pictures (Ina Fichman), Made in Palestine (Rashid Abdelhami)

The projects were selected by Hayet Benkara, head of Nouveau Marché, and Karim Aitouna (Haut Les Mains Productions).

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