eOne Sells Canadian Crime Drama ‘Cardinal’ to Canal Plus France
European paybox Canal Plus France has acquired French pay TV rights to the first season of Canadian thriller series “Cardinal,” from co-producer and worldwide distributor Entertainment One.
Toplining Billy Campbell (“The Killing”) and Karine Vanasse (“Revenge”), “Cardinal” is set in a small town in Northern Ontario, following two detectives as they attempt to solve the mystery murder of a teenage girl.
The first season of “Cardinal,” made up of six one-hour episodes, recently aired on C More in Scandinavia, where it became the network’s biggest foreign drama series. The series will premier in the U.K. via the BBC later this year.
“We’re delighted to have secured Canal Plus as the French broadcaster for ‘Cardinal’ season one as we head into MipTV,” said Stuart Baxter, eOne TV International president. “We’re incredibly proud of this captivating series which is already gaining early success among international audiences.”
Produced by Sienna Films and eOne in association with Bell Media’s Canadian broadcaster CTV, “Cardinal” adapts award-winning novel “Forty Words for Sorrow,” the first of the “John Cardinal Mysteries” series, six bestselling crime books written by Giles Blunt.
Recently, CTV announced, due to a breakthrough inaugural season, that it had greenlit second and third cycles of “Cardinal” for broadcast in 2017/18, marking the first time the Canadian network has ordered two consecutive seasons of a drama.
The second season of the show, inspired by “Black Fly Season,” the third novel in Blunt’s series, will be filmed this summer in the Northern Ontario cities of Sudbury and North Bay.
“Cardinal’s” third season, based on the fourth and fifth titles in the book series, “By the Time You Read This” and “Crime Machine,” is to begin rolling this fall.
The series has been financially backed by the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, the Canada Media Fund and the Cogeco Program Development Fund, with the assistance of the Ontario Film and TV Tax Credit and the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit.
Super Écran has commissioned “Cardinal” for French-language Canadian broadcast.
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