The Hot Ones — Docs: Playboy Bunny Crime, The Story Of Disco & Andrew Tate Profile Headed To Mipcom Cannes

The Deadline Team
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Welcome to Deadline’s The Hot Ones, our guide to some of the best television being sold at Mipcom next week. Our editorial team has done extensive research in the run-up to the 2023 market and handpicked what we think are sure to be the shows that will be big talking points at this year’s event in Cannes. In between meetings and cocktail parties, you’re sure to hear whispers about the next potential global hit and The Hot Ones is here to guide you. Here’s three top docs headed for the Croisette.

The Playboy Bunny Murders

Distributor: Blue Ant International
Length: 2×60’
Producers: Soho Studios, Future Studios

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The Playboy Bunny Murders is a story so pressing that its presenter Marcel Theroux was “going to do it whether there was a TV commission or not,” says executive producer John Farrar of the ITVX two-parter.

Theroux, older brother of recent MacTaggart lecture giver Louis Theroux, had been following the story of disturbing murders of three young women in London the 1970s. The journalist, author and filmmaker’s long-time obsession with the killings of Playboy Bunny Eve Stratford, croupier Lynda Farrow and schoolgirl Lynne Weedon had led him to conduct his own research and audio interviews with many involved and affected by the events.

The murders centered around the Playboy Club in Mayfair, which for a time was the golden goose of Hugh Hefner’s empire. “The time period was fascinating—a sexual revolution, feminism and it all centered around the club,” Farrar says.

The series will see Theroux travelling around London’s W1 postcode and beyond to track down police files, examine new breakthroughs and find key figures linked to the case.

Theroux had told Ian Lamarra, founder of Soho Studios and former co-chief at Alaska TV, about the story some time back and together they went about developing the project before drafting in Farrar’s Future Studios as co-producer. “It was great that he knew the story inside-out, but the story is forwards-looking,” Lamarra says. “He finds new evidence, but he treats the audience with respect. At no point is he telling you the answers. Marcel is a great talent—already quite well known but he could be a new talent for ITV.”

Lamarra and Farrar both note how as the cases are unsolved, they needed to work closely with ITV lawyers and editorial compliance team. They also note duty of care to the victim’s friends and families was paramount. “We never forgot about the people involved,” Farrar says.

For ITV, the series is the sort of noisy true-crime doc series its streaming service ITVX needs to draw people in and present them with a wider archive of programs. Lamarra describes it as part cinematic journey back into the West End’s past and another part unfolding investigation.

At MipcomCannes, Canada’s Blue Ant International will be presenting it to buyers, with Global Head of Acquisitions and Partnerships Lilla Hurst saying it will equally be a “package driver” for networks and global streamers.

“This is at the intersection of where crime and glamour meet. British crime can be challenging at times to sell, but the setting and precinct of this immediately eradicated that.”

“This is a premium story,” says Lamarra. “We’ve spent months investigating. It’s not just a run-of-the-mill factual show.” —Jesse Whittock

Disco: Soundtrack Of A Revolution

Distributor: BBC Studios Distribution
Length: 3×60’
Producer: BBC Studios Productions Documentary Unit

This landmark doc series for BBC Two and PBS exists to remind people of how disco became a cultural phenomenon around the world, while only actually existing as a sub-culture for a decade from circa 1970-79. “Disco burned brightly and then burned out,” says BBC Studios’ Alexander Leith, Executive Producer on Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution.

The three-part series sets out to tell the colorful story the music genre that has influenced the world ever since New York DJ David Mancuso began throwing rooftop parties in the early seventies.

“[U.S. DJ] David Morales said every form of EDM owes something to disco,” notes Leith.

Besides revelling in the thumping tunes, dance moves and flamboyant fashion, Disco will chart how the genre pioneered a social movement and provided what Leith calls “a safe space on the dance floor” for many marginalized groups, such as black and Hispanic people, the LGBTIA+ community and women.

“We think of disco as music but it’s much more than that—it was a cultural phenomenon,” Leith says. “Marginalized communities, particularly in New York at the time, were having a rough time of it, being persecuted in different ways, and were looking for a means of self-expression.” Many of the issues are still relevant and live today: Black Lives Matter, LGBTIA+ identity and female empowerment are three examples.

The series will chart how disco spread to Europe and gave rise to megastars such as ABBA, Grace Jones and Boney M before mainstream music took hold of disco and saturated the global market with the sound, leading to a hate-fuelled backlash that quickly killed off the genre commercially. The culmination is a recollection of the Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in Chicago in 1979, when a crate of disco records was blown up on the field in between a doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers, which led to a riot, the cancellation of the second game and effectively the end of disco era.

The BBC led on production, with PBS providing editorial guidance during development and production.

The series is a strong pick for any network or streamer looking to attract music doc fans, but Leith points to another, less expected benefit. “I have an excellent Spotify disco playlist now,” he says.

BBC Studios will shop the series in Cannes, along with big ticket blue-chip factual such as Mammals and several new dramas. —JW

(In)Famous: The True Story Of Andrew Tate

Distributor: Abacus Media Rights
Length: 1×47’/1×80’
Producer: Amos Pictures

Just a few days before Andrew Tate was detained in Bucharest on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organized crime group, he was chatting to Dan Reed about a documentary profile.

The shape of Reed’s doc—(In)Famous: The True Story of Andrew Tate—changed the day the news broke about the highly controversial influencer in late 2022 and Leaving Neverland creator Reed and director Marguerite Gaudin have pushed on with the definitive tale of one of the world’s most well-known internet personalities, speaking to supporters, family members and detractors alike.

That doc is now being sold at Mipcom Cannes by Abacus Media Rights as it prepares to air on the U.K.’s Channel 4, with a string of pre-buys set to be unveiled soon.

“Andrew Tate approached Dan and asked his team to make a film about him and, prior to his being detained, Dan had already made clear that it wouldn’t be a puff piece but would only show the truth,” says Abacus Managing Director Jonathan Ford, who has sold numerous Reed shows including Four Hours at the Capitol and Escape from Kabul. “The full exposure of Andrew’s life needs to be out there in one go so people can make the right decisions about him.”

Tate is an ex-kickboxer who obtained worldwide fame—especially among younger people—with hyper-misogynist rants that handed him instant name recognition and a swelling following on platforms like TikTok prior to his arrest. He is currently awaiting trial and was recently released from house arrest by Romanian authorities.

Reed has set out to answer questions around where Tate really came from. The fast-car-driving, cigar-smoking hyper-male appears to have been in the public consciousness for a very long time but where did he in fact spring from, and how did he engineer such a meteoric rise? (In)Famous will also cover the life of his brother, Tristan, who has also been arrested.

As the world prepares for potential trial, Ford says the doc has a “commercial proposition as it is topical and relevant but is also an important story to get out there so people are aware what is going on.”

Tate’s influence is broad and Abacus will be pitching into key territories including North America and major European nations along with the CEE, which has become more familiar with Tate due to his Romanian detention.

“Pre-buyers know with Dan that this will be a balanced but cautionary story,” Ford says. “There is a huge influence here that needs to be explained.”

As with Reed’s previous fare, Ford believes the doc will work better on linear as part of an event-driven schedule. —Max Goldbart

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