Oleg Shardin & Alex Lane Launch Prod Firm Puma In A Tank; Unveil First Slate With Dramedy Based On ‘Driving The Saudis’ & Crime Thriller ‘Thieves In Law’

Jesse Whittock and Melanie Goodfellow
·2 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: Tech entrepreneur and producer Oleg Shardin, best known as the co-founder of digital whiteboard company Miro, and actor-producer Alex Lane have partnered to create multimedia production company Puma In A Tank.

The new banner will specialize in low to mid-level budget elevated thriller films and TV shows focusing on international components and socially relevant themes.

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The company has already raised financing to co-fund a slate of films and TV shows and will seek strategic partnerships on a project-per-project basis.

Partners include venture capitalist Joachim Laqueur, M&A and business strategy expert Vasiliy Lantsov and corporate finance professional Igor Shardin.

First projects include female-driven thriller feature film Speak Up, directed by award-winning Irish filmmaker Rioghnach Ni Ghrioghair (Balor Hall); American dramedy TV series Driver A.D., based on the international bestseller Driving The Saudis by Jayne Amelia Larson, who also co-created the series, as well as female-driven futuristic thriller A Better Place.

Puma In A Tank’s cornerstone project is the upcoming international crime-thriller TV series Thieves in Law, to which Germany’s Uli Edel (The Baader Meinhof Complex) is attached to direct.

Lane co-created the series with Josh Berman (Angels of the Sky) and will also co-showrun the production with former HBO Europe creative exec Gabor Krigler (Aranyélet).

The series revolves around an international criminal cartel that comes together around the fall of the Soviet Union, as well as the international law enforcement efforts headed by the FBI’s Organized Crime Unit to try to take this criminal merger down.

The book The Organizatsiya, by Alain Lallemand, Senior Investigative Reporter for the Belgian Newspaper Le Soir, serves as its IP.

Sandy Climan (The Aviator) is executive producing alongside Shardin, Lane and Krigler. Retired top-level CIA Operative Darrell M. Blocker and Lallemand are Co-EPing

Emmy nominated Nancy Bishop is casting. Jonathan Ford at Abacus Media Rights is handling the sales.

Shardin’s producing credits include arthouse drama feature Illusions, upcoming political drama The Debates and thriller feature Blackwater Lane.

Lane has appeared in various TV shows, films and theater productions. As a writer and producer, he assisted in developing, packaging and financing of various international film and TV projects for European and American producers and distributors.

Blackwater Lane was one of those projects and was the seed of the Shardin-Lane partnership.

The company is represented by the law firms Lee & Thompson in London and Philip Lee LLP in Dublin.

Edel is represented by David Gersh at The Gersh Agency and Ni Ghrioghair is represented by Annie Shipton and Sean Gascoine at United Agents.

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