Sky Studios Teams With Italian Rapper Salmo on In-House TV Project ‘Blocco 181’
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Sky Studios is teaming with popular Italian musician and rapper Salmo to develop “Blocco 181” (working title), an in-house TV production.
Salmo will serve as creative and music producer of “Blocco 181” and will also star in the series, which will mark the Italian rap artist’s first TV project.
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The creative hub Red Joint Film, which is led by partners Paolo Vari and David Fischer, is collaborating with Sky Studios to develop the project. The series is being produced in-house at Sky Studios in Italy with Nils Hartmann and his team. Now at script stage, “Blocco 181” is expected to start shooting in 2021.
“Blocco 181” will be set in the multi-ethnic communities on the outskirts of Milan, and will revolve around themes of love, generational conflicts, female emancipation and, above all, power struggles.
“With this series I would like to keep the bar high and go beyond, even while telling life in the suburbs, showing them for what they are, something that has always fascinated me, a multi-layered world that lacks nothing: chaos, vitality, power, weaknesses, conflicts, passion,” said Salmo.
“All this generates wealth and energy, which are also the elements that will take this story beyond,” said Salo, whose sold-out “Playlist Tour 2019″ saw him perform to over 220,000 people in Italy. Salmo is the first Italian artist to have eight songs enter Spotify’s Global Chart.
His latest album “Playlist” has also been a hit. The artist has been praised for introducing elements of electronics and hardcore rap into his music.
“Salmo has a unique ability to fuse different languages, genres, textures and culture in his music, a skill that makes this collaboration with Sky so exciting,” said Nicola Maccanico, the executive VP of programming for Sky Italia.
“‘Blocco 181’ will invite viewers to look at modern-day Milan through new eyes and re-examine what it means to live in a globalized world where extremes co-exist,” said Maccanico, who added that the project has “an extremely topical, interesting and complex theme.”
Hartmann, who runs original production at Sky Italia, said this partnership with Salmo underscores “Sky Studios’ ambition to create fresh, thought-provoking and bold television with the most exciting new voices from across Europe and beyond.”
Hartmann also referred to Sky Italia’s recent announcement of its first in-house series project written and directed by Italian siblings Fabio and Damiano D’Innocenzo, who won the Silver Bear in Berlin with “Bad Tales” at last year’s festival.
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