Israeli series headed for int’l remakes
Anumber of Israeli series have been sold for international remakes lately, while others are in the pipeline
Keren Margalit’s series Yellow Peppers, about a family in the Negev with an autistic son, will be remade by Netherlands-based public broadcaster EO on its NPO1 network. This remake of the show, which was also remade as The A Word on the BBC, will be produced by the Dutch company Fiction Valley. The original Israeli show was produced by July-August Productions for Keshet Broadcasting.
Another Keshet series, Stockholm, will be remade in Germany by German broadcaster RTL for its streaming platform TVNOW and TV channel Vox. The black comedy, about a man whose death one day before he wins a Nobel Prize is hidden by his friends, is also being adapted for a US version. The German version is being produced by Keshet Tresor Fiction (KTF), the German scripted division launched by Keshet International in 2018.
Omri Givon made the hit series When Heroes Fly, which has been popular all over the world on Netflix, and his latest series, The Grave (in Hebrew, When the Earth Shook), will have its international premiere at CANNESERIES, the Cannes International Series Festival, in France at the end of the month. The Grave, which stars Tsahi Halevy, is about a mystery surrounding a grave that is revealed after an earthquake strikes Israel.
At the recently concluded Berlin Film Festival, audiences were raving about The Attaché, two episodes of which were shown in a television section. Created by and starring Eli Ben-David, the series, loosely based on the director’s own story, tells the story of an Israeli musician who relocates to Paris when his wife gets a job there. They are greeted by terrorist attacks, and their dream of a romantic year abroad soon turns into a nightmare.
Closer to home, residents of the Kerem HaTeimanim neighborhood in Tel Aviv were taken aback over the last few weeks by disruptions caused by Hit and Run, the new Netflix series by Fauda creators Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, that is filming in their neighborhood.
Jaded Manhattanites may be used to trailers full of movie crews pulling up and taking over their neighborhoods, but in Israel, it’s a relatively new phenomenon. Locals found themselves unable to park or even walk near their home. In February, Raz attended a community meeting where he pledged that the film crew would do all it could to minimize disruptions during the filming, which was expected to take two months.
The description of the plot on the Internet Movie Database is, “A man’s life is turned upside down when his wife is killed in a mysterious hit and run accident.” There is great secrecy surrounding the script, but apparently Raz plays the man and he is helped in his search, which leads to New York, by an old girlfriend played by Sanaa Latham. The series is shooting all over Tel Aviv and features dozens of Israeli actors.