News round-up: ‘Wild Republic’ starts shooting; Podcaster Cadence 13 develops sports TV series; Painless strikes paranormal deal with Rob Saffi

Wild Republic

Shooting begins on MagentaTV’s Wild Republic

Principal photography has begun on MagentaTV drama Wild Republic at Germany’s MMC Studios and in Cologne.

The drama adventure series tells the story of a group of juvenile offenders who take refuge in the high Alps, forming a new society according to their own laws.

Wild Republic will premiere on Deutsche Telekom-owned streaming platform MagentaTV at the end of 2020. One year later, the series will air on public channels ARTE and ARD.

Global distribution is handled by Beta Film.

Directed by Marcus Goller and Lennart Ruff, the eight-part series stars Verena Altenberger, Franz Hartwig and Ulrich Tukur.

The series is produced by Lailaps Pictures GmbH, X Films Creative Pool and Handwritten Pictures in co-production with Deutsche Telekom, ARTE, WDR, SWR and ONE.

It is backed by Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, FFF Bayern, German Motion Picture Fund and IDM South Tyrole.

The scripts were penned by Arne Nolting, Jan Martin Scharf and Klaus Wolfertstetter in collaboration with MagentaTV and the public television partners.

Cadence 13 launches sports doc podcast franchise, TV series in development

Podcast firm Cadence13 is launching a sports documentary podcast franchise that will explore in-depth sports stories, with Season One focused on the Houston Astros 2017 World Series-winning baseball season sign-stealing scandal.

Season One will be hosted and written by Ben Reiter, the journalist and author who predicted the Astros 2017 World Series victory in a June 2014 SI cover story, and author of Astroball: The New Way to Win it All. Season One will be produced by Leon Neyfakh and Andrew Parsons, co-creators of the podcasts Slow Burn and Fiasco.

Chris Corcoran, chief content officer of Cadence13 and Steven Fisher, partner at Underground Entertainment, will serve as executive producers.

A TV series based on the podcast is also in development by New York based TV production company Left/Right, a Red Arrow Studios company, along with Reiter, Leon Neyfakh’s Prologue Projects, and Fisher’s Underground Entertainment.

Throughout the podcast series, Reiter will explore the sign-stealing scandal that rocked the sports world this year when MLB unveiled the findings of its investigation, revealing that the Astros 2017 World Series winning season that led to their victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers was tainted by cheating.

Painless strikes paranormal deal with Rob Saffi

Painless Productions has struck an overall deal with producer, director and showrunner Rob Saffi for paranormal and mystery programming.

Saffi served as showrunner for the company’s Travel Channel series The Holzer Files, and will now collaborate with Painless on two new unannounced projects for Travel.

Under the deal, Saffi will showrun, develop, and produce unscripted series with a focus on paranormal and mystery programming.

Saffi will be based at Painless’ East Coast office and work closely with the West Coast team including Jim Casey, chief executive officer, Nicole Reed, vice president of development, and Ross Kaiman, vice president of creative.

Saffi’s showrunner credits include Paranormal Lockdown (Destination America/TLC), My Horror Story (Travel Channel) and The Holzer Files (Travel Channel).

Painless delivered over 100 hours of programming across networks such as Travel, ID, Discovery, NatGeo in 2019, including Out There with Jack Randall (NatGeo WILD, Disney+) and Strangers Among Us (ID).