News round-up: UniMás acquires Globo’s ‘Orphans’ for US debut; Viasat & Beyond strike factual deal; ‘Angela Black’ lands pre-sale partners

Orphans Of A Nation

UniMás acquires Globo’s ‘Orphans’ for US debut

Univision-owned Spanish-language free-TV channel UniMás has picked up Lat Am-based Globo’s telenovela Orphans Of A Nation for it US debut.

The series, which launched on UniMás yesterday (26 July), was acquired as part of a strategic agreement signed between Globo and Univision, which also recently aired the telenovela Sweet Diva.

Written by Thelma Guedes and Duca Rachid, Orphans Of A Nation tells the story of two Syrian refugees have to leave their native land and depart for Brazil to rebuild their lives. But, in order to live this love, they need to triumph over a lot of barriers.

Heavy Rescue: 401

Viasat & Beyond strike factual deal

Viasat World has acquired 72-hour factual content package for channels across CEE, Nordics and Russia & CIS, following a deal with distributor Beyond Rights.

Viasat Explore will bolsters its ‘Mates at Work’ strand with the returning third seasons of both Bangers & Cash and Massive Engineering Mistakes, as well as season 2-4 of Heavy Rescue: 401.

Meanwhile, Viasat History has taken three-part series Countdown To War, which looks at the build-up to World War II specifically through the eyes of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Viasat Nature has also picked up Aussie Snake Wranglers, which follows an Australian snake catching team and will debut alongside the channel’s recently acquired Australian-themed zoo programming.

Viasat World has secured exclusive pay-TV and catch-up rights on all titles, in addition to some SVOD exclusives and FTV holdback periods as part of the deal.

Angela Black

‘Angela Black’ lands pre-sale partners

Amazon Prime Video and HBO are among those to sign pre-sale deals with All3Media International for Two Brothers Pictures’ upcoming British psychological thriller Angela Black.

The series has been acquired by Amazon Prime Video for the Nordic territories (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden), with RTL picking up German speaking rights and HBO Europe taking Spain, Portugal and CEE territories.

Further TV and digital pre-sales have been signed in Europe with BeTV (French-speaking Belgium and Luxembourg), RTL (Netherlands), Nova TV (Greece, Cyprus), NPO (Netherlands), VRT (Belgium) and TV+ (Turkey, Cyprus).

Orange has meanwhile acquired the premiere of the six-part thriller in France, as has Stan in Australia and TVNZ in New Zealand. BBC Studio Asia has also picked up for the series for BBC First, while Pumpkin Film has secured digital rights in China, and CBC has taken the show for Canada.

Angela Black stars Joanne Froggatt as a suburban housewife whose seemingly perfect life isn’t all it appears to be. The drama also stars actor Michiel Huisman and Samuel Adewunmi.

Harry and Jack Williams are executive producers on the series alongside Christopher Aird and Sarah Hammond. The drama is directed by Craig Viveiros and is produced in association with All3Media International.