Fremantle partners with ‘Chernobyl’ director Johan Renck on new prodco

Chernobyl

Fremantle has partnered with The Last Panthers and Chernobyl director Johan Renck and producer Michael Parets on a new production company that already has an LA-based drama in the works.

Renck and Parents’ prodco, Sinestra, has signed a two-year first-look deal for TV with Fremantle and unveiled details of Mouth To Mouth, a drama based on the novel of the same name by Antoine Wilson that revolves around the raucous LA art scene of the 1990s.

The show, along with all of Sinestra’s upcoming TV projects, will be co-owned, co-developed and co-produced with Fremantle, which leads on physical production, raising production finance and international sales.

Renck has been behind hits including Chernobyl for HBO and Sky, as well as The Last Panthers, produced for Sky and Canal+. He has also worked on Vikings, Bloodline, Shut Eye, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, and is in pre-production on the pilot for Dune: The Sisterhood for HBO Max.

Parets, meanwhile, most recently worked at Free Association running the film and TV unit where he developed and produced Spaceman for Netflix. Before that he worked for FilmNation.

Renck and Parets said Fremantle “knows how to push artists and their audiences out of their comfort zones and into the invigorating creative space where true risk is rewarded. We can’t wait to see what kind of trouble we get into with them.”

The deal was brokered by Fremantle’s Christian Vesper, president of global drama, Seb Shorr, EVP of commercial & business affairs for scripted, and Renck’s team at Casarotto Ramsey & Assocs, CAA, Black Bear Pictures and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern.