Swiss Studios Plots Streamer Assault With Debut Slate Including Oil Town Drama ‘Black Gold’ & ‘Swiss Samurai’ Limited Series
EXCLUSIVE: The recently-launched Swiss Studios is readying a slate of streamer-friendly originals, including a drama series set in a German oil town and limited series about a Swiss samurai.
Launched last month as a collective of five European production companies, Swiss Studios is seeking to take advantage of Switzerland’s ‘Lex Netflix’ legislation, which instructs global streamers such as Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ to reinvest 4% of their local income in Swiss film and television productions, or pay a tax.
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Swiss Studios CEO Malte Probst told Deadline that streamers have been willing to pay the 4% “as along as the content is of they quality they need.” He estimates the tax will bring in around 20M Swiss francs ($22.4M) directly, but with associated costs could add as much as 40M Swiss francs each year. “It’s a sizeable amount,” he added.
Deadline can reveal Swiss Studios — which comprises Elite Filmproduktion, Praesens-Film Production, Contrast Series, Bavaria Fiction and Kinescope Film — has as many as 55 projects in development, with a plan to move forwards with around 12 selected via committee. These will be pitched to streamers.
Among those in development are Black Gold, which Swiss Studios/Kinescope Film is creating as a co-production with FilmNation and NDR.
The six-part multi-season drama, from Justin Koch and Matthias Greving, tells the story of when the discovery of oil in a small town in Northern Germany in the late 19th century. This led the hardworking village population being torn between progress, environmental destruction and survival.
Probst told Deadline the series has a budget of around €20M ($21.1M) and was being pitched as a “Yellowstone meets Germany.” We hear top American and international talent are attached.
Swiss Samurai is Swiss Studios/Elite Filmproduction limited series about Switzerland’s Andy Hug, the first ever non-Asian to win the K1 kickboxing championship. A huge star in his home country and Japan, Hug died under suspicious circumstances in 2000.
The show is being produced in close collaboration with Hug’s family, and Swiss Studios is eyeing an Japanese partner, said Probst.
Valerie Lehmann, another Swiss Studios and Elite Filmproduction project, is being readied as a multi-season high-end crime thriller series based on Swiss writer Silvia G?tschi’s crime thriller novels. Pascal Walder and Tom Kolinski have created the project, with season one running to six parts.
The books follow the titular detective, Valerie Lehmann, who is a strong, modern woman who for personal reasons must move to the remote Swiss mountainside fighting both crime and rejection by locals.
In the vein of Tiger King, Leopard is a Swiss Studios and Praesens Filmproduktion limited series, created by Cihan Inan and Benedikt Eppenberger. Set in 1970s Switzerland, it follows the rise of Hans Ulrich Lenzlinger from poor upbringings to one of the kingpins of the country’s underbelly, chased by the Stasi for trafficking East Germans into West Germany. His murder in 1979 is still unsolved.
Finally, Queen of the Eiger comes from Swiss Studios and Bavaria Fiction Switzerland in co-production with Luck Films. The docu-series focuses on Daisy Voog, who was the first woman to ever climb the Eiger north face, back in 1964 – but funding her expeditions by committing financial fraud on her employer to get it done.
‘Swiss stories with international potential’
“As you can see, we’re trying to create stories with international potential out of Switzerland,” said Probst in an exclusive interview.
Along with having first draw up the blueprint for Swiss Studios with former Sky Deutschland colleague Marcus Ammon and now acting as its CEO, Probst is also the Chief Product Officer, Fiction, at Blue Entertainment, overseeing its TV entertainment projects, original productions, transactional deals and content partnerships at the subsidiary of Swiss telco Swisscom. Before joining Blue in 2021, he spent 15 years at Sky Deutschland and its predecessor, Premiere.
His role is to work with Contrast Film chief Ivan Madeo, Bavaris Fiction Switzerland’s Ammon and Dominic Fistarol, Kinescope’s Matthias Greving, Praesens-Film Production’s Corinne Rossi, and Elite Filmproduktion’s Roger Kaufmann to decide on what projects should go forwards and be pitched.
“You can imagine it is not the simplest of tasks to put five production houses together, but if you do it with people you trust who have the same value set, it can be a very nice process,” said Probst. “We’re working with streamers and developing based on their needs through market intelligence.”
Each partner has an obligation to provide Swiss Studios with a first look at new projects, which are then considered as a committee. Should an idea be passed on, the producer can then take it out themselves.
Probst is also working on the strategy that will effectively see Swiss Studios act as a proxy for streamers in Switzerland. “There is a lot of money flowing in to the country, but none of the streamers have forces on the ground to manage it. We could do it for them,” he said.
Local tax break systems will be tapped to add finance to projects, with Greving from Kinescope an expert in tax management. “We’re trying to build a competence center in a studio fashion, but ultimately we will be judged by the quality of our output.
A further target will be the French-language market, given Switzerland’s sizeable number of native speakers, and the fact the country has a co-production agreement with French-speaking Canada.
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