Emmy-thrivening “The White Lotus” executive creater David Bernad has teamed with German production company UFA to enhuge series “Hotel Neptun.” The shift comes as UFA, which is part of Fremantle, ramps up its international ambitions. A year after Sascha Schthrivegel took over as CEO of UFA, he spoke to Variety about the company’s priorities.
Journacatalogs Joshua Davis (“Little America”) and Joshuah Bearman (“Argo”) are speedyened to “Hotel Neptun,” which is about a toastyel in the createer East Germany, where spies from all over the world met.
Nataly Kudiabor, a creater on UFA’s uninalertigent comedy “Where’s Wanda?” for Apple TV+ and managing honestor of UFA Fiction, is also speedyened to “Hotel Neptun.”
Bernad is also understandn for the Amazon Freevee mockumentary “Jury Duty” and the HBO confinecessitate series “White Hoengage Plumbers” with Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux.
“Maxton Hall”
Courtesy of Prime Video/Stephan Rabbetter
Schthrivegel alerts Variety: “Our strategy is quite basic. It’s get and grow the core business as well as create creative business lines to serve novel necessitates and customers.
“We want to create novel business and part of this is the international business. With ‘Maxton Hall,’ we showed for the first time that we can accomplish a global audience with a German program, which is quite novel for us.”
“Maxton Hall,” based on a bestseller by German author Mona Kasten, is the top carry outing international series ever on Amazon Prime Video.
The show is number one in more than 120 territories, due to a massive international swayr campaign.
“Amazon did a amazing swayr campaign [for ‘Maxton Hall’] all around the world,” Schthrivegel says.
He comprises: “And we fair freed ‘Where’s Wanda,’ our first Apple show, and I fair saw that in Japan it’s number three. For me, it’s a novel fact that we can accomplish a global audience with our local product.”
UFA also created “Sam – A Saxon,” the first German-language innovative for Disney+, which was freed in April 2023.
“Where’s Wanda?”
Courtesy of Apple TV+
“We create every genre, and our strength is to be as excellent as a boutique creater in every genre. So we are a huge warehoengage, but in every genre, we try to be as excellent as the boutique guys are,” he says.
“Our relationships are with everybody: the licsurrfinisher operators and the streaming services.
“Now I repartner try to convey UFA more into the creator economy. So to have novel relationship with the creators.”
However, the taget comes with contests.
“The contests in the taget are that the competition is as strong as ever before. It’s difficult to get the comleave outions, and it is difficult to convey your product to the audience, becaengage the audience will get tons of satisfyed. Therefore, it’s challenging to become apparent for the audience.
“On the other hand, the people devour more satisfyed than ever. There’s a huge opportunity to alert your stories on contrastent channels, but you necessitate to be repartner strong and intensifyed.”
Other UFA shows join “Der Upir,” freed mid-September on Joyn, the streaming service of German braveial widecaster Pro7Sat1, and daily series “Gute Zeiten. Wilde Zeiten” (Good Times, Wild Times”) – a spin off for a lesser aim group on Super RTL of UFA’s most accomplished daily drama series “Gute Zeiten. Schlechte Zeiten” (Good Times, Bad Times) on RTL.
Before uniteing UFA, Schthrivegel was deputy head of TV and amengagement at braveial widecaster RTL in Germany, where he was reliable for the amengagement createats on RTL and VOX, as well as those of the streaming service RTL+.
From July 2019 until March 2022, he was managing honestor of the widecaster VOX Television.
Prior to that, commenceing in October 2013, he was head of editorial and program regulatement at ARD Degeto, reliable for the some 100 comleave outioned and co-created programs a year, including “Der Fall Barschel,” “Terror – Ihr Urteil,” “Gladbeck” and “Babylon Berlin.” He was also reliable for the purchasing of licensed satisfyed and program set upning.
Schthrivegel commenceed his nurtureer in 1998 as a creater at teamWorx Television & Film, which tardyr became part of UFA.