Bavaria builds Das Boot with Sky

The 1981 Das Boot movie

European satcaster Sky and Germany’s Bavaria Film are developing a €25m (US$28m) TV series that will act as a sequel to the classic 1981 war movie Das Boot.

The show is being based on the novels Das Boot and Die Festung by Lothar-Günther Buchheim and will rejoin the crew of a submarine in the Second World War, picking up from events that happened at the end of the movie.

The 8×60′ show will be set in 1942 and will focus mainly on the German point of view as submarine warfare became increasingly brutal.

Tony Saint (Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley, The Interceptor) and Johannes W Betz (The Tunnel, The Spiegel Affair) are head writers, while Oliver Vogel and Moritz Polter are attached as exec producers.

Christian Franckenstein

Marcus Ammon and Frank Jastfelder will oversee production for Sky, with the series slated to air across all five of the firm’s territories (Germany, Austria, UK, Ireland and Italy) in 2018.

Christian Franckenstein, CEO of Bavaria Film, said: “The 1981 film Das Boot is unique, and we are approaching our work with the greatest of respect for this masterpiece. We want to build on the strong brand of Das Boot and continue telling the story in a contemporary manner by making use of every filmmaking and storytelling technique available to us today.”

Carsten Schmidt, CEO at Sky in Germany, added that the show is one of a number of projects in the pipeline from the company in the territory.