German deal for Parthenon's cgi monsters

Year-old wildlife distributor Parthenon Entertainment has secured exclusive distribution rights to a new cgi Steve Irwin-style wildlife show and has already sold the special into Germany.

Giant Monsters sees the presenter of Animal Planet’s The Jeff Corwin Experience come face-to-face with cgi prehistoric beasts such as the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the saber-toothed tiger and the pterosaurs.

The 90-minute special, produced by UK indie Wall to Wall Television, is a coproduction with Animal Planet, Discovery Channels International and US conservation organisation, the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). It has already sold to NDR in Germany.

Meanwhile, Parthenon is expanding its catalogue by moving further into history documentaries and is working on its first in-house production, one of 25 hours in production for this year.

Stonehenge Rediscovered, to be launched at MipTV next month, uses cgi from South African company G-Vision to take viewers back to Neolithic Europe, at a time when the hunter-gatherer tradition was making way for a new way of life. The special has been pre-sold to National Geographic and NDR Germany.

Parthenon md Carl Hall said: {We always knew we wanted to be involved in history, and that we’d need to enter production to get the quality and style of programmes that the international audiences want to watch.{

Stonehenge Rediscovered is due to wrap in May in time for the Summer Solstice.