Cinemax begins Fatale shooting

HBO-owned Cinemax’s film noir series Femme Fatales is being turned into a television movie and could become a feature film franchise.

Season two of Femme Fatales (13×30′) is due to air on the premium US cable network in May. However, co-creators and exec producers Mark A Altman (Castle) and Steve Kriozere (NCIS) are set to begin shooting a feature-length spin-off this spring.

Speaking to C21, Altman said: “The plan is to start with a TV movie and hopefully the brand can move into features.”

Femme Fatales is a half-hour anthology series based on the magazine of the same name. Each episode tells a different story inspired by film noir, with a woman as the central character.

Altman said: “We’ve done a lot of other TV shows. I used to own the magazine with [exec producer] Mark Gottweld and was meeting HBO and I said something about wanting to do an anthology film noir show. We sold it in 10 minutes. We were in production a couple of months later. We’ve done two seasons. We were renewed before they even aired the show. That was a remarkable vote of confidence for us.”

Outside the US, Femme Fatales has been picked up by Sinema TV in Turkey, HBO Latin America, Sky Italia, Muz TV in Russia, TVN Turbo Channel in Poland, Movie Central/Movie Network in Canada and Orion TV in South Korea.

Altman and Kriozere are also developing a television series based on Elvis Van Helsing, a recently published graphic novel about a “modern day Buffy [the Vampire Slayer] with a slacker who discovers he’s the sole survivor of the Van Helsing family.”