Dark, 1899 creators Odar, Friese renew overall deal with Netflix, adapt comic book

Netflix’s German original sci-fi drama series Dark

Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, co-creators of Netflix dramas Dark and 1899, have renewed their overall deal with the streaming giant.

The deal comes five years after Netflix inked a multi-year overall series deal with the German creatives. At the time, it was the first overall series deal Netflix had signed with any European-based creators.

The pair are currently developing an adaptation of Something is Killing the Children, a comic book series created by James Tynion IV and Werther Dell’Edera and published by Boom! Studios. LA-headquartered Boom! is also under a first-look deal with Netflix.

News of the extension of Odar and Friese’s deal comes around seven weeks after it was confirmed that their multilingual supernatural mystery series 1899 was being cancelled after one season on Netflix. The show followed a group of Europeans travelling from Southampton, England to New York to start new lives.

Meanwhile, German-language drama Dark marked one of the breakout successes of Netflix’s early forays into non-English European drama. The sci-fi thriller, which at the time was Netflix’s first German original series, ran for three seasons from 2017 to 2020.

In the time since, Netflix has significantly ramped up its German commissioning output, with the streamer pledging to invest around €500m (US$570m) in local German content between 2021 and 2023.