Italian and Turkish dramas, Duffy doc among first Disney+ EMEA originals under Angela Jain’s regime
SERIES MANIA: Disney+ has unveiled a raft of new commissions as Angela Jain, the streamer’s recently appointed head of content for EMEA, told delegates here in Lille about plans to accelerate commissioning across the region.
Making her first major appearance since taking up the role in September, Jain said: “We are definitely ramping up local production.
“What we are doing now, we will be doing more this evening and tomorrow, and that’s absolutely our mission. That’s partly because we know there’s a huge amount of creative talent we can tap into and there’s the opportunity to grow. That’s what we want to really get behind. And it’s important for us that it’s local stories. Hopefully we can find the shows that we believe will resonate with the audience.”
On whether there was investment to back up her ambitions, she added: “We’re going to invest. Even in the short space of time I’ve been here, we’ve greenlit a huge number of shows.”
Among the scripted commissions announced on stage were Murder on Lake Garda (w/t), an Italian crime drama series based on Tom Hindle’s novel of the same name. In the quiet of Lake Garda, a private island hosts the most exclusive wedding of the year, but when a lifeless body is found on the beach, the island turns into a trap from which no one can escape, and everyone becomes a potential suspect.
The Hulu original series for Disney+ is produced by Fremantle’s The Apartment. The six-episode series is directed by Laura Bispuri and written by Alessandro Fabbri (head writer), Ilaria Macchia, Gianluca Bernardini and Laura Colella.
The Strange Story of Gustav Maier is an original series from Turkey that is described as a hilarious love story between a 350-year-old virgin vampire and a perfectly normal woman.
The comedy is produced by MGX, directed by Umut Aral and written by Giray Altınok, with a cast featuring Altınok, Özge Özpirinçci and Haluk Bilginer.
In unscripted, Disney+ has commissioned feature length doc Duffy (w/t), which follows the titular Grammy, Brit and Ivor Novello award-winning singer who became a global sensation in the late 2000s with her album Rockferry and its hit single Mercy – and then disappeared. For 10 years, Duffy vanished from the music scene, from social media, from the public eye, without a word.
Then in 2020, Duffy published a harrowing post on social media, revealing that a decade earlier, she had been drugged, before being kidnapped and taken to another country, where she was violently and sexually abused. She’s barely been seen or heard from since – until now. It is executive produced by Fernando De Jesus for Rare TV, who will produce the film in partnership with executive producer Matthew Worthy for Stellify Media
From Spain comes four-part doc series Abandoned, which features Elvira, Ramón and Ricard Moral, who aged 2, 4 and 6 were found abandoned at a city train station. They were unable to explain who they were, who their parents were or why they were there. No one ever came forward to claim them. They were adopted by two educators from Barcelona, who raised them with care and provided stability. But 40 years later, they now want to discover who their parents were and why they were abandoned.
It is produced in collaboration with Luminol Media and features executive producers Carles Porta, Pablo Fernández Masó and Laura Rubirola Sala.
Jain was announced as head of content, EMEA, in June 2025, switching to Disney from her role as director of unscripted at ITV Studios. She began her new position in September, lead Disney’s EMEA content strategy for original productions on Disney+, including commissioning, production management, business affairs and Disney+ originals-branded acquisitions.
On stage, she described her three-point commissioning strategy, which centres on audience, “bold, distinctive storytelling” that can sit alongside offerings from Disney’s Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, FX and Hulu labels, and sharing “local stories commissioned by local teams for the local audience.”
She described Italy as a “priority market,” while identifying a need for younger, female-skewing content in Spain. She also wants to “ramp up” UK commissioning with Rivals season two prepares to launch in May and comedy-drama Alice & Steve coming later this year.
