Sky Studios, Amusement Park, CBS Studios light thriller Munich Match

Sky Studios, Hamburg- and Berlin-based Amusement Park Film and CBS Studios in the US have partnered on a six-part thriller set 50 years after the terrorist attack on the Israeli Olympic team at Munich in 1972.

Julia Jaensch

Munich Match (working title) starts filming in Germany later this month and will premiere as a Sky Original across all Sky territories including the UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. A premiere date has not yet been announced.

The political thriller was created by Israeli author Michal Aviram (Fauda), who wrote all six scripts alongside Martin Behnke (Berlin Alexanderplatz), with Philipp Kadelbach (Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, Parfum) directing.

The story unfolds in 2022, on the anniversary of the massacre, as Munich hosts a ‘friendly’ soccer match between a German and Israeli team. But with tensions running high and the world watching, things begin to unravel and fears arise that history could repeat itself.

The massacre took place during the Munich summer Olympics in 1972 when eight members of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September took several Israeli Olympic team members hostage. Eleven athletes were murdered when police tried to free them.

Serving alongside Aviram and Kadelbach as executive producers are Daniel Brühl, Amelie von Kienlin and Malte Grunert for Amusement Park Film, Frank Jastfelder and Julia Jaensch for Sky Studios and Meghan Lyvers from CBS Studios. Behnke is co-executive producer.

In a statement, Amusement Park Film’s executive producer Amelie von Kienlin said: “We are fans of political thrillers, a genre with enormous potential that we feel has been neglected in German programming so far.”

The television drama is supported by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, German Motion Picture Fund and the Czech Film Fund. ViacomCBS Global Distribution Group is handling international distribution outside of German-speaking territories, the UK and Italy.

Julia Jaensch, exec producer at Sky Studios Deutschland, said: “Munich Match is a remarkably authentic thriller series with a threatening conspiracy so close to reality that it truly holds up a frightening mirror to our society.”