Robots Wars spreads around the globe

Following its recent German deal with RTL2, Mentorn International's BBC2 gameshow Robot Wars is set to continue its international invasion of TV screens.

Canadian digital channel Space: The Imagination Station has picked up a whopping 132 episodes of the show (series 2-6) and is due to begin airing the gameshow from this autumn for the next three years.

In Australia, cabsat broadcaster Foxtel is to begin airing the show from this month, while the show is already on air in a Friday access primetime slot on New Zealand's terrestrial Prime TV.

Channel E in Korea has taken a further 47 episodes of the show, following a previous acquisition of 20 episodes from series 3.

Denmark's TV2 has recently picked up series 4 (23×45') of the UK version, while Holland's public channel BNN has followed its previous 20-episode pick-up with a format deal to produce a series of six Dutch Robot Wars episodes.

Six episodes of series 1 were recently taken by Norway's TV2, with an Italian reversion of previous episodes due to feature in the autumn launch line-up of the new Italian entertainment channel La 7.

The US channel TNN has also produced six US-versioned episodes for transmission this December.

The Television Corporation-owned distributor has previously forged Robot Wars deals with VTM Kanaal 2 (Belgium), TG4 (Ireland), Italia 1, Wizja (Poland), TV4 (Sweden), RTL (Germany) TVC Channel 5 (Singapore); and Much TV (Taiwan). In the UK, secondary licence deals have been inked with BBC Choice and UK Horizons.

The production division behind the show, Mentorn Barraclough Carey, is currently producing a further 64 episodes of the show destined for BBC1 and BBC2.