Big Bones bags Berlinale Copro victory

BERLINALE: Austrian period crime drama Big Bones, based on the novel by David Schalko, has been named the winner of the Berlinale Copro Series 2019.

David Schalko
(photo: Superfilm Wien)

The series, presented to delegates here in Berlin alongside nine other pitches, has now been invited to join the line-up of the Series Mania Copro Pitching Sessions at the event next month in Lille, France, as part of a partnership between the two festivals.

The prospective eight-part series is described as a “gritty, big-budget crime show” set in post-war Vienna. The story follows four small-time crooks whose experience in a Nazi concentration camp turns them into major criminals.

With Schalko serving as showrunner, it is being coproduced by Austria’s Satel Film and Superfilm. Heinrich Ambrosch (Satel Film) and Superfilm’s John Lueftner are producing.

Earlier at Berlinale it was announced that Germany’s Beta Film would handle worldwide sales of the programme.

Ambrose and Lueftner both took to the stage this morning at Berlin’s Zoo Palast to present the series, which is currently in development and is scheduled to begin shooting in March 2020.

Broadcast and studio partners are now being sought for the German-language drama, which will command a budget of €16m (US$18m).

Schalko is also the writer and director of Beta Film’s M: A City Hunts a Murderer, based on Fritz Lang’s 1931 film, which will have its world premiere here in Berlin tonight.

Previous series to have been pitched in Berlin include German period drama Babylon Berlin, Norway’s Valkyrien, Danish series Warrior and Austrian drama Freud.