Netflix and Mediaset have announced an agreement to work together to make “a series of Italian-language films, in Italy, using independent Italian producers”. It covers five ready-defined projects and two which are still in the study phase. The movies are scheduled to drop on the online streaming platform in 2020, before being broadcast on Mediaset’s generalist TV networks 12 months later. A cinema release window for several of the titles is likewise a possibility. “We want to offer a huge variety of films and series. Our total investment amounts to 200 million euros devoted to Italian content over the course of two years, and these films made with Mediaset are all part of this effort. We’re not against the idea of these works being screened in cinemas either”, declared Reed Hastings, Netflix In Italy CEO and founder. The on-demand colossus now boasts over two million subscribers in the country and has announced the opening of a registered office in Italy in the hope of resolving tax-related issues (the public prosecutor’s office in Milan has opened an inquiry into Netflix).

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The first five films set to be made and distributed as part of the Netflix-Mediaset partnership will offer brand new stories touching upon various themes and genres. Under the Riccione Sun [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], directed by Younuts! (Niccolò Celaia & Antonio Usbergo) and produced by Lucky Red, sees a group of teenagers holidaying on the crowded beaches of Riccione, grappling with relationship worries, love stories and dates. In Rocco Ricciardulli’s The Last Paradiso [+lire aussi :
critique
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fiche film], starring Riccardo Scamarcio but also produced by the actor in league with Lebowski, a man in rural Italy fights for better working conditions in the 1950s, but things become complicated when he falls in love with a land owner’s daughter. Caught By a Wave [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], meanwhile, produced by Cinemaundici and directed by Massimiliano Camaiti, tells a summertime tale which unfurls under the glare of the Sicilian sun and which soon turns into a painful love story. Il Divin Codino by Letizia Lamartire, a film produced by Fabula, is a blow-by-blow account of football star Roberto Baggio’s 22-year career, while Al di là del risultato, directed by Francesco Lettieri and produced by Indigo Film, is the story of an intergenerational friendship, set in the world of football fans during the last five weeks of a football tournament.

“Netflix is constantly on the look-out for new talent and is free from any preconceptions”, Indido producer Nicola Giuliano underlined. “Twenty years ago, Mediaset funded Paolo Sorrentino’s One Man Up [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], a film featuring actors who weren’t famous at the time, but who now are: Toni Servillo and Andrea Renzi. We must constantly strive to unearth and invest in new talent”.

Mediaset CEO Pier Silvio Berlusconi added that “in the near future, thanks to the scale of our European project MFE MediaForEurope, we will be looking to increase the number of agreements such as this one, which is excellent news for the entire film and production industry in Italy. The combination of Mediaset’s resources and Netflix’ sheer strength might lead to new investments and new opportunities for the sector".