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Viaplay Results: Focus On Core Ops Working Slowly

Viaplay’s focus on doing what it does best willed out in its latest quarterly results, with total turnover down slightly but turnover in core operations increasing by a similar margin. Since the exit of former CEO Anders Jensen amidst financial turmoil last year, the Scandi outfit has been focused on making far less original content and supercharging sports rights. Today, Q2 turnover was shown to have declined a smidgeon to SEK4.49B ($424M), while core turnover rose by a similar amount to SEK4.29B. In further signs of green shoots a year on from Jensen’s departure, operating income, while still in the red, was only minus SEK70M, compared to minus SEK273M in Q2 2023. Jensen’s replacement as CEO, Jørgen Madsen Lindemann, said “our focused focused work to retransform Viaplay Group is progressing, with substantial changes being made across the business,...

Exclusive: Luke Carroll (The Artful Dodger), Debra Lawrance (Please Like Me) and David Roberts (Please Like Me) are among the new stars of Australian drama Scrublands, which is gearing up for its second season on Stan and 9 Network.

Also starring alongside returning leads Luke Arnold and Bella Heathcote in Scrublands: Silver are Tasma Walton (The Twelve), Luke Pegler (Hacksaw Ridge), Caroline Brazier (Year Of), Joel Jackson (Peter Allen: Not the Boy Next Door), Toby Truslove (La Brea), Sarah Roberts (Home and Away), Hamish Michael (The Twelve), Radek Jonak (The Surfer) and Damian De Montemas (Hounds of Love).

Above you can see an exclusive first-look image of season 2, with filming now underway in Augusta, Western Australia.

The season is being adapted from author Chris Hammer’s novel ‘Silver’, and here are some new plot details: A year after the life changing events of season 1, investigative journalist Martin Scarsden (Arnold...

A new romance from Easy Tiger spanning Australia and India, along with some star power for previously announced crime drama 'Swift Street', led the scripted announcements for Sbs as it unveiled its "biggest ever content line-up" for 2024 today.

The post Easy Tiger romance ‘Four Years’ added to Sbs’s 2024 scripted slate alongside ‘Swift Street’ appeared first on If Magazine.

Toufik Ayadi and Christophe Barral’s Srab Films has a slate of social justice titles.

Toufik Ayadi and Christophe Barral’s Paris-based Srab Films, which is heading to Toronto next month with Ladj Ly’s Les Indésirables, has unveiled a slew of projects including the next features from Ly and Alice Diop, whose Saint Omer the company produced last year.

Ly is in the writing stages of the third of what will be a trilogy of titles set against the same backdrop of his native Montfermeil neighbourhood following Les Misérables (also produced by Srab) and Les Indésirables.

“After Les Misérables,...

Netflix has announced four new productions as it ramps up its Australia originals slate, including movie Love Is In The Air, starring Delta Goodrem as a seaplane pilot falling for the man sent to sink her business.

Shot with 8K Vista Vision in Queensland’s picturesque Whitsundays islands, the film is directed by Adrian Powers and co-produced with Jaggi Entertainment. Joshua Sasse, Steph Tisdell and Roy Billing also star in the film, which will premiere on Netflix on September 28.

The new slate also includes two series – Desert King (working title), billed as an ‘Outback Western’ and co-produced with Easy Tiger and Ronde, and crime mystery The Survivors, co-produced with Tony Ayres Productions.

Created by Tim Lee and Ben Davies, Desert King is an epic succession story revolving around billionaire miners, traditional landowners, cowboys and desert gangsters fighting over a cattle station the size of Wales. Greg McLean is directing with...

Lila Rawlings, head of creative: film and TV at “Roma” filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron’s U.K.-based outfit Esperanto Filmoj, is joining British independent production company Motive Pictures as an executive producer.

Rawlings’ remit at Motive will encompass both TV and film projects as the company scales its team in the wake of its first wave of productions, including the Ruth Wilson drama “The Woman in the Wall” for BBC and Showtime.

At Esperanto, Rawlings oversaw a slate of projects with Sarah Solemani, Jack Thorne and Charlize Theron and served as executive producer on “The Shepherd,” one in a series of films financed by Disney, directed by Iain Softley and starring John Travolta. Previously, Rawlings was executive producer at Left Bank Pictures where she was responsible for several projects, including “Sitting in Limbo,” a BAFTA- winning drama for BBC One and “Electric Dreams” for Amazon, Sony TV and Channel 4.