In today’s Global Bulletin, Amazon Prime Video and IMDb TV announce new casting for Season 2 of “Alex Rider,” investment is approved for Bottle Yard Studios in the U.K., the BIFAs announce Tom Felton will host this year’s online ceremony, NENT Studios UK sells three formats in Vietnam and Cruchnyroll picks up “Tsukimichi – Moonlit Fantasy” for streaming outside of Asia.
CASTING
Eleventh Hour Films has announced expanded casting for Season 2 of its popular Amazon Prime Video and IMDb TV series “Alex Rider.”
Adapted from Anthony Horowitz’s popular YA series, “Alex Rider” tracks a teenager in London who has been clandestinely trained as a spy since childhood. Season 2 will adapt “Eagle Strike,” the fourth book from the popular series.
“Die Another Day” and “Lost in Space” actor Toby Stephens joins the cast as tech billionaire Damian Cray, while Rakie Ayola (“Noughts and Crosses”) will play CIA deputy director Jo Byrne and newcomer Charithra Chandran steps in as a recent Oxford grad thrown into the mix.
Horowitz will once again serve as executive producer with Jill Green, Eve Gutierrez and writer Guy Burt. Sony Pictures Television will distribute internationally.
STUDIOS
Bristol’s Bottle Yard Studios has announced that its £11.8 million ($16.19 million) expansion to add three new sound stages is on track following an investment from the West of England Combined Authority (WECA). WECA, after approving a business case outline, released £135,000 ($185,215) for development and £11.73 million ($16.09 million) for purchase and construction costs.
The expansion includes converting an industrial property in South Bristol’s Hawkfield Business Park into three new sound stages, bringing the total number to 11, and ancillary spaces for production offices, prop storage, costume and makeup areas and break out spaces. Improvements will also be made where needed to the eight existing sound stages.
AWARDS
The British Independent Film Awards have announced that stage and screen actor Tom Felton (“Harry Potter”), star of Netflix’s upcoming Dutch war epic “The Forgotten Battle,” will host Feb. 18’s award ceremony live from Whales, where he is currently filming Sky Cinema’s “Save the Cinema.”
Felton will be joined by friends and guests from Britain and abroad to present this year’s winners to an online audience after the awards were forced to go virtual. The ceremony will be produced by Annie Hughes and Jack Clark and executive produced by Catherine Bray of Little Dot Studios.
Nominations were announced in December with the first nine BIFA craft awards announced last week.
FORMAT
NENT Studios U.K. has partnered with Vietnamese producer Dong Tay Promotion to bring three of its popular unscripted formats to the Vietnamese marketplace with new local-language versions for broadcasters VTV and HTV.
Included in the deal are “The Generation Show,” originally created by De TV Makers for VRT in Belgium; Magnum Media’s “12 Stars,” first commissioned by Channel 4 in the U.K.; and 2LE’s “Married to a Celebrity,” also originally on Channel 4.
The trio will slot right into Dong Tay Promotion’s production pipeline, which includes other popular reality formats such as “Vietnam Idol,” “So You Think You Can Dance” and “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?”
NENT Studios U.K.’s Emmanual Grinda and Dong Tay Promotions’ Vu Nguyen negotiated the deal.
ANIMATION
Multi-territory special interest streaming platform Crunchyroll has picked up international rights outside Asia to “Tsukimichi – Moonlit Fantasy,” an animated TV series that is the first show to emerge from the recently-launched animation department at Japan’s Nippon TV. Within Asia, the series will be distributed on the Aniplus network, the Ani-one platform by Medialink, and the aniplus.tv platform, shortly after broadcast by Nippon TV in Japan.
The Crunchyroll and Asian territories together mean that the series will be available in approximately 200 markets. “Tsukimichi” is a 12-part fantasy series with episodes of 30 minutes each, adapted from an award-winning novel and manga with the same title, and written by Kei Azumi. With a story about a high school student summoned to another world and challenged by the forces he finds there, “Tsukimichi” was produced for Nippon TV by C2C Studios.
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