Matchbox Pictures sells The Straits across Europe
An Australian production company has sold the rights to one of its series across Eastern and Western Europe.
Matchbox Pictures struck the deal with AMC/Sundance Channel Global which will see the Tropical gangster story aired across Eastern Europe, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, France, Benelux as well as selected territories in Asia.
Helen Panckhurst, producer at Matchbox Pictures said: “We’re delighted to be receiving significant international interest in The Straits and that the ABC has given us the opportunity to develop such distinctive contemporary Australian drama series.”
The deal was struck through NBCU International, who bought into Matchbox Pictures last year.
Also purchased in the deal was for Matchbox Pictures‘ other stand out series The Slap to air in Benelux on the Sundance Channel, which is in addition to previously secured rights for Eastern Europe, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey and Asia.
Locally, The Straits struggled to secure the audience for ABC1 that last year’s The Slap did. The Slap was often the ABC’s number one show on a Thursday night. The Straits, aired at the same time slot averaged around 550,000.
Earlier this week Matchbox Pictures announced Rachel Griffiths and Anthony LaPaglia would star in the telemovie Underground about Julian Assange’s youth as a computer hacker.
Will there be a second series?
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So glad to see this wonderful series doing well. It’s great to see Top End Australia portrayed in a new way. Great performances from all involved
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Entertaining series in all, a series with a completely new take on life for a family of drug runners. Some excellent acting, some ordinary acting, some over acting. I feel this series tried to do too much. If the storyline had been worked on until it was considerable more fine tuned & believable, it would have been so much better.
In a few episodes, it bordered on being a comedy. In fact in most it had this laughable context, which is a shame as it could have been sharp, more connected in story line, backed by better et at other times it was too much story for an event. After yet another death, it became a series on just ‘how many ways to take somebody out’ there are. They used every way possible-quite novel too, but having everything at their disposal within minutes/hours-again-ridiculous! Didn’t like Brian Cox as Harry at all-poorly cast, & having 4 adopted kids in these roles was a poor choice. Yes-it gets over the ‘look alike’ idea, but really-it was ridiculous again. Was this an attempt to involve indigenous actors? If so-they did really well.But didn’t ‘fit’ their characters. But again, too many deficits in the storyline, too far fetched and the series always looked like the kids had grown up completely out of contact with the Montebello family ways until suddenly-at 20+, they were all new chums learning the trade! Gary’s character was very poorly thought out.
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