Exclusive: DreamWorks remaking Spanish cancer drama for ABC

US network ABC is adapting Spanish cancer drama The Red Band Society after striking a deal with TV3 Catalunya and local producer and distributor Filmax.

DreamWorks TV will produce the series in the US with Friends’ co-creator Marta Kauffman.

The series, which is 13x45mins, originally aired last year on public broadcaster TV3 Catalunya.

“We closed a deal memo on Saturday with ABC who are going to buy the format,” said Victor Carrera, head of international relations, TV3 Catalunya.

The Spanish series follows a group of children who have cancer and live together in a hospital.

The producers say that the series was written and shot so as to make the children and not the doctors the focus of the medical drama and that the story is intended to be life-affirming rather than upsetting or downbeat.

“The children have to share hospital space but they are still children behaving as children. The challenge was talking about death in a positive way,” Jordi Roure i Oriol, head of drama, TV3, told TBIvision.

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