Scripted round-up: HBO orders music drama ‘The Idol’; Viaplay visits Swedish border for ‘Fenris’

The Idol

HBO orders music drama The Idol

HBO has greenlit music industry drama The Idol, with Atlanta’s Amy Seimetz set to direct the show.

The series has been co-created by Sam Levinson (Euphoria), Abel Tesfaye and Reza Fahim.

It will be filmed in LA and centers on a self-help guru and leader of a modern-day cult, who develops a complicated relationship with an up-and-coming pop idol.

Levinson, Tesfaye and Fahim exec produce alongside Joe Epstein, Seimetz, A24 and Aaron Gilbert from US-based BRON.

Francesca Orsi, EVP of HBO programming, said the “subversive, revelatory take on the cult of the music industry” would be unlike “anything HBO had ever done before.”

Viaplay visit Swedish border for Fenris

Nordic streamer Viaplay has ordered a drama about mysterious disappearances in a remote, wolf-inhabited forest on the Swedish border.

Fenris has been created and directed by Simen Alsvik (Ragnarok) and will premiere exclusively on Viaplay in 2022.

When a young boy from a small Norwegian town vanishes, rumours that wolves are responsible immediately swirl. A visiting biologist then discovers the boy’s bloody jacket in the home of her father, a controversial wolf researcher. He then goes missing too, sparking an investigation into the disappearances.

Alsvik, Maren Skolem and Nikolaj Scherfig are attached as writers, with Sveinung Golimo and Tanya Nanette Badendyck among executive producers for Nordisk Film Production and Viaplay respectively.