Ex-NDF chief Eric Welbers launches Bravado Media, buys into European outfits

The Swarm

Former NDF chief Eric Welbers has launched a new production business that has taken stakes in several European companies.

Eric Welbers

Bravado Media, which is based out of Munich, has acquired all of NDF’s shares in Italy’s Viola Film, headed by Alessandro Passadore, and Jan Theys’s Belgium-based Bravado Fiction.

The deal gives Bravado 80% stakes in both firms, while Welbers – most recently MD at NDF – is increasing his stake in NDF International Productions, which he will continue to run together with Matthias Walter.

Bravado is making its first market appearance at MIPCOM next week and is attached to projects including ZDF’s The Swarm, which is from NDF International Production.

Welbers is also coproducing The Man Who Died, based on the Finnish author Antti Tuomainen’s novel, for Finnish streamer Elissa Vide and has an adaptation of Andreas Eschbach’s novel Lord of All Things in development. The line-up also includes On The Ropes, which explores lawyers working on organised crime cases taking place in the Belgian port city of Antwerp.

Welbers described his new company as “a contemporary, modern content house: internationally positioned, open-formatted, story-driven, content-oriented.”