BBCS, SBS & Sundance Now strike deals for BossaNova Development Day factual titles

Ottoman Empire By Train (Source: BossaNova Media)

UK-based distributor, content creator and financing firm BossaNova Media, has closed deals for several of the shows to come out of its Development Day pitching programme.

Sundance Now in the US, and Foxtel Group and SBS in Australia have all picked up true crime documentary series The Flight Attendant Murders (4 x 60-minutes), produced by Flicker Productions; while BBC Studios has acquired Ottoman Empire By Train (5 x 60-minutes), from Spark Media, in which Professor Alice Roberts explores a civilisation that spanned three continents.

BossaNova’s Development Day aims to fast-track the commissioning and production of factual projects with international potential. The latest event took place in Central London in the run-up to MIPCOM in Cannes. Buyers and commissioners from global channels and platforms were pitched a shortlist of 50 projects, curated from more than 200 original submissions.

Other shows to strike deals include AMS Pictures’ 1 x 60-minute documentary The Andes Tragedy: 50 Years On, which is headed to Telewizja Polsat Poland, RTBF Belgium, Movistar Spain, Foxtel Group and SBS Australia, Bell Media Canada (Canal D), TV4 Sweden and Finland, TV2 Norway and DPG Benelux.

Foxtel Group, TV4 and DPG have also acquired another Development Day-generated AMS Picture’ documentary, Siegfried And Roy: The Original Tiger Kings. The 1 x 60-minute special features exclusive interviews with friends and contemporaries of the German-American magicians, whose mix of showbiz glitz and white-tiger magic reinvented Las Vegas.

A+E Networks EMEA has also ordered a second six-part season of another series to come out of the initiative – Content Kings’ Secrets Of The Lost Liners (6 x 60 mins), which charts the triumphs and tragedies of “the 20th century’s most beguiling mode of transport.”