23/04/2018 - Netflix announces plans for 55 new non-American productions, including European projects such as the TV series Money Heist, The Wave, Luna Nera and Antonio Morabito’s new film

Rimetti a noi i nostri debiti by Antonio Morabito isdue to be the very first original Italian film to be released on Netflix. The film will be available to stream from 4 May and is not due to be released in cinemas. The CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, made the announcement in Rome while presenting the streaming company's new season to the European press. On the cards are 55 new productions from Europe, the Middle East and Africa, which will raise investments outside the United States and exceed US content for the first time. The new season will widen its content beyond Anglo-Saxon productions and will open up the floor to a variety of projects, while adjusting itself more to individual cultures. Netflix now boasts 125 million subscribers (7.4 million new users between January and March) and has a turnover of $3.7 billion. "We are working with other European partners," stated Hastings, "so that customers can watch Netflix shows in just one package. The most exciting thing is that we are sharing content." 

In terms of new releases in Italy, Netflix has announced the production of a film by Morabito starring Claudio Santamaria and Marco Giallini, which tells the story of a debt collector and debtor who turns from victim into culprit. Also on the cards for Netflix’s new season is Luna Nera [+see also:
series review
series profile], an original series produced by Fandango, which tells the story of a group of women accused of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Italy and the original series Baby directed by Andrea De Sica and Anna Negri, inspired by real-life events and the world of child prostitution in the Parioli district of Rome. Netflix has also announced that shooting is due to commence on the second season of Suburra - Blood on Rome, the docu-series First Team: Juventus, and the adaptation of Winx Club into a live action show.

Germany will be welcoming the production of The Wave, a TV series inspired by the famous film of 2008 The Wave [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Dennis Gansel, which is due to be set ten years after the film. Netflix will also be releasing a French fantasy series called Mortel, which tells the story of a group of teenagers who are brought together by an evil force. In the United Kingdom, Netflix has announced the release of a new series called The English Game, about the invention of football, and Turn Up Charlie, a comedy in which Idris Elba is forced to become a baby sitter. Continuing on the theme of the supernatural is the hotly-anticipated British series The Innocents, starring Guy Pearce, while also in the pipeline is the fifth season of Black Mirror, which is currently in production, and with which we can apparently "expect new ideas and new genres, which will continue to be bravely addressed," as Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, the series’ creators, have stated. The third series of Money Heist has also been announced for 2019, produced directly by Netflix in Spain and the most viewed non-English series on the platform. 

Finally, in terms of documentaries, Netflix has announced the release of a three-part French series called 13 Novembre: Fluctuat Nec Mergitur, directed by the brothers Jules and Gédéon Naudet, which tells the story of various individuals caught up in the terrorist attack in Paris in 2015, available on Netflix from June 1, as well as The Staircase, directed by the Oscar winner Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, which tells the story of the novelist Michael Petersen who was accused of killing his wife, and a still untitled docu-series about one of the biggest crime stories in French history – the murder of Grégory Villemin.

(Translated from Italian)