Zurich Avenue, headed by producers and former Zurich Film Festival execs Karl Spoerri and Viviana Vezzani, has shortly amassed a formidable slate of initiatives since launching final yr, together with Annette Bening starrer “Nyad.”
Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s movie, which chronicles the try by 64-year-old swimmer Diana Nyad to swim from Cuba to Florida, unspools on the Zurich Film Festival. Zurich Avenue co-developed the Netflix movie, which was produced by Black Bear Pictures and Mad Chance.
Part of financing group SPG3 Entertainment, likewise co-founded by Spoerri together with Urs Wietlisbach and Alfred Gantner in 2020, Zurich Avenue has offered the producers with a extra hands-on method, permitting them to create their very own slate. The firm’s latest movies embody Bill Pohlad’s critically-acclaimed “Dreamin’ Wild,” starring Casey Affleck and Zooey Deschanel; Coky Giedroyc’s Take That musical “Greatest Days”; and the forthcoming Josh Margolin action-comedy “Thelma,” starring June Squibb (“Nebraska”) as a 90-year-old grandmother out for revenge after falling sufferer to a cellphone rip-off.
Spoerrie says he and Vezzani are particularly focused on initiatives primarily based on true tales, like “Nyad,” which have “emotional and inspirational angles and are filmmaker-driven. We actually like working with nice filmmakers. That’s the principle factor. When we develop one thing, that’s the place we wish to go.”
While the corporate is focusing totally on English-language initiatives aimed toward international audiences, it’s also creating high-profile German productions, together with Robert Schwentke’s “Bad Company,” primarily based on the tell-all expose charting the 2020 collapse of the German monetary companies agency Wirecard within the wake of revelations that €1.9 billion ($2.1 billion on the time) had gone lacking. While former CEO Markus Braun has been indicted on a lot of expenses, together with fraud, information continues to emerge relating to its fugitive former COO, Jan Marsalek, who disappeared in 2020 after being fired. Rumored to be hiding out in Russia, Marsalek is alleged to have had ties to German, Austrian and Russian spies.
Schwentke has “Bad Company” largely written, however Spoerrie says extra will likely be added to the story because it’s nonetheless creating. “It’s getting up to date. We’ll most likely want one other yr for that one – it’s so fascinating what continues to be popping out. I feel we shouldn’t rush it. You don’t wish to miss all of the craziness that’s there,” he says.
Zurich Avenue can also be creating its first TV sequence, “Hansen.” The formidable present relies on the bestselling German e book sequence by Ellin Carsta a couple of 19th-century Hamburg household searching for to revive its money-losing espresso enterprise with a cacao plantation in Cameroon and a distribution operation in Vienna.
The sequence, which has playwright Nicki Bloom connected as lead author, will study a little-explored chapter of German historical past, specifically its colonial previous – Cameroon was a German colony from 1884 to 1920.
It received’t delve too deeply into a number of the darker elements of that historical past, nevertheless, Spoerrie says. “It’s historic, it’s enjoyable, it’s horny but it surely’s additionally a undertaking with relevance” that may cope with these points however in an entertaining method, Spoerrie notes.
Zurich Avenue’s has two different initiatives presently halted as a result of Hollywood strikes; they embody Sigal Avin’s psychological thriller “A Perfect Marriage,” produced with Patrick Wachsberger and Ashley Stern of Picture Perfect Federation, and “So Happy for You,” primarily based on Celia Laskey’s bestselling novel which the author can also be adapting for the display.
“We simply began engaged on [“A Perfect Marriage”] after which we needed to cease.” Spoerrie is optimistic following information of the WGA’s tentative cope with the studios, nevertheless.
