Hat Trick Sends Episodes & Whose Line Worldwide

LONDON: Hat Trick International has presold the final season of the Matt LeBlanc-fronted comedy series Episodes into 112 countries and landed a format deal for the unscripted show Whose Line is it Anyway?

Hat Trick International inked presales for the fifth and final season of Episodes ahead of its December 2016 delivery. The 7×30-minute new season from Hat Trick and Crane Klarik Productions is currently being produced. Season five is headed to Africa (BBC Worldwide), Asia (Fox), Australia (ABC and Stan), Benelux (Fox), CEE (HBO), Israel (Yes), New Zealand (Sky), Norway (SBS Discovery), Portugal (Fox) and Spain (Canal+). The series will return to Showtime in the U.S. and BBC Two in the U.K. Episodes is written by David Crane (Friends) and Jeffrey Klarik (Mad About You).

In addition, Foxtel in Australia picked up format rights for Whose Line is it Anyway?, with The Comedy Channel commissioning a ten-part series. Whose Line is it Anyway? is executive produced by Kevin Whyte of Guesswork Television and Craig Campbell of +61 TV. The local version is scheduled to launch later this month.

Whose Line is it Anyway? has been adapted in Holland, Israel, Vietnam, Belgium, Finland, Poland, Russia, Spain and Sweden. It also airs in the U.S. on The CW.

Sarah Tong, the director of sales at Hat Trick International, commented, “By focusing on themes with global appeal in our finished content and offering formats easily adaptable to local tastes, topics and humor, we’ve been able to build a strong and successful comedy portfolio which consistently proves very popular with our international clients.”

New comedy content from Hat Trick International includes a special of the hit comedy drama Outnumbered and the new half-hour sitcom format Power Monkeys.