Benito Mussolini Drama Set for Sky

Sky has commissioned M. Son of the Century, based on Antonio Scurati’s best-selling novel that chronicles the birth of fascism in Italy and Benito Mussolini’s rise to power.

The eight-part series will cover the founding of Fasci Italiani in 1919 through to Mussolini’s infamous speech in parliament following the murder of socialist Giacomo Matteotti in 1925. It will also delve into Mussolini’s personal relationships, including with his wife, his lover and other iconic figures of the time.

The Sky Studios series is produced by Lorenzo Mieli for The Apartment Pictures, a Fremantle company, in association with Pathé. It is written by Stefano Bises (Gomorrah–The Series, The New Pope, ZeroZeroZero, Speravo de morì prima) in collaboration with Davide Serino (1992, 1993, Il Re, Esterno Notte). Filming is set to begin in 2023, with the series planned to debut on Sky and NOW in all Sky markets across Europe.

“Antonio Scurati’s book is an unprecedented work in Italian literature in terms of boldness, originality and accuracy,” said Nils Hartmann, executive VP of Sky Studios Deutschland and Italia. “Producing a TV series based on this work is an opportunity we could not pass up. With the partnership and creativity of The Apartment team, we are diving right into the thrilling material of this story, to bring Sky customers a truly unique original series on the rise and fall of a man and the historical legacy that our country, and the world, have yet to come to terms with.”

Mieli, CEO of The Apartment Pictures, added, “Making this series today has great value. In recent years, we have witnessed the birth of new forms of populism, sovereignty and authoritarianism. Traces of the man who made the March on Rome a hundred years ago can be found in many figures of the times in which we live. Even more so now that Europe has once again become a theater of war. M recounts the perverse mechanisms of empathy and violence, of manipulation and modernity that swept Italy a century ago, and shortly afterward, the world. It is an extraordinarily contemporary tale but also a journey into the boundless ambitions, seductive capacities, relationships and fears of a man who made a large part of the Italian people fall in love with him and then dragged them into an abyss. In which, in the end, he himself found death.”

Scurati said, “M depicts—for the first time from the inside—the rise of the fascist dictatorship and the sinister power of the dictator Benito Mussolini. A theme of tragic relevance. I am happy that a series will extend the literary project. We need stories that awaken the passion for freedom. The struggle between democracy and dictatorship is not over.”