Adi Hasak Unveils Karantina Drama Series

Adi Hasak (Shades of Blue, Eyewitness) and Adi TV Studios have unveiled the new family crime drama Karantina, an international production based on the ZDF format Tempel.

The eight-part series was optioned by Hasak and Dynamic Television’s Dan March, who originally developed it as an American show before MBC offered to remake the series in Arabic. Among the series’ stars are James Franco, Yaqoub Al Farhan and Reham Alkassar.

With a cast also including Yasmina El Abd, Cynthia Khalifeh, Nicolas Mouawad and Earl Cave, the series wrapped production in May after shooting in Athens and Beirut.

Karantina tells the story of Dahab, a fighter for a Beirut-based American crime boss. Upon his release from jail, he promises his paraplegic wife and teen daughter that he will never return to a world of crime and takes a job as an elder caregiver. When his daughter’s violin is smashed the evening before her audition for a music conservatory by a gang who wants to evict the family, Dahab steps back into the crime world so he can afford a new violin for his daughter.

Hasak is the series showrunner, while Christine Crokos (Pimp) serves as co-showrunner. Hasak wrote or co-wrote all episodes with Crokos and Clare Siobhan Byrne. Directors are Goran Kapetanovic (Caliphate) and Umut Aral (Who Were We Running From?). Executive producers are Hasak and Crokos for Adi TV Studios; Fredrik Ljungberg for MBC; Marc Antoine de Halluin and Arnaud Figaret for Asacha Media Group; March and Michael Wenning for Dynamic TV; and ZDF.