New eOne-Palomar Series to Explore Life of Muammar Gaddafi

Entertainment One (eOne) and Palomar have teamed up for the new series Gaddafi, based on the life and times of Muammar Gaddafi and the lingering effects on the world today.

Gaddafi is being developed by Roberto Saviano (Gomorrah) and created and written by Saviano and Nadav Schirman (The Green Prince). The story will center on a man with an endless desire for power who wanted a worldwide revolution. Gaddafi was an enigmatic leader and tyrant who came from the desert and tried to conquer the world. He believed in his vision for Libya but ended up being killed by his own people.

Worldwide rights for the series will be controlled by eOne.

“This is a TV series about a warrior, a dreamer, who becomes a savage and merciless tyrant; a multi-millionaire oil tycoon and a vicious oppressor,” said Saviano. “It’s the story of an adventurer from the desert, a rock ‘n’ roll tyrant, who self-ascribed terrorist attacks he didn’t organize and associations with terrorist groups that he did not know in order to have the monopoly on one of his most important assets: fear.”

“As international co-productions continue to be a very important part of our global content strategy, we are thrilled to partner with Palomar, who share our passion for creating bold dramas,” noted Pancho Mansfield, the president of global scripted programming at eOne Television.

Carrie Stein, the executive VP of global production at eOne Television, stated: “We are delighted to have Roberto and Nadav on board this impressive project. Roberto’s commitment to research and his ability to weave the details of Gaddafi’s rise and fall into a tapestry of captivating storytelling will make for great television.”

Carlo Degli Esposti, the president of Palomar, remarked: “We are starting a new terrific endeavor and we are very proud of doing it with eOne. We will tell an untold, visionary, tragic story of madness.”

“We share with Saviano and Nadav the enthusiasm in creating a great story for television that digs in our recent past that will help us understand our present and future,” added Nicola Serra, partner and managing director of Palomar.

Serra told TV Drama‘s Anna Carugati that the project really started with Saviano. “We have been working with him for a year developing stories. In autumn, we will shoot a feature film based on his book La Paranza dei Bambini and that is the first step of our collaboration. Then we decided together to develop specific subjects for TV series. One year ago he told us about his idea of telling the story of Gaddafi. We were fascinated. This was at the same time we started our collaboration with eOne. So the two things combined perfectly. We started to talk with eOne about this idea. Because this is a very interesting subject but also very complicated, we decided with Roberto to take a long time in terms of preparation, scouting and research, which is the way he always approaches these kinds of projects. We kept eOne informed and proposed that they share with us this path because for both of us the writing phase is crucial. We thought that if we are going to manage this type of project we need to share every decision from the beginning. That’s how it started.”

Polly Williams, the head of scripted drama in the U.K. for eOne, told Carugati, “We recognized Palomar as fantastic producers, active for a long time in Italian drama. The Italian market is at a very interesting point right now with a lot of interesting projects. Nicola has a very entrepreneurial and forward-thinking vision for his projects that really aligned with the way that we see shows, wanting to create big shows with big appeal, but using really fantastic talent. Saviano is someone that I respect hugely. He’s brilliant and very well known and is a really exportable talent. And the subject matter that he chose and the fact that he wants to shoot this in English makes this a project we feel we can find an international audience for. It’s that combination of taking something very Italian in lots of ways but with huge international appeal and helping to build that up into an international project. It’s really exciting. As a collaboration, it’s something that is quite different for eOne, a bit of a game-changer. It’s really, really interesting.”