Factual & Scripted Sales for ORF-Enterprise

VIENNA: Austria’s ORF-Enterprise wrapped up MIPCOM last week with a slew of factual sales, including pickups for titles from its Universum strand.

Among those documentaries was Vanishing Kings: Lions of the Namib, which was acquired by National Geographic Channels International, Canada’s Explora and Sweden’s SVT. The latter also went for Africa’s Wild West, which was additionally bought by Iceland’s RÚV. Explora nabbed several factual titles from the strand as well, including Wild Venice, Return of the Hoopoe, The Wild Balkans and The Dolomites: In the Heroes’ Garden. Finland’s Yle also picked up The Dolomites: In the Heroes’ Garden.

Italy’s Rai 1 will soon air Triumph of the Tomato, along with the documentary The Voynich Code. Al Jazeera (MENA) picked several hours of documentaries, among them the historical docudrama Gonsalvus: The Real Beauty and the Beast, as well as titles from ORF’s current affairs lineup.

Meanwhile, Interfaces: Our Digital Life was sold to RDI in Canada and AB Droits in France, completing their package with the historical documentaries First on Mount Everest and Prisoners of War. France’s Ushuaia secured the broadcast of four episodes of John Murray’s Last Nomads.

On the scripted side, Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp TV Studios USA picked up the format rights for ORF’s mystery series Janus. A pilot script has been ordered by U.S. network ABC. Additionally, a TV-film package was sold to CAT Co. featuring the movies Father’s Day, His Mother & Me, Small Fish and How to Steal a Kiss. MVS in Mexico acquired the twin pack movie The Christmas Dog and 2 Christmas Dogs, while Romance TV in Denmark picked the complete romantic series White Beauty.

As for musical highlights, Brazil’s Globosat acquired director Robert Dornhelm’s staging of the open-air opera event Aida.