Italian thriller 1992 to get international Sky release
David Farnor | On 07, Feb 2015
Sky’s Italian thriller 1992 premieres at the the Berlin Film Festival on Monday 9th February before it launches on the small screen.
The 10-episode show is based on an idea of the Italian actor Stefano Accorsi (The Last Kiss), who also stars along with Guido Caprino, Domenico Diele, Miriam Leone, Tea Falco and Alessandro Roja (Romanzo Criminale). The show is produced by Sky Italia, who also brought us the mafia-drama series Gomorrah, which was the channel’s highest rating series ever.
The show will follow in the footsteps of Fortitude by launching simultaneously across all five Sky markets this year, with Sky Arts broadcasting the programme in the UK and Ireland and Sky Atlantic screening it in Germany and Austria.
Gary Davey, Managing Director, Content at Sky, comments: “We are excited to add another outstanding TV Series from our partners Sky Italia and Beta Film to our growing portfolio of series on Sky Atlantic HD in Germany and Austria, and Sky Arts in the UK and Ireland. 1992 offers a thrilling story set in the Italian politics of the early Nineties and is a fine example of outstanding story-telling.”
Fortitude premiered on Sky Atlantic on Thursday 29th January with over 700,000 viewers, the best viewing figure for a UK originated drama on the channel – an audience size that is only beaten on Sky Atlantic by Game of Thrones and almost outperformed the 9pm slots on BBC Two and Channel 4. The Barb data does not take into account on-demand viewing that occurred from Friday onwards, with both Sky On Demand and NOW offering viewers a way to catch up after broadcast.
In its most recent quarterly results, Sky revealed that its connected TV platform has broken its own previous record, in the UK and Ireland, with almost 2 billion download and streaming requests made by its customers during 2014 – 60 requests per second. That’s an increase of nearly 50 per cent on the number of downloads and streams in 2013, reflecting the continued trend of people watching TV when and where it suits them.
The simultaneous international broadcast of 1992 marks Sky’s growing push to boost the profile of its original content, as the company enjoys strong growth: 204,000 new customers joined Sky in the last three months, the highest number in nine years.
Sky Arts will also be launching two brand new Scandinavian series in 2015: Sweden’s 30 Degrees in February, which airs later this month, and Norwegian comedy Dag. Denmark’s critically-acclaimed The Legacy will also return with a second series on the channel later this year.