EXCLUSIVE:Gilles Bannier, the director of the primary seasons of hit sequence Blue Lights and Set off Level is opening up a brand new drama indie, Alef UK. The London-based label can be a subsidiary of Alef One, Nora Melhli’s Paris-based prodco that counts Flight MH370 and doc Carlos Ghosn The Final Flight amongst its credit.
French born writer-director Bannier has been primarily based in England for a decade and can be Artistic Director of the brand new UK drama enterprise. His directing credit embody iconic dramas Spiral and Les Beaux Mecs in addition to The Tunnel, which is the place he first collaborated with Melhli, who was a producer on the Kudos drama. The duo additionally labored collectively on Tim Roth-starrer Tin Star.
Melhli labored at Endemol and Altice earlier than teaming with Jacques Arthur Essebag to create Alef One in 2018. She instructed Deadline that working with Bannier throughout Covid – and the problem-solving and inventive conversations required to maintain initiatives collectively as manufacturing shut down – led to the thought of them working collectively in a brand new capability.
“It was now not merely ‘you’re a author, and I’m a producer,’ it was extra about how can we make issues occur, as a result of it was so troublesome when every part stopped, there was an vitality between us.”
Bannier picked up the thread: “We have been sharing a really robust frequent imaginative and prescient and we thought it may discover a approach to categorical itself in London and past… and in English language drama.”
The primary Alef UK undertaking out of the gate can be a TV adaptation of Iain Levison thriller Thoughts Reader, which it has optioned. Levison has a curious again story as a Scottish American author who’s, presently, best-known in France the place his work makes bestseller lists.
Jonathan Wakeman, who penned the screenplay for Shailene Woodly film To Catch A Killer and upcoming Brian Epstein biopic Midas Man, is writing the script for Thoughts Reader. The story follows a cop and a dying row prisoner who can each learn folks’s minds. The novel is about within the U.S. however the six-part sequence is predicted to maneuver among the motion to the UK.
As a small indie, Alef UK will construction its initiatives as coproductions and usher in different companions. Bannier and Melhli stated what pursuits them is drama that speaks to the fashionable world, and that might embody know-how, immigration, or different points we face in modern society. There’s an open-minded method to how this imaginative and prescient can be realized. “We will do any story, we gained’t prohibit ourselves by topic or style – we are going to do comedy, we’ll do thrillers, we’ll do motion,” Melhli stated.
As a director, Bannier stated relocating to the UK ten years in the past confirmed him one other method of working: “After I arrived right here it was so difficult, but in addition so thrilling, the best way administrators within the UK work with producers, with commissioners,” he stated. “I needed to incorporate a brand new method of doing my job, which was not merely directing and forgetting everybody else, as a result of right here it’s such a crew effort.”
As an indie boss he has a slate of about six initiatives and is recruiting an exec to work on growth who will be part of quickly. “What’s on the core of the connection between Alef UK and the mothership, which is the Paris workplace, is my fixed dialog with Nora,” he stated. “She overviews my initiatives, however she leaves me with full independence, which is great, it provides me wings.”
