Keshet International will be presenting the series to buyers at Mipcom in October.
Keshet International (KI) has invited submissions for the third year of its Greenlight: Factual & Formats commissioning initiative. This announcement follows a series of new partnerships with producers who participated in its second Producer Pitch event.
KI has already commissioned two major projects for distribution: Catch Me If You Can by Woodcut Media and Hitler’s Treasure Hunters by Perpetual Entertainment. The company is now advancing with Too Good To Be True, a dating format by The Connected Set, entering a three-phase development deal. This series, featuring AI-generated deepfake suitors, challenges participants to identify real-life human love matches.
Additionally, KI has signed four new shopping agreements. Woodcut Media will return with two true crime docuseries, Hotel Horrors and Captive Calls. Yeti Television’s Secret Royal Homes, Flicker Productions’ Million Dollar Alien Hunters and Hello Mary’s Subterranean Secrets are also set for potential development.
Kelly Wright, MD of Distribution, KI, said: “We are so pleased to invite submissions for our 2024 Producer Pitch event by announcing this next wave of Greenlight: Factual & Formats’ partnerships – including our first option, a development deal, and a round of shopping agreements. The quality of projects pitched at our Producer Pitch last November generated a great deal of interest from the nearly 50 buyers who took part, but these six shows from The Connected Set, Woodcut Media, Yeti Television, Flicker Productions and Hello Mary really stood out from the crowd. We can’t wait to introduce them to buyers at MIPCOM 2024.”
Anke Stoll, SVP of Acquisitions and Co-productions, KI, added: “For our third Producer Pitch event, we are looking for a wider variety of factual genres and entertainment formats than last year, when we had more than 200 projects submitted. We are being a little more specific with our entry requirements this year, and also asking producers to complete a submission form for each project that can be found on our website. Our aim is to create our strongest line-up of pitches for buyers to choose from at our Producer Pitch event in London on Monday 2 December.”
For its 2024 submissions, KI is expanding the scope to include specialist factual content, alongside premium factual, true crime, reality and social experiment formats.
The Greenlight initiative, launched in September 2023, aims to greenlight up to three English-language projects annually for distribution, either fully funded by KI or co-funded with broadcast or streaming partners. In 2023, over 200 ideas were submitted, with 30 shortlisted projects pitched by 15 producers to an international audience at KI’s Producer Pitch 2023 event.
These new partnerships complement two others signed this year, including a co-development deal with SandStone Global for two ancient history documentaries and a collaboration with Ritual Arts and Orlando Bloom’s production company Amazing Owl for the premium factual docuseries Earthbound, narrated by Bloom. KI has also formed a non-scripted formats alliance with the Satisfaction Group.
Meanwhile, KI is broadening the scope of the genres it is looking for submissions for its 2024 intake of KI’s Greenlight: Factual & Formats to include specialist factual alongside premium factual and true crime content; and reality and social experiments formats alongside entertainment ones.
Officially launched in September 2023 with the announcement of its first commission, KI’s objective with its Greenlight: Factual & Formats’ commissioning initiative is to greenlight up to three English-language projects a year for distribution – either fully funded by KI or co-funded in partnership with at least one broadcast or streaming partner.
