The Reeperbahn series team
Having produced the first Netflix non-fiction original out of Germany (A Perfect Crime, 2020), gebrueder beetz filmproduction is producing the high-end true-crime Reeperbahn Series (working title), for leading German public broadcaster ARD. Christian Beetz, Georg Tschurtschenthaler and Florian Fettweis, the core team behind A Perfect Crime, will produce the series.
Shooting commenced June 2021 on the 5-parter that concerns the “tumultuous history of Hamburg’s red-light-district in the 1980s.” Directors are Georg Tschurtschenthaler (showrunner), Carsten Gutschmidt and Ina Kessebohm. Ina Kessebohm, Georg Tschurtschenthaler, Florian Fettweis and Christian Beetz take writing credits.
The plotline reads how, in 1980s Hamburg, the Golden Age of the city’s red-light-district is coming to an end. HIV hampers the sex business, cocaine becomes the new revenue stream and further incites the fights between rival gangs…
The doc series will merge interviews and previously unpublished archive material ‘to create compelling programming that revives the times when gun shots rattled Hamburg and hitman Werner “Mucki” Pinzner spread fear across the city and beyond,’ the company writes in a statement.
What’s more, the project marks the first time that the German Motion Picture Fund, launched in 2015 to advance high-budget production in and from Germany, lends it support to a non-fiction project, making this series the first documentary project co-financed by the German Picture Motion Fund and Moving Images North Film Fund. Studio Hamburg Enterprises Ltd will handle international sales (except North America rights). The series is commissioned by the ARD Network, with NDR channel taking the lead.
Christian Beetz (above, third from the right), producer and head of gebrueder beetz filmproduktion, comments: “After having produced the Netflix Original A Perfect Crime we decided to realize our next high- end documentary series together with the German public TV network ARD in Hamburg. The ARD Network’s increasingly popular online platform is perfectly suited for us to also reach younger audiences. Moving Images North Film Fund has supported us in this project from the very beginning, enabling us to maintain international distribution rights and participate in the success of this series.”
Tania Reichert-Facilides, Head of Studio Hamburg Enterprises Ltd., states: “Our aim is to be a strong partner for producers. We are thrilled to join this superb project by gebrueder beetz as co-producer. We are specifically excited that this collaboration puts an innovative spin on our existing cooperation with the NDR channel, part of the ARD Network.”
Release is planned for late 2022 on the ARD Network online platform.
