Angela Jain makes Disney+ spending commitment

Disney+ is poised to significantly increase its EMEA content spend, according to content chief Angela Jain.  

“We’re going to invest. There’s already evidence that we’re ramping up anyway,” Jain told delegates during her keynote conversation at Series Mania today – her first public address since she was took up the role in September. “Otherwise, I’d be sitting her making false promises.” 

Besides her wider EMEA remit, Jain also promised Disney+ would be “ramping up UK commissioning”, with announcements expected in the coming months. Her pledge comes off the back of  Stellify Media and Rare TV exploring the life of reclusive popstar Duffy in a feature doc commissioned by Jain and Sean Doyle, vice-president of unscripted, EMEA. 

The order was among a swathe of pan-EMEA commissions announced during her keynote, with Spanish documentary Abandoned, Italian original drama Murder on Lake Garda (w/t) and Turkish comedy The Strange Story of Gustav Maier rounding out the slate. 

Four-part Abandoned tells the story of Elvira Moral, Ramón Moral and Ricard Moral, who aged 2, 4 and 6 were found abandoned at a city train station. They were unable to explain who they were, who their parents were, or why they were there and no one ever came forward to claim them.  

They were adopted by two educators from Barcelona, who raised them with care and provided stability. But forty years later, they now want to discover who their parents were and why they were abandoned. The series is produced in collaboration with Luminol Media, with executive producers Carles Porta, Pablo Fernández Masó and Laura Rubirola Sala. 

Six-episode whodunnit Murder on Lake Garda centres on the exclusive wedding of Leopoldo Vigevani, heir to one of the country’s richest and most powerful families, and influencer Eva Bianchi.  

Aspiring journalist Lara, the fiancée of the groom’s brother, is an outsider in this world of privilege, but when a body is found on the beach, everyone becomes a potential suspect.  

The Hulu original for Disney+ is produced by Fremantle label The Apartment. It is directed by Laura Bispuri and written by head writer Alessandro Fabbri, Ilaria Macchia, Gianluca Bernardini and Laura Colella. The series is based on Tom Hindle’s bestselling Sunday Times novel of the same name.  

The Strange Story of Gustav Maier, from MGX and written by Giray Altınok, is billed by Disney as a “hilarious love story between a 350-year-old virgin vampire and a perfectly normal woman”. The eight-episode original comedy is directed by Umut Aral. 

Jain said the “overarching [thread] in all territories is we’re trying to broaden what we’re doing”. But she stressed that Disney+ didn’t want to be a commissioner that solely outlines exactly what each territory wants or needs. 

“Sometimes there’s an element of surprise that’s required,” she said. “I don’t want to set out a shopping list, necessarily, which means that people won’t pitch us the shows we didn’t know we were looking for.” 

Within that, however, Jain said there were plans to grow its unscripted offering across the region to “rebalance” the scripted skew Disney+ has shown in its commissioning in recent years. 

“We’re going to increase the amount of scripted we’re doing, but over-increase or buy a bigger percentage of unscripted, because we’re starting from a lower base,” she added. 

“In success, you can potentially commission unscripted in volume, it returns and can return quicker.”  

She said Disney+ orders will be “country-dependent”, but talked up the prospect of unscripted formats from the Netherlands and “unscripted thrillers” – Disney+’s umbrella term for anthological one-off documentaries, as well as observational documentaries and reality in the UK.