EXCLUSIVE: James Franco is starring in a Middle Eastern TV crime drama penned by Shades of Blue creator Adi Hasak. Check out a teaser below.
Alongside a cast of actors who hail from the MENA region, the Oscar-nominated 127 Hours star recently wrapped on Karantina, which is being shopped for the first time at Mipcom Cannes this week. Hasak told Deadline he hopes the “gamechanger” crime drama will “do for MENA what Fauda did for Israel and Squid Game did for Korea.”
Based on the German series Tempel, Franco plays an American laying low from the FBI in Beirut who has opened a club called the Miami Rainbow Club, a “taste of Americana,” according to Hasak.
The show’s lead is Yaqoub Al Farhan as Dahab, who is released from jail and promises his paraplegic wife and teenage daughter that he will never return to a world of crime, instead taking a job as an elderly caregiver. But when his daughter’s expensive violin is smashed by a gang who wants to evict his family and have their area gentrified, Dahab’s life is sent spiralling as he attempts to gather enough money to buy a new violin. Joining Al Farhan are Reham Alkassar, Yasmina El Abd, Cynthia Khalifeh, Nicolas Mouawad and Earl Cave.
Yaqoub Al Farhan
Joining with Dan March’s Dynamic Television, Hasak said he had first pondered setting the show in Detroit and pitching it to U.S. buyers before he settled on MENA. Asacha Media Group and MBC are also attached.
“The themes are so universal when you think about gentrification and a father living at the bottom of the social ladder,” added Hasak. “So this is a family-first show, a crime show.”
Hasak said he was inspired by the work of Capernaum director Nadine Labaki, the first female Arab director to be nominated for an Oscar, and was in awe of her “Lebanese films in the style of Italian neo-realism that don’t condescend but offer a realistic, heartfelt perspective of the working poor.”
Yasmina El Abd
While some MENA movies have gained global acclaim, he is hopeful Karantina will be one of the first TV shows from the region to be a worldwide hit. “You’ve never seen it in television and I know they can do it,” he added.
James Franco
Although he has attracted controversy in recent years, Franco lends Karantina a dose of star power.
He was present for more than half of the 60-day shoot and Hasak said “everybody raised their game,” as he labeled him “one of the most talented actors I have ever had the privilege to work with.”
“At first [the other actors] were intimated working with such a big star and I just said to them ‘you guys are great’,” added From Paris with Love scribe Hasak. “James wanted to play around with his lines and he bought his A-game. Seeing him work with the MENA actors was amazing. He came in three weeks into the show and they were sailing and riding high and he just joined the party.”
The news comes with Franco only just returning to acting following a circa-four-year hiatus. He took a break late last decade after five women — four of whom were his students at an acting school he previously ran — accused him of sexually exploitative behavior. Franco has acknowledged he slept with students, apologized and settled a class-action suit. He is now also starring in the likes of Alina of Cuba as Fidel Castro and French action thriller The Price of Money: A Largo Winch Adventure.
Sense of place
Hasak was keen to set Karantina in Beirut and filming took place in Athens with second unit in Lebanon.
He called Beirut a “very progressive” place full of European tourists that has of late succumbed to tragedy following a port explosion that killed more than 200 people.
“Beirut used to be the Riviera of the Middle East so the tragedy of Beirut was very complimentary to the tragedy that these characters were feeling,” he added. “The city becomes a character.”
Karantina’s sellers will start introducing the show to buyers at Mipcom on a slow rollout that will then progress to Content London in November and next year’s Berlinale.
Hasak penned all episodes with Christine Crokos and Claire Siobhan Byrne co-writing. EPs are Hasak, March, Crokos, Fredrik Ljungberg, Marc Antoine de Halluin, Arnaud Figaret and Michael Wenning. Producers are Fenia Cossovitsa and Elias Ledakis for Blond and Joseph Saman and George Papantakos for Tanweer.
