Matthew Gross has been named the new President of EuropaCorp Television, U.S., the American TV arm of Luc Besson‘s French film studio EuropaCorp.
Gross, who has had an exclusive television deal with ABC Studios since 2003 and has produced such series as Body Of Proof, Dirty Sexy Money and Day Break, will be in charge of developing and producing series under the EuropaCorp label targeting the U.S. market. He will be working alongside French EuropaCorp Television heads Edouard de Vesinne and Thomas Anargyros.
“This is a dream come true for me,” said Gross. “I’m a huge Luc Besson fan, and now I have the privilege of working with him and everyone at EuropaCorp to further expose their highly regarded brand.”
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EuropaCorp’s move into U.S. television comes after the Paris-based group secured a $450 million capital boost to bankroll a new slate of English-language features, which will be distributed through RED, the company’s joint venture with Ryan Kavanaugh‘s Relativity Media.
STORY: Cannes: EuropaCorp Gets $450 Million Funding for English-Language Movie Push
EuropaCorp Television is already a prime-time player in Europe and has several series in the pipeline, including Taxi Brooklyn, a New York-based English-language small screen spinoff of the hit French Taxi action-film franchise, which NBC has picked up; and the original French-language action adventure series No Limit. Both series are backed by French network TF1.
Already a giant on the independent film scene, EuropaCorp’s push into international TV follows the lead of fellow French giants Gaumount (producers of NBC’s Hannibal and Hemlock Grove on Netflix) and StudioCanal, whose international series include procedural Crossing Lines, now in its second season, and the upcoming series Sex, Lies and Handwriting. Both series are produced by StudioCanal’s German subsidiary Tandem Communications.
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