HBO Max launches today in Italy, with several Italian originals coming soon. Chief among them is Marco Bellocchio’s limited series Portobello, which reimagines one of the country’s most tumultuous travesties of justice.
The HBO Max streaming service is also launching today, January 13, in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein.
“Portobello,” for which Variety has exclusive access to the trailer, tells the true story of Enzo Tortola, a popular Italian television host who, among other shows, directed the prime-time game show of the same title, which aired for seven seasons on Italian national broadcaster RAI starting in 1977. The six-episode series vividly depicts Tortola’s rise from A-list TV star to being wrongly convicted of colluding with state powers in 1985. Neapolitan criminal organization known as the Camorra.
Tortola will be played by Verrocchio’s frequent collaborator Fabrizio Gifuni, who played former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro in Verrocchio’s previous limited TV series, Exterior Nights, about the 1978 kidnapping and assassination of a national leader by Red Brigade terrorists.
Portobello, which premiered to rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival last September and toured Toronto and Busan, will become the first HBO original Italian production to be released on Italy’s HBO Max streaming platform on February 20th.
The series is co-produced by Our Films and Kavab Films, both owned by Media One.
Arte France in collaboration with RAI Fiction and Fremantle company The Apartment Pictures.
Produced by Lorenzo Mieri and Mario Gianni for Our Films and Simone Gattoni for Kavac Film.
Bellocchio’s series will be available on HBO Max worldwide in the coming months, including the US, UK, Latin America and Europe, excluding France and Germany.
Other outstanding HBO Max Italian originals in the pipeline include “In Utero,” a series set in a Barcelona fertility clinic; The series stars Sergio Castellitto (“Conclave”), is directed by Maria Sole Tognazzi (“Petra”), and is produced by ITV-owned Cattleya in association with Paramount Television International Studios. The lineup also includes the previously announced docuseries Gina Lollobrigida: Diva Contessa, which exposed the battle over the legacy of a film icon, and Saman, which tells the story of a young Pakistani woman who was murdered by her family in northern Italy for refusing an arranged marriage.
Watch the trailer for “Portobello” here.
