Benefiting from word-of-mouth, Borgia has consistantly built viewership during its run. Repped by Jan Mojto's Munich-based Beta Film, Borgia has sold in nearly 40 countries and Netflix recently acquired U.S. and Canadian rights. It will bow the show via its online service later this month. The real test for Fontana’s Borgia, however, will come with its debut next Monday in primetime on German free-TV network ZDF. While Netflix has already committed to a second series of the show, Borgia’s fate depends on a greenlight from its European broadcast partners. Borgia is a co-production between France’s Atlantique Productions and Germany’s EOS Entertainment in cooperation with Canal +, ZDF and Austrian network ORF. EOS sister company Beta Film is handling international sales and has closed deals for the series with some 40 countries worldwide.
The show's $35 million budget consolidates a new benchmark for high-end European series set by a trio of previously announced productions. They are BSkyB's $27 million "Sinbad," being produced by BBC Worldwide and Impossible Pictures; plus "Versailles" and "Pharaoh," which cost $30 million-$35 million per season. The latter two are co-financed, like Borgia, by Gallic paybox giant Canal Plus. Also ground-breaking, Borgia melds the know-how of U.S. showrunner Fontana ("Oz," "The Philanthropist") with European production and finance. "In Europe we don't as yet have showrunners of this level of talent," says Canal Plus COO Rodolphe Belmer. "But we have good directors, subjects and stories and a robust production industry, which knows how to work at cost-efficient levels."
Fontana, a second-generation Italian-American, passionately researched the subject before writing episodes one and 12 plus the stories for other segments working with writers on individual scripts. Germany's Hirschbiegel directed the first four episodes; France's Philippe Haim ("Secrets of State") shepherded episodes five to eight. "The Borgia family's reputation is evil through and through," Fontana says. "Historically, that's not accurate." He says the Borgias were partly victims of a smear campaign by Alexander VI's successor, Pope Julius II, to ensure no Borgia became pope again.
So the Renaissance-set show centers on the infamous clan and its cunning, yet also the charisma of patriarch Rodrigo, as he rises to power in the Vatican and becomes Pope Alexander VI. It was the age of Da Vinci and Michelangelo, of enlightened creativity and unparalleled intellectual achievement. But it was also the age of Macliievelli, of rampant lawlessness, incessant war and unspeakable depravity. At the heart of the world order was the Vatican, the arbiter of conflicts between kingdoms and empires. And at the center of the Vatican was a man whose quest for power would propel him to seek the ultimate prize, the holy see of Rome. He was a man whose name would become synonymous with ruthlessness, and whose reign as pope would be remembered as the most infamous chapter of the history of the Catholic church. His children -Juan, the oldest, a prideful, lazy, unscrupulous sexual predator, Cesare, a young man torn between a faith that was not his calling and his dark violent nature, Lucretia, a young girl discovering the secret power that a women's sexuality holds.
The first season centers on Rodrigo's rise to pope. He "strives very hard to change the way business in done in Rome but finds that corruption is so embedded in the day-to-day workings of government that it's virtually impossible to make a huge difference," Fontana says. "The circumstances President Obama finds himself in today are not very different." The second season will focus on Cesare and the third largely on Lucrezia. "These are incredible characters in a period when everything was opening up and an old world was finishing," Mojto adds. "It's very much about today."
Borgia toplines The Wire's John Doman, with support from Brit actor Mark Ryder as son Cesare, Isolda Dychauk as daughter Lucrezia, Stanley Weber as Juan Borgia, Christian McKay as Cardinal Sforza, Diarmuid Noyes as Alessandro Farnese, Assumpta Serna as Vannozza Catanei, Marta Gastini as Giulia Farnese, Andrea Sawatzki as Adriana De Mila and Benjamin Gur as Petronio. Art Malik and Udo Kier also feature. Showtime's The Borgias, developed at the same time as Fontana's show, covers much of the same sordid ground (incest, papal deception, etc.). That show is helmed by Neil Jordan and stars Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia. It bowed in April and has already been renewed for a second season after it grabbed 1.06 million viewers on its U.S. debut earlier this year.
Television Series: Borgia (S01E01- 1492)
Release Date: July 2011
Actress: Isolda Dychauk, Marta Gastini & Elisa Mouliaá
Video Clip Credit: DeepAtSea
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