EXCLUSIVE: Artwork turns into fiction as René Magritte, Salvador Dalí and their friends give the whodunnit style a surreal makeover in This is Not A Murder Mystery. Deadline can share an unique new picture from the sequence, which is produced by Belgium-based indie Panenka.
Hans Herbots, whose directing credit embody The Serpent and Paris Has Fallen helmed all six eps. “We wished to raise the style and provides it a twist,” he tells Deadline. “This story, this universe, supplied loads of loads of alternative to do this.”
“This isn’t a pipe” is the wording beneath Magritte’s well-known 1929 image ‘The Treachery of Photos’ and That is Not A Homicide Thriller options the long-lasting Belgian artist and several other of his surrealist friends.
Actually, the sequence completely is a homicide thriller – as Series Mania attendees will see, with the drama within the Coming Subsequent From Belgium part. It was commissioned by VRT, RTL & Proximus in Belgium and made as a copro with the highly effective alliance of Euro pubcasters New8 and Deadpan Photos. Studiocanal is distributing internationally.
Set within the mid-Thirties, it follows a younger René Magritte (Pierre Gervais) after he’s invited to take part in a personal artwork exhibition at an opulent English property owned by the flamboyant Lord James, an occasion that really occurred.
Fellow visitors embody Salvador Dali (Iñaki Mur), Lee Miller (Florence Corridor), Man Ray (Frank Bourke), Max Ernst (Mike Hoffmann) and Gala Dali (Regina Bikkinina). After a wild night time, Magritte wakes up beside the physique of efficiency artist Sheila Legge (Lauren Versnick). Extra our bodies drop and Scotland Yard’s DCI Thistlethwaite (Stephen Tomkinson) and DC Quant (Donna Banya) are dispatched to analyze
“We wished to translate artwork surrealism into the visible aspect of the story,” Herbots explains. “That allowed us to make it far more enjoyable, to do issues that we in any other case may by no means do. We may herald colours and go all the way in which with the artwork course and even the tone.
“We had been capable of carry up the performances a little bit, make them bigger than life, and maintain that with the music and the digital camera strikes.”
Set in England and filmed in Eire and Belgium, the present is predominantly English language. The drama was created by Christophe Dirickx and Paul Baeten and primarily based on an authentic concept by Matthias Lebeer – who additionally co-directed episodes 3 and 4. It was one of many exhibits chosen in 2022 to be pitched the Co-Professional Sequence occasion, half the Berlin Movie Competition’s TV exercise.
“It’s whodunnit for a really broad viewers, however with a twist, since you play with actual characters, and also you play with artwork from actual artists,” says producer Kristoffel Mertens. “These artists are extra common than ever as a result of it’s surrealism and that’s cool and it’s very visible and hanging. So, in the event you return to the title, This Is Not A Homicide Thriller, it’s playful. In the identical method that we play with the style, we play with the [characters of the] artists.”
This system-makers needed to get the inexperienced gentle from varied artists’ foundations to make use of their characters and have a few of their work, including to the complexity of creating the sequence.
“That was finished as parallel course of with the event of the sequence; getting all of the rounds of suggestions on the scripts,” says producer Kato Maes. “All of them cherished the pitch, however, in fact, coming from Flanders and being a small producer with such an enormous idea, we needed to dig deep to get that half finished.”
