Matthias Schweighoefer’s Pantaflix, the company behind Amazon’s hit German series “You Are Wanted,” is partnering with Roland Emmerich’s Centropolis Entertainment and Berlin-based Flimmer on a modern-day screen adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.”
The co-production deal was closed during the Berlin Film Festival, where the first offers for world rights to the English-language project have reached the producers. Development, casting, and location scouting for the music-driven family film is underway. with production scheduled to begin later this year.
The story follows 15-year-old orphan Tim Walker, who is sent from London to the Austrian Alps to attend the renowned Mozart boarding school, where he discovers a centuries-old forgotten passageway into the fantastic world of Mozart’s most famous opera.
The creative team behind the project includes German writer-director Florian Sigl and Flimmer CEO and producer Christopher Zwickler, with Andrew Lowery is attached as a writer. Dan Maag and Fabian Wolfart are producing via Pantaflix subsidiary Pantaleon Films, which is also co-producing Amazon’s upcoming new Berlin crime series “Beat.”
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“We are thrilled about the amazing response for ‘The Magic Flute’ and welcome Pantaflix and its team as our new partner on board,” said Emmerich, the director of “Independence Day” and the upcoming historical epic “Maya Lord.” Emmerich was a shareholder in Flimmer before it was acquired by French media group Webedia in 2016.
The producers are targeting a winter release in late 2018 or early 2019.
(Pictured, left to right: Florian Sigl, Christopher Zwickler, Roland Emmerich, Dan Maag, Fabian Wolfart, Frank Kusche)
