After tackling gender energy dynamics within the publish #MeToo period, Prime Video‘s raunchy comedy sequence “Escort Boys” is returning for a second season that’s a number of shades darker and is world premiering as we speak at Canneseries.
Tailored from the Israeli present “Johnny and the Knights of Galilee” (“Milk and Honey”) and directed by Ruben Alves, the half-hour comedy sequence portrays 4 younger males who grow to be escorts to make ends meet and save their household enterprise in a picturesque city in Southern France.
Boldly addressing well timed themes equivalent to romantic love, feminine sexuality and poisonous masculinity, Season 1 was successful, even luring Wild Bunch TV which acquired worldwide gross sales (to seasons 1 and a couple of), and France’s main industrial channel TF1 which purchased second-window rights.
Myriam Gharbi-de Vasselot at Mediawan-owned Oberkampf Productions ‘(“Les Papillons Noirs”) who produced the sequence with Charlotte Toledano-Detaille and RTL TVI, stated Season 2 is taking a departure from the unique format. “It’s a real creation,” she says, and one which reteams Alves with Yaël Lebrati (“Pricey You”), joined by Louis Pénicaut (“Le Bureau des Legendes”).
Season 2 picks up six months after the top of Season 1 which noticed the principle characters deciding to cease escorting to begin a lodge enterprise. “They’re compelled again into it because of a failed lodge enterprise which was a fiasco: they have been ripped off and confronted subsequent debt, main them to lose their area,” says de Vasselot, who additionally beforehand produced a documentary about male escorts which Wild Bunch TV picked up alongside the primary two seasons of “Escort Boys.”
“We’re going to have a look at the implications and limitations of prostitution, because it’s a topic that may’t be taken evenly and that we’re treating as realistically as attainable,” she says, including that the plot will take care of the “intercourse habit of certainly one of its principal characters, Ludo, who’s the daddy determine,” in addition to introduces “a lady who has been crushed by her husband and makes an attempt to beat her trauma and reconnect along with her physique with the assistance of an escort.”
“That’s Ruben Alves’s signature model, all the time oscillating between drama and laughter,” she says. Whereas the present can be positively extra dramatic in its second season, she says it’s going to nonetheless boast “moments of comedy, typically burlesque, typically humorous and touching, with a various vary of shoppers, all the time performed by distinctive visitor stars.”
These embody Josiane Balasko, Marisa Berenson (“Barry Lyndon”), Thibault De Montalembert (“Name My Agent!”), Margot Bancilhon (“Machine”), Cristiana Reali (“Tenting 3”) and Afida Turner (“LOL”), who will star alongside the important thing forged of Guillaume Labbé, Thibaut Evrard, Simon Ehrlacher, Corentin Fila and Marysole Fertard.
Prime Video will premiere the sequence on June 13 in France, adopted by Italy, Spain, Germany and the U.Ok.
De Vasselot can also be growing a raft of internationally pushed initiatives with totally different companions and expertise, together with Olivier Abbou with whom she beforehand collaborated on the Netflix serial killer thriller “Les Papillons Noirs.” She’s teamed up with Nathalie Perus at Atlantique Productions, one other Mediawan label, to acquired rights to a bestselling U.S. guide whose adaptation is being penned by Abbou and Laura Fontaine (“Analysis Unit”).
She’s additionally working with “Vortex” co-creator Sarah Farkas and Marjorie Bosch (“Sam”) on a female-led sequence undertaking in superior growth at a streamer, and “Holy Lands” filmmaker-screenwriter Amanda Sthers’ first sequence which can be primarily based on an unique story revolving round two journalists employed to create faux information.
‘Escort Boys’ Season 2
© Eloïse Legay
