EXCLUSIVE: Germany’s Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion is gearing up for Sundance Film Festival by changing its corporate identity to Beetz Brothers Film Production, and unveiling new projects on Boney M and the Titan Disaster as part of an international push.
The Leonine Studios-owned producer’s new name reflects the relationship of its co-founders, brothers Christian and Reinhardt Beetz, and comes as the company lines up a series of new projects that form part of its push into international premium docs. It also comes ahead of Beetz Brothers’ latest doc, Eternal You, competing in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance in Utah, as announced earlier this week.
Christian Beetz told Deadline the company will is also co-developing a feature-length doc about the Germany cult music group Boney M alongside the Twilight saga producer Temple Hill. Beetz Brothers senior producer Kerstin Meyer-Beetz is developing the project alongside Temple Hill’s Patrick Murphy.
Temple Hill hired Murphy as Head of Non-Fiction last year to launch a docs, doc series and alternative division.
Boney M, whose track ‘Rasputin’ became the soundtrack for a worldwide TikTok dance trend, were recently featured in BBC doc Disco: Soundtrack to a Revolution.
Also on the Beetz Brothers slate is a doc about the Titan submersible disaster that made headlines around the world last year. Beetz is teaming with Alan Hayling’s Warner Bros Television UK-owned Renegade Pictures and Arnie Gelbart’s Galafilm in Canada on the project.
This will be the latest project on the OceanGate disaster, which killed five people after the Titan submersible disappeared in June before being discovered five days later. MindRiot Entertainment is making a scripted film on the tragedy with with E. Brian Dobbins (The Blackening) co-producing and a docu-series about the life of OceanGate boss Kyle Bingham.
In further news, Beetz Brothers has teamed New York’s Submarine Entertainment for Against All Enemies, from director Charlie Sadoff. The film, which explores the role U.S. military veterans played in domestic extremist groups, sold to Franco-German channel Arte and broadcasted earlier this month.
“We are looking to invest in new collaborations, especially on international prime docs and doc-series,” said Christian Beetz. “We know that this goes against the current market and countercyclical, but as we believe the international documentary market will come back in 2025 and this is the right moment.”
To that end, Beetz Brothers’ next doc, Eternal You, from Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck and co-producing with Julie Goldman’s Motto Pictures and Concordia Studio in the U.S., is headed to Sundance later this month. Directed by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck, the feature explores how start-ups are using AI-created digital avatars to allow enable mourners to communicate with their deceased loved ones.
Building a ‘doc powerhouse’
Beetz revealed the company, which benefits from a development fund from parent Leonine, will invest in more Israeli documentaries such as Hamas Festival Attack — Survivors of the Desert Rave / Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre, made as a co-production with director Duki Dror and broadcasted on Arte.
“One year after working under the umbrella of Leonine Studios, we have hired a lot of staff to build a new documentary powerhouse in Europe,” said Christian Beetz. Notably, Beetz Brothers hired ZDF veteran Martin Pieper as an international producer last year, as we revealed at the time.
“In that first year we focused on the German market with a slate of ‘local to local’ productions, including true-crime series and feature-length documentaries for streamers such as Netflix and Amazon and public broadcasters such as ARD.
“We are also making sports documentaries, such as a portrait of the German extreme sailor Boris Herrmann, who will again go on the solo racing word tour Vendée Globe at the end of 2024. We released more than 16 documentaries, but in 2024 we will focus on more investments in international collaborations.”
Beetz Brothers is best known for docs such as the Emmy-nominated 2019 feature The Cleaners, Berlin Series-winning series Reeperbahn — Special Unit 65 and Sky’s Juan Carlos: Downfall of the King.