EXCLUSIVE: Newly launched Swiss Studios is preparing a series of streamer-friendly originals, including a drama series set in a German oil town and limited series about a Swiss samurai.

Launched last month as a collective of five European production companies, Swiss Studios seeks to take advantage of Switzerland’s ‘Lex Netflix’ legislation, which instructs global streamers such as Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ to reinvest 4% of their local earnings into Swiss film and television productions or pay a treasure.

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Swiss Studios CEO Malte Probst told Deadline that streamers have been willing to pay the 4% “as long as the content is of the quality they need.” He estimates the tax will bring in about 20 million Swiss francs ($22.4 million) directly, but with associated costs it could add as much as 40 million Swiss francs each year. “It is a considerable sum,” he added.

Deadline can reveal Swiss Studios – made up of Elite Filmproduktion, Praesens-Film Production, Contrast Series, Bavaria Fiction and Kinescope Film – has as many as 55 projects in development, with a plan to move forward with around 12 selected via committee. These will be presented to streamers.

Among those in development are Black goldwhich Swiss Studios/Kinescope Film is creating as a co-production with FilmNation and NDR.

The six-part multi-season drama, from Justin Koch and Matthias Greving, tells the story of the discovery of oil in a small town in northern Germany in the late 19th century. This left the hard-working villagers torn between progress, environmental destruction and survival.

Probst told Deadline that the series has a budget of around €20 million ($21.1 million) and was pitched as a “Yellowstone meets Germany.” We hear that top American and international talent are tied.

swiss samurai is the Swiss Studios/Elite Filmproduction limited series about Swiss Andy Hug, the first non-Asian ever to win the K1 kickboxing championship. Hug, a huge star in his home country and Japan, died under suspicious circumstances in 2000.

The show is being produced in close cooperation with Hug’s family, and Swiss Studios is looking at a Japanese partner, Probst said.

Valerie Lehmann, another Swiss Studios and Elite Filmproduction project, is being prepped as a multi-season high-end crime thriller series based on Swiss author Silvia Götsch’s crime thriller novels. Pascal Walder and Tom Kolinski have created the project, with season one in six parts.

The books follow the titular detective Valerie Lehmann, who is a strong, modern woman who for personal reasons must move to the remote Swiss mountainside and fight both crime and the rejection of the local population.

In the same spirit Tiger King, Leopard is a limited series from Swiss Studios and Praesens Filmproduktion, created by Cihan Inan and Benedikt Eppenberger. Set in 1970s Switzerland, it follows Hans Ulrich Lenzlinger’s rise from poor upbringing to one of the kings of the country’s underworld, hunted by the Stasi for smuggling East Germans into West Germany. His murder in 1979 remains unsolved.

Finally, Queen of the Eiger comes from Swiss Studios and Bavaria Fiction Switzerland in co-production with Luck Films. The docu-series focuses on Daisy Voog, who was the first woman ever to climb the north face of the Eiger, back in 1964 – but financed her expeditions by committing financial fraud against her employer to get it done.

‘Swiss stories with international potential”

“As you can see, we try to create stories with international potential from Switzerland,” Probst said in an exclusive interview.

Along with first drafting the Swiss Studios with former Sky Deutschland colleague Marcus Ammon and now acting as its CEO, Probst is also Chief Product Officer, Fiction, at Blue Entertainment, overseeing its TV entertainment projects, original productions, transactional deals and content partnerships in the subsidiary of Swiss telco Swisscom. Before joining Blue 2021, he spent 15 years at Sky Deutschland and its predecessor Premiere.

His role is to work with Contrast Film head Ivan Madeo, Bavaria’s Fiction Switzerland’s Ammon and Dominic Fistarol, Kinescope’s Matthias Greving, Praesens-Film Production’s Corinne Rossi and Elite Filmproduktion’s Roger Kaufmann to decide which projects will go ahead and be pitched.

“You can imagine that putting together five production houses is not the easiest task, but if you do it with people you trust who share the same values, it can be a very enjoyable process,” says Probst. “We work with streamers and develop based on their needs through market intelligence.”

Each partner has an obligation to give Swiss Studios a first look at new projects, which are then considered as a committee. Should an idea be passed on, the producer can then withdraw it himself.

Probst is also working on the strategy that will effectively see Swiss Studios act as a proxy for streamers in Switzerland. “There is a lot of money flowing into the country, but none of the streamers have the forces in place to handle it. We can do it for them,” he says.

Local tax relief schemes will be tapped to add funding to projects, with Kinescope’s Greving an expert in tax management. “We are trying to build a studio-style center of excellence, but ultimately we will be judged by the quality of our output.

Another target will be the French-speaking market, given Switzerland’s large number of native speakers and the fact that the country has a co-production agreement with French-speaking Canada.

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