Curious Films Records Boyzone Concert Film For Sky — SkimNews
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- Curious Films produced "Boyzone: One for the Road," a live concert film recorded at London's Emirates Stadium over the summer with around 40 staff and 25 cameras, set to air on Sky later this year — the company's first live project after years of true-crime and pop-culture documentaries.
- "Boyzone: No Matter What" became Sky's most-watched unscripted series of all time, prompting the Irish band to reunite; Curious subsequently produced fourth and fifth episodes covering the reformation and then recorded the live concert.
- Dov Freedman, Curious Films' boss, said the live project offered "a refreshing addition" to the indie, contrasting its faster turnaround with the 18-month-to-two-year cycle the company typically runs on crime documentaries, and confirmed the company is "definitely looking to do more in that space."
- Former Boyzone manager Louis Walsh disputed claims made by band members in the documentary, telling Deadline the members' accounts are "fiction rather than fact."
- Curious Films co-founder Charlie Russell has departed, with Nicky Varley promoted to MD to oversee relationships with Hulu, Netflix and National Geographic.
- "A Toxic Love Story" has hit multiple Netflix top 10s, and "Welcome to the Family" — about the murder of law professor Dan Markel — has held the Disney+ no. 1 spot in both the US and UK; Freedman argued the latter kept Hulu scripted series "Furious" off the top spot, saying streamers are weighing true-crime docs against scripted budgets on a cost-per-audience basis.
- Curious Films has another Netflix true-crime series slated for early next year that Freedman declined to identify, plus a project on a story "people know, but they only know one side of it."
Why it matters: Sky locks in a Boyzone reunion concert film to extend its biggest-ever unscripted hit into a live format, while Curious Films — best known for true-crime work — uses the project to position itself in live programming just as Netflix UK has built a dedicated live commissioning team. For streamers, Freedman's argument that true-crime docs like 'Welcome to the Family' outperform scripted series such as Hulu's 'Furious' on cost-per-audience grounds could reshape greenlight math.
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