BANFF – Twentieth Century Fox Studios will be remaking the CBC sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie for broadcast in the U.S. market on the Fox network, the Canadian producer announced Monday.
Mary Darling, head of Westwind Pictures, told Cartt.ca the two parties have an agreement in principle and a deal will be signed in the next few days. She said Westwind will be working closely with Twentieth Century Fox on the adaptation of the half-hour series about a community of Muslims living in a small prairie town. The U.S. studio, which is bankrolling the remake, is currently getting together a group of writers for Darling to check out.
The tone of the show won’t change much, but changes will be made to adjust to the U.S. situation. For example, there are quite a few African Americans who have converted to Muslim, which we don’t find in Canada, she told Cartt.ca, noting that this type of character could be introduced in the U.S. remake.
Canadian references, such as mention of Premiers or Hockey Night in Canada, will also be eliminated.
Darling likened the remake to “Little Mosque in Minnesota” – a place she can relate to since she was born there.
She wasn’t sure when production would begin on the remake.
“It took a long time selling to the United States. But I think we really wanted to build a relationship, so we wanted to do it ourselves,” Darling added. She noted that several smaller U.S. cablecos have offered to buy the Canadian version, but the deal with Twentieth Century Fox will put the show in “front of as many people as possible.”
She hasn’t ruled out selling the Canadian version down south either.
The Mosque example was one of several Canadian success stories highlighted during a panel on scripted Canadian comedy being sold to the United States on Monday at the Banff Television Festival.
The panelists agreed to successfully remake a series for a new market the essence of the character or story shouldn’t change, although regional sensitivities should be taken into account. Another key is to ensure that the rights to the original format are retained by the original creator, added Christoph Fey, managing director of the Format Recognition and Protection Association (FRAPA).
For example, he said Ugly Betty, ran into problems because the Colombian originators did not retain control. The German producers, who didn’t understand the Latin American telenovela genre upon which the show was originally developed, killed the program by trying to extend it into a second season, he noted.
As well the rights in other European territories were driven down when both the originators of the show and the Germans, who said they owned the German version because they had hired the writers, etc., competed with each other to sell the product elsewhere.
A similar problem involving getting too far from the original version manifest with the French-Canadian show François en série that aired on Astral Media’s Series + and was sold by Distraction Formats to the U.S. network NBC in a deal announced last September.
Entitled Serial Frank in English, the comedy is about an ordinary single guy, named Frank, whose “inner selves” turn up at his doorstep, even though only he can see them.
“The first American writer changed Frank’s personality. Frank is loveable and a dreamer, but the writer turned him into a nasty stock broker from Manhattan,” noted Kaplan. “It was like making Ugly Betty into someone pretty.”
Distraction Formats vice-president Rob Kaplan said the first U.S. writer on the adaptation had to be replaced because he strayed too far from the original character in making adjustments for the U.S. markets.
The successful Radio-Canada French-language show Les hauts et les bas de Sophie Paquin was readapted for the public broadcaster’s English arm, and the English version, Sophie, will be broadcast this January on ABC.
Anton Leo, creative head of TV comedy at CBC Television, said the public broadcaster learned a lot in how to make the crossover to English Canada from mistakes in producing the hit Quebec show Rumeurs for the English market.
“With Sophie we had the same producers as with Rumeurs (Rumours), so we knew what we had done wrong previously,” he noted.
Not only did they change the script from the French for Sophie, but they also changed the way the show was created in English Canada. For example, one writer will often pen the whole series of a show in Quebec, but the tradition in English Canada is to work with a group of writers. The producers worked the English-Canada way on the English-language version.
“But we have a consultant who will challenge the English writers to make sure our Sophie is remaining true to the character,” noted Leo.
Norma Reveler is in Banff this week covering the Banff International Television Festival.
