We are happy to report that Rabbit Films has appointed experienced international distribution executive Paulina Eklund to our format and finished tape sales team.

Paulina has been hired in the role of International Sales Agent. Her responsibilities will include spearheading Rabbit Films’ sales efforts across Northern, Western and Southern Europe. She will enact as the paternity cover for the territories usually managed by Rabbit’s SVP, International Jonathan Tuovinen, who will be going on parental leave. Paulina will report to Rabbit’s CEO, Olli Suominen.

Prior to joining Rabbit, Paulina has held a variety of high-profile roles in the international distribution business, including Nordic World, Absolutely Independent and Dick Clark Productions. She has also previously been the de facto distributor of Rabbit’s sister company Monday Media Norway.

Paulina Eklund commented:
“I am beyond excited to be joining the Rabbit International team, and looking forward with working with all of the great titles coming from the Monday Media companies. The whole team has done such a wonderful job spreading fantastic Nordic content worldwide, and I can’t wait to be part of that expansion!”

We at Rabbit are delighted to have Paulina in our ranks!

Rabbit International will continue to bring the best original ideas from Rabbit Films Finland to the worldwide market. After joining the Monday Media in 2023, we are also now the distributor of all new content coming from the 13 different production labels belonging group. We hope to service our international clients with a wide variety of different genres of formats and finished tape of the highest quality!

 

The Golden Venla – Finnish TV Awards nominations have just been announced, and several Rabbit Films original series scored nods in various categories.

For Best Game Show, the perennial favourite City vs Country (Season 6) received a nomination once again! In City vs Country teams from the big city face teams from the countryside in a hilarious quiz set-up.

And in the Best Entertainment Series category, two Rabbit formats received nominations: Should I Be Worried (Season 12) and Ultimate Escape (Season 2)! Though quite different shows, both have been extremely successful with audiences in the country. Should I Be Worried is a comedy panel series featuring the most worrisome concerns of the general public. And Ultimate Escape is an adventure reality series, where each episode is a brutal 24-hour challenge.

Additionally, WWTBAM Finland and Taskmaster Finland, both produced by Rabbit Films based on third-party formats, were also nominated in the Best Game Show category.

2022 was an especially successful year for Rabbit at the Finnish TV Awards, winning 6 out of the 22 categories. The biggest winner of the evening was the scripted title Summer of Sorrow (Munkkivuori), which scored 4 wins, including Best Drama Series. Summer of Sorrow is distributed internationally (both format and tape) by Keshet International.

Check out City vs Country, Should I Be Worried and Ultimate Escape.

Congratulations to all nominees across all the categories!

As announced earlier this year, Rabbit International has been named as the distributor of all content originating from its parent company Monday Media Group. The Rabbit International team is set to distribute all formats and finished tape that have been originated in the 13 Monday-affiliated production companies, spanning across the Nordics and Benelux.

Rabbit will be attending the MIPCOM 2023 market in Cannes for the first time representing titles from the Monday group. The first new Monday-originated formats that will be distributed by Rabbit include:

The Nation’s Next Fashion Designer (6 x 60’) from Monday Denmark, currently airing on DR1. The elimination-based competition reality format sees talented fashion designers compete for an opportunity to sell their clothes at the nation’s largest department stores.

Truth or Dare (8 x 15’) is a jaw-droppingly daring celebrity game show format, produced by Monday Norway for Dagbladet.no, Norway’s largest tabloid newspaper. In the show, a group of the most daring celebs get together to play spin the bottle. Anything can happen! There is already also an 8 x 30’ Danish version of Truth or Dare, which airs on DR P3.

Losing It Together (6 x 60’) is an emotional and rewarding factual format that aired this spring on NRK1 in Norway, produced by Teddy TV. It features a famous female comedian, who is joined by four normal people on a year-long weight loss journey. The show has been both a phenomenal ratings as well as critical success: it’s currently the highest performing non-scripted series of the year on NRK!

 

To coincide with new set up, Rabbit has promoted its key sales team. Jonathan Tuovinen, previously Head of International,  has been named Senior Vice President, International. Tuovinen has lead the Rabbit International team since 2016, having previously held positions at NBCUniversal International Formats and Banijay Rights. He will be responsible for overseeing the strategic expansion of Rabbit Films’ distribution network, ensuring that Monday Media Group’s content reaches new global audiences.

Samantha Ferguson has been named Vice President, International Sales. Ferguson has been with the company since 2019 and previously held the title of International Sales Manager. She is in charge of sales to English-speaking territories and Asia, recently brokering the deal for the highly anticipated upcoming Australian version of the adventure reality format Ultimate Escape for Seven Network.

Additionally, Marta Csizmadia, who joined the company in 2020, has been upped to Senior Sales Consultant. Csizmadia is the sales liaison for CEE, Middle East and Africa.

“We are humbled and excited by the faith entrusted in our team. The other Monday Media Group companies have done an exceptional job in creating high quality series in various different genres. I speak for the whole team by saying that we can’t wait to share all of this new amazing content -both as formats and as tape- with the rest of the world”, commented Jonathan Tuovinen.

 

Rabbit’s fact-ent format steals the show by winning its Monday night slot every week!

Endangered Species Aotearoa with WWF premiered 3rd July 2023 on TVNZ 1 on Monday 8.30pm, winning the time slot every week of the show’s run thereafter.

On an extremely competitive night, going up against adventure reality titans The Summit, Million Dollar Island and The Traitors, Endangered Species came out as the slot winner each week!

The show averaged a stellar 23.4% share in total viewers, well above the 13.1% of The Summit and 12.0% of The Traitors. The series reached 1.3 million New Zealanders, which is 27.5% of the total population. Endangered Species also performed extremely well digitally, ranking as the 9th highest reaching local show on the TVNZ+ VOD service in the last six weeks!

Endangered Species Aotearoa is a 6 x 60 factual entertainment series is based on the Rabbit original format The Most Endangered Species. It features conservationist Nicola Toki and comedian Pax Assadi travelling around New Zealand and the South Pacific to get up close and personal with an array of species at risk of extinction. Not your typical nature documentary series, Endangered Species Aotearoa aims to captivate a new audience of armchair wildlife enthusiasts through Assadi’s comedy and Nicola’s enthusiasm. Aotearoa is the contemporary Maori-language name for New Zealand.

The Most Endangered Species is an epic nature format, which sees a well-known comedian travel together with a scientist to the outermost corners of the world to get acquainted with the protection of endangered animals. The original Finnish format offers once in a lifetime experiences, such as racing a snow leopard in the Himalayas, looking for the Svalbard polar bears and visiting Borneo to explore the shrinking areas of the orangutan.

Watch the trailer and full subtitled episodes of The Most Endangered Species New Zealand here.

The Most Endangered Species is available as a format, and both the original Finnish version and the New Zealand version are available as finished tape.

You can access our website by using your personal login, or with the general password rabbit15.

Today is a great day, as we announce that Rabbit has joined the Monday Media Group! 

Rabbit Films Productions Finland is excited to become part of the innovative leading media groupm, which currently consists of 12 different production companies in Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. 

We are also thrilled to announce that the Rabbit International team will take over for the distribution of the new formats and tape coming from the Monday Media Group’s companies. 

For all our clients from territories where the Monday Media Group does not have a presence, we will continue working with you in the exact same manner as before. We will be able to offer you a wider and larger range of quality content coming from all the different companies that are part of the Monday Media Group. 

For our broadcaster clients from current Monday Media Group territories, any new commissions of self-created formats from our catalogue are to be done through the Monday Media production company in your territory. 

For our production company clients working in current Monday Media Group territories, this unfortunately means that we will no longer be able to offer you our self-created formats. Any third party content in our catalogue from outside the Monday Media group will still be available to you. 

We will be adding some of the existing Monday Media Group titles into our catalogue during the summer and autumn, and will keep you well informed on all the updates. Any previous distribution agreements between Monday Media Group’s companies and third party distributors will continue to be active. 

We at Rabbit International are extremely excited about this opportunity, and can’t wait to share all of the great new upcoming content with you! 

Walter Presents in the UK and Ireland, as well as Channel 4 UK are now airing  season one of Finnish drama Mobile 101 – The Nokia Story.

We are happy to report that starting 19 May 2023, viewers in the UK and Republic of Ireland are now able to enjoy the Rabbit scripted drama series Mobile 101 via the VOD platform Walter Presents. The first episode of the series has also just premiered on the linear broadcaster Channel 4 yesterday (Sunday 21 May 2023).

Mobile 101 is based on real life events: It’s the late 1980s. Nokia is financially shaky, the leading execs are at loggerheads, but an engineer has a brilliant idea…

The 6 x 45 min series was produced by Rabbit Films for broadcaster MTV3 Finland and streamer CMore, where it premiered in 2022 to both critical and commercial acclaim.

The series has previously been acquired for Sweden, Denmark and Norway by CMore, and by Disney+ in Italy, The Netherlands and Belgium.

Walter Iuzzolino of Walter Presents praised the series: “Mobile 101 is a sharp, incisive and unmissable show infused with nostalgia and vintage pop culture. Sharp writing, strong performances by a brilliant ensemble cast and gorgeous direction and photography make this a delicious treat for all lovers of great subtitled drama.”

Watch all of the episodes of Mobile 101 here.

Hot off the press, we are excited to present to you a brand new format: My Way!

My Way is a musical entertainment show, where you will hear the biggest global hits translated into the hottest local versions!

The studio-based series features the most popular artists in the country. In every episode each artist picks a song that has a special meaning to them and then translates it into their own language and style.  Performing the lyrics in their own language brings a new emotional connection to the song. We will also get to hear each artist’s personal stories behind their song of choice.

My Way airs on Finnish commercial broadcaster Nelonen on Fridays at 8pm, and is produced by our friends from Solar Republic. The first season is 6 x 90 mins and premiered on Friday 5^th May 2023.

The overnight ratings of the first episode are now in, and they are sensational! Not only did the show come out as the slot winner, it was also clearly the most-watched series of the whole evening!

My Way scored a whopping 28.4% share in the target commercial demographic (10-54), and a superb 24.4% with all viewers (4+).

The weekend primetimes are traditionally the most important slots of the week for Nelonen. This week, they aired My Way on Friday, The Farm on Saturday and a local adaptation of the Norwegian format The Best Entertainer (Stjernekamp) on Sunday in the same time slot. My Way outperformed both long-lasting formats, which scored 18.7% and 20.6% in the commercial demo respectively. It is now on its way to be the broadcaster’s best-rated show of the week!

Watch the Trailer and full Subtitled Episode of My Way here.

You can access our website by using your personal login, or with the general password rabbit15.

 

The international team here at Rabbit has been hard at work once again, and we are proud to present to you a brand new non-scripted format for MIPTV 2023: Travel Battle!

In this comedic travel show two famous hosts, known for their crazy antics, battle it out to see who can make the most epic weekend trip! At the beginning of each episode the hosts arrive at their destination, where they are faced with a challenge in which the winner gets a huge travel budget, and the loser gets a small one. The hosts have no idea what the other one is doing, and they only get to see each other’s trip in the studio. Which is better: having money or having to innovate? Unlimited options or creative solutions? Each episode features three different fun tasks that each of our hosts has to complete separately. And at the end of each episode, it will be the studio audience votes for their favorite trip to see who is the winner!

The 6 x 60 mins series is set to premiere right after MIPTV, on Friday 21^st April 2023. All episodes of the first season will be made available on the YLE Areena VOD service on that date, and the weekly linear run will be on YLE2 at 9pm. But you can watch a full subtitled episode of the series already now here.

We are also happy to share, that although the first seasons hasn’t aired yet, the series has already been picked up for a second season by YLE! It will also be 6 x 60 mins and is filming this summer in various locations across Europe.

Find out more about the series here.

You can access our website by using your personal login, or with the general password rabbit15.

Walter Presents in the UK & Ireland, Disney+ Italy, Netherlands and Belgium, and RUV Iceland have all acquired season one of Finnish drama Mobile 101 – The Nokia Story.

The 6 x 45 min series was produced by Rabbit Films for broadcaster MTV3 Finland and streamer CMore, where it premiered in 2022 to both critical and commercial acclaim. Directed and written by Maarit Lalli, the series tells the story of the close calls and the uncertain first steps of a small Finnish electronics company becoming a global titan of the mobile phone industry. Season 1 focuses on the years 1988-1990 when the company was developing its first ever GSM phone, the ‘101’.

The series has previously been acquired for Sweden, Denmark and Norway by CMore.

Jonathan Tuovinen, Head of International at Rabbit Films said: “We are extremely happy announce this first round of international sales of Mobile 101, and to bring this quintessentially Finnish story to audiences outside of the Nordics. We all grew up with a Nokia mobile phone, so this unique series has really resonated with buyers, and we hope that audiences around the world will be both entertained and informed by this amazing nostalgia-evoking series.”

Walter Iuzzolino of Walter Presents praised the series: “Mobile 101 is a sharp, incisive and unmissable show infused with nostalgia and vintage pop culture. Sharp writing, strong performances by a brilliant ensemble cast and gorgeous direction and photography make this a delicious treat for all lovers of great subtitled drama.”

Watch all of the episodes of Mobile 101 here.

 

 

We are excited to announce that Ultimate Escape has been developed for the Australian audience by Helium Pictures, and has now been officially commissioned by Seven Network! Based on the hit original series by Rabbit Films, this new reworked version of the format will see teams of Australians race the clock and each other in a high stakes search-and-rescue operation in some of the toughest and most beautiful terrain on the planet.

Seven’s Chief Content Officer for Entertainment, Angus Ross, said: “We’re excited to partner with Helium on this electrifying new format. Ultimate Escape is gripping TV, offering viewers fast-paced, jaw-dropping action supercharged by real emotion.”

Helium’s Chief Creative Officer Mark Fennessy said: “Ultimate Escape is immersive, edge-of-the-seat, big event TV. With a stunning backdrop and teams of unique Australians, this ground-breaking series will be like a blockbuster movie come to life.”

Rabbit Films’ International Sales Consultant Samantha Ferguson, who brokered the deal, said: “We are beyond thrilled to be working with Helium and Seven to partner on this epic adventure-of-a-lifetime and bring this adventure competition series to Australia.”

Ultimate Escape was originally created by Rabbit Films for Discovery+ and TV5 Finland. The first season aired to high ratings in the autumn of 2021. The series was renewed for a second season, which has just been filmed, and will air in autumn 2023. The format also received much critical acclaim, winning the Best Reality Format prize at the 2022 International Format Awards.

The Australian version of Ultimate Escape is set to air on Seven Network and 7plus later this year.

Watch the trailer and full subtitled episodes of the original Finnish version of Ultimate Escape here.

You can access our website by using your personal login, or with the general password rabbit15.