Television
January 24, 2008
LIVING Sinks Its Teeth Into Vampire Drama “Moonlight,” Via Agreement With Warner Bros. International Television Distribution
(January 24, 2008 – London) - Virgin Media Television-owned television channel LIVING has acquired brand new supernatural thriller “Moonlight” from Warner Bros. International Television Distribution for its Q1 2008 schedule, it was announced today by Amy Barham, Head of Acquisitions, Virgin Media Television; Jeffrey R. Schlesinger, President, Warner Bros. International Television; and Chris Law, Senior Vice President & Managing Director, UK Television and Digital Distribution, Warner Bros. International Television. The deal secures the acquisition of the vampire drama, which stars Alex O’Loughlin (“The Shield”) and Sophia Myles (“Thunderbirds,” “Doctor Who”) and was recently voted Best New TV Drama at the 2008 People’s Choice Awards in the US.
Amy Barham, Head of Acquisitions, Virgin Media Television, said: “LIVING has a real heritage in the supernatural, and the recent excellent performances of ‘Ghost Whisperer’ and ‘Blood Ties’ demonstrate our viewers’ commitment to this type of show. ‘Moonlight’ is another strong offering in this genre.”
“We are thrilled that LIVING is the home for ‘Moonlight’ in the UK and know it is a good fit for their audience,” said Schlesinger. “The show has an extremely devoted following in the US, and we believe we can replicate that success in the UK.”
In “Moonlight,” O’Loughlin stars as Mick St. John, a mysterious, charming and immortal private investigator from Los Angeles who defies the traditional vampire tendencies by using his wit and powerful supernatural abilities to help the living. In a life-altering twist of fate, Mick was bitten 60 years ago by his then-new bride, the seductive Coraline (Shannyn Sossamon – “One Missed Call,” “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”), on their wedding night. Forever 30 years of age, Mick is as handsome and charismatic as the day he was "turned.” With only a handful of like-minded confidantes for company, including the eternally young, wealthy and mischievous Josef (Jason Dohring – “Veronica Mars”), a 400-year-old vampire hedge-fund trader who relishes his uniqueness, Mick fills his infinite days protecting the living, including beautiful, ambitious Internet investigative reporter Beth Turner (Myles).
“Moonlight” is produced by Silver Pictures Television in association with Warner Bros. Television. The executive producers are Joel Silver, Chip Johannessen, Ron Koslow, Rod Holcomb and Gerard Bocaccio.
LIVING
LIVING is the ultimate entertainment destination on TV. Commissions like Britain’s Next Top Model, Dirty Dancing – The Time of Your Life, Living with Kimberly Stewart and To The Manor Bowen have emerged as some of the UK’s most talked-about programmes. As the home of the paranormal, LIVING airs cult phenomena Most Haunted and the hugely successful Most Haunted Live. LIVING has also built a reputation for cleverly identifying and out-maneuvering its rivals to the best acquired shows out there such as Grey’s Anatomy, Criminal Minds, Ghost Whisperer and America’s Next Top Model.
Since its launch at the end of 2004 LIVING2 is one of the fastest growing channels on multichannel. With an emphasis on entertainment reality, LIVING2 feature new exclusive acquisitions of top reality shows.
Virgin Media
Virgin Media is an innovative and pioneering UK entertainment and communications business. For the first time consumers can get everything they need from one company - the UK's only quad play of TV, broadband, phone and mobile plus the most advanced TV on demand service available, the UK’s first high definition TV service and V+, our high specification personal video recorder. We're the UK’s most popular residential broadband provider, the largest virtual mobile network operator and the second largest provider of pay TV and home phone.
Virgin Media owns two content businesses - Virgin Media Television (VMTV) and sit-up. VMTV owns seven entertainment channels - Living, Living 2, Bravo, Bravo 2, Challenge, Trouble and Virgin 1 - and is a 50% partner in UKTV which consists of ten channels including UKTV Gold and UKTV History. sit-up runs retail TV channels bid tv, price-drop tv and speed auctiontv.
ntl: Telewest Business also operates under the Virgin Media umbrella and provides voice, data and internet solutions to leading businesses, public sector organisations and service providers in the UK.
Virgin Media is the largest Virgin company in the world and has almost 10 million customers (5m cable, 4.5m Virgin Mobile, 250,000 virgin.net). To find out more visit www.virginmedia.com/presscentre
Warner Bros. International Television Distribution
Warner Bros. International Television Distribution is one of the world’s largest distributors of feature films, television programs and animation to the international television marketplace (broadcast, pay cable, basic cable, satellite, pay-per-view, video-on-demand, digital platforms, etc.). It licenses some 50,000 hours of programming (including more than 6,000 features and 70-plus current series), dubbed or subtitled in more than 40 languages, to telecasters and cablecasters in more than 175 countries.
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