‘White Lotus’ Executive Producer David Bernad Teams With UFA as German Production Company Ramps Up International Ambitions (EXCLUSIVE)

Emmy-winning “The White Lotus” executive producer David Bernad has teamed with German production company UFA to develop series “Hotel Neptun.” The move comes as UFA, which is part of Fremantle, ramps up its international ambitions. A year after Sascha Schwingel took over as CEO of UFA, he spoke to Variety about the company’s priorities.

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Journalists Joshua Davis (“Little America”) and Joshuah Bearman (“Argo”) are attached to “Hotel Neptun,” which is about a hotel in the former East Germany, where spies from all over the world met.

Nataly Kudiabor, a producer on UFA’s dark comedy “Where’s Wanda?” for Apple TV+ and managing director of UFA Fiction, is also attached to “Hotel Neptun.”

Bernad is also known for the Amazon Freevee mockumentary “Jury Duty” and the HBO limited series “White House Plumbers” with Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux.

Schwingel tells Variety : “Our strategy is quite simple. It’s protect and grow the core business as well as create innovative business lines to serve new needs and customers.

“We want to create new business and part of this is the international business. With ‘Maxton Hall,’ we showed for the first time that we can reach a global audience with a German program, which is quite new for us.”

“Maxton Hall,” based on a bestseller by German author Mona Kasten, is the top performing international series ever on Amazon Prime Video.

The show is number one in more than 120 territories, due to a massive international influencer campaign.

“Amazon did a fantastic influencer campaign [for ‘Maxton Hall’] all around the world,” Schwingel says.

He adds: “And we just released ‘Where’s Wanda,’ our first Apple show, and I just saw that in Japan it’s number three. For me, it’s a new reality that we can reach a global audience with our local product.”

UFA also produced “Sam – A Saxon,” the first German-language original for Disney+, which was released in April 2023.

“We produce every genre, and our strength is to be as good as a boutique producer in every genre. So we are a big warehouse, but in every genre, we try to be as good as the boutique guys are,” he says.

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“Our relationships are with everybody: the linear operators and the streaming services.

“Now I really try to bring UFA more into the creator economy. So to have new relationship with the creators.”

However, the market comes with challenges.

“The challenges in the market are that the competition is as strong as ever before. It’s hard to get the commissions, and it is hard to bring your product to the audience, because the audience will receive tons of content. Therefore, it’s challenging to become visible for the audience.

“On the other hand, the people consume more content than ever. There’s a big opportunity to tell your stories on different channels, but you need to be really strong and focused.”

Other UFA shows include “Der Upir,” released mid-September on Joyn, the streaming service of German private broadcaster Pro7Sat1, and daily series “Gute Zeiten. Wilde Zeiten” (Good Times, Wild Times”) – a spin off for a young target group on Super RTL of UFA’s most successful daily drama series “Gute Zeiten. Schlechte Zeiten” (Good Times, Bad Times) on RTL.

Before joining UFA, Schwingel was deputy head of TV and entertainment at private broadcaster RTL in Germany, where he was responsible for the entertainment formats on RTL and VOX, as well as those of the streaming service RTL+.

From July 2019 until March 2022, he was managing director of the broadcaster VOX Television.

Prior to that, starting in October 2013, he was head of editorial and program management at ARD Degeto, responsible for the some 100 commissioned and co-produced programs a year, including “Der Fall Barschel,” “Terror – Ihr Urteil,” “Gladbeck” and “Babylon Berlin.” He was also responsible for the purchasing of licensed content and program planning.

Schwingel started his career in 1998 as a producer at teamWorx Television & Film, which later became part of UFA.

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