Netflix has boarded Perfume, a dark German-language thriller series from producers Constantin Film and network ZDFneo loosely based on the global best-seller of the same name by Patrick Suskind.
Netflix has acquired worldwide rights outside of German-speaking Europe for the crime drama, which features a laundry list of German stars, including Wotan Wilke Mohring (Valkyrie), August Diehl (Inglourious Basterds), Friederike Becht (The Reader), Christian Friedel (The White Ribbon), Susanne Wuest (Goodnight Mommy) and Ken Duken (Inglourious Basterds).
Philipp Kadelbach, a director on International Emmy-winning series Generation War and BBC espionage drama SS-GB, helmed the six-part crimes drama, currently in post-production.
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Netflix has also picked up second-window streaming rights for its German-language service for Perfume.
Suskind’s novel is set in 18th-century France and follows a serial killer with a superhuman sense of smell and an ability to manipulate people using specialized perfumes. Director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, Cloud Atlas) adapted the book into a 2006 feature film starring Ben Whishaw and Dustin Hoffman.
The new Perfume series shifts the action to the modern day and uses the book’s idea of manipulating people through scent as a springing-off point. A young profiler investigating a series of brutal murders traces events back to a small cadre of boys at a boarding school who experimented with manipulating people using human scents.
Constantin Film (Look Who’s Back, Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments) is producing Perfume, together with und Moovie, broadcasters ZDFneo/ZDF and ARRI Media in cooperation with Netflix. Oliver Berben of Constantin is executive producing. Gunther van Endert from ZDF and Florian Weber of ZDFneo are overseeing the project for their respective networks.
Perfume will premiere on ZDFneo in Germany and on Netflix worldwide this fall.
