Yahoo News ‘Gomorrah,’ ‘Sicario: Day of the Soldado’ Director Stefano Sollima and Team Launch AlterEgo Shingle (EXCLUSIVE)
Italian crime/action genre specialist Stefano Sollima – who is known for milestone TV series “Gomorrah” and Hollywood movies such as “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” and “Without Remorse” – is officially launching a film and TV production shingle named AlterEgo in tandem with ace U.S. showrunner Gina Gardini and longtime collaborator, writer/director Ludovico Purgatori.
The high-powered trio have been associates since “Gomorrah” and, more recently, Sollima’s Rome-set crime drama “Adagio” and his upcoming Netflix serial killer series “Il Mostro” – the latter two partly produced by AlterEgo. They are now widening their scope and will start shepherding film and TV works by other talents and also venturing into different genres.
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“The reason we decided to call ourselves Alter Ego is that we didn’t start out as producers,” said Sollima (pictured, left). “So each of us has their own specificity.” The name “alter ego” refers “precisely our individual ability to put this knowledge at the service of new IPs and to provide our know-how to other talents,” Sollima continued.
Gardini (pictured, center) who is a former Miramax exec and partner in Italy’s ITV-owned Cattleya – which she left in 2022 – said that “in recent years we’ve managed to create a brand of sorts with [high-end] projects rooted in Italy, but with an ambition and proven ability to travel.”
Now the idea is “to capitalize on what we’ve buil over these years,” she went on. And not just within the boundaries of “the [crime] genre we’ve done so far, but by continuing to create “original, authentic, grounded stories that can have great international resonance.”
Gardini, who has been instrumental in shepherding “Gomorrah” and Sollima-directed “ZeroZeroZero,” more recently took on showrunner duties for Cattleya on “Citadel: Diana,” the upcoming Italian installment of Prime Video’s global “Citadel” spy thriller franchise directed by Arnaldo Catinari.
Though the Alter Ego partners are keeping the company’s projects under wraps for now, they said they are leveraging their wide network of connections and entering the market by casting a wide net. Their only proviso is “not to replicate stories or ambiances that we have already done,” said Purgatori, (pictured, right). Incidentally, Purgatori will be a co-producer on Sollima’s upcoming Will Smith-starrer “Sugar Bandits,” the action thriller produced by Stuart Ford’s AGC International that the hot Italian director is expected to start shooting in the U.S. in coming months.
Purgatori, Gardini and Sollima said they are open to working with non-Italian writers and directors on projects for AlterEgo, but preferably on narratives that have a cultural connection to Italy. The AlterEgo partners also specified that they plan to shepherd TV and film projects, but that AlterEgo will not be acting as executive producers on their company’s productions, the first of which will be announced soon.
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