EXCLUSIVE: ABC News’ iconic 20/20 news magazine franchise is going international.
Disney+ has greenlit the first ever non-U.S. version of the 50-year-old series and it will kick off in the UK next week.
Titled 20/20 Britain’s Most Notorious Crime Investigations, the series will reopen six cases including Jane Andrews, the Duchess of York’s former aide and dresser who was convicted of murder, Ben Field, the charming young churchwarden accused of seducing older people into signing over their estates, and Joanna Yeates, who went missing on a freezing night in Bristol and was never found.
These are some of the most high-profile cases in the UK. All three have been made into successful TV dramas: The Lady, The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies and The Sixth Commandment.
The other three eps will follow Ben Needham, who was abducted from the Greek island of Kos in the early 1990s, Scottish serial killer Peter Tobin and Mahek Bukhari, a TikTok influencer who murdered her mother’s lover and his friend in a high-speed car chase.
20/20 Britain’s Most Notorious Crime Investigations will drop on Disney+ in the UK and Disney+ and Hulu in the U.S. in just nine days’ time, with the Needham episode first before the rest drop weekly. Candle Media-backed docs indie Candle True Stories, which is run by former ABC News boss James Goldston, won a tender to produce the series and is co-producing with ABC News Studios.
The move signals a new dawn for one of America’s most popular news franchises. Created by Roone Arledge as a rival to CBS’ 60 Minutes, 20/20 has been airing pretty much weekly since 1978 and is currently hosted by David Muir and Deborah Roberts. It has taken on a huge range of stories and cases over the years and in 2019 shifted to a two-hour format pivoting to tell true crime stories and celebrity scandals. In the UK, the BBC had a similar series, Crimewatch, but it was cancelled in 2017.
Disney+ EMEA unscripted has focused on splashy premium docs like Caroline Flack: Search for the Truth, Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story and Flintoff, while it is rebooting Blind Date, but we are told today’s announcement is the beginning of a big true crime push. Disney+ has been given a bigger budget of late and on the scripted side is adapting Tom Hindle’s bestseller Murder on Lake Garda. Rivals Netflix and Prime Video are already big in the international true crime game.
20/20 Britain’s Most Notorious Crime Investigations is executive produced by Goldston and Alicia Kerr, while Ralph Perring is co-executive producer. David Sloan is the senior executive producer, and Eamon McNiff is EP for ABC News Studios. The Hulu original was commissioned by Sean Doyle, Vice President, Unscripted, Disney+ EMEA.
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