The project based on the most successful Ukrainian movie franchise Crazy Wedding will become possiblethanks to the strategic partnership of FILM.UA Group, 1+1 Media and Kyivstar TV. Crazy Neighbors will be the first original series of the platform.
Crazy Neighbors will consist of 24 episodes 25 minutes each. Just like before in Crazy Wedding universe, the audience will see familiar characters and new faces of the franchise. The story of Vasyl Seredyuk and his family will be dedicated to “peaceful times”: not in extreme conditions of endless wedding but in regular everyday life. However, this life can hardly be called calm: “All people were made by God, and only neighbors are the devil’s creation!” – the telling slogan of the project speaks for itself and promises lots of fun. Maybe not for Seredyuk and his numerous relatives, but surely for the audience.
According to the project authors, there is no doubt about the audience’s interest in the future series as the film trilogy which became its foundation can rightly be called the most successful Ukrainian movie project of the latest years.
For example, the total box office of Crazy Wedding three films amounted to over 124 million UAH (4.66 million USD) and more than 1.4 million tickets sold. Last year Crazy Wedding 2 became the only Ukrainian film making it to top five Google search queries made by Ukrainians. TV, theatrical and digital rights to franchise screenings have been sold to tens of countries, including Canada, the USA, Poland, European and Latin American countries. In Ukraine, Crazy Wedding also became the most popular film among all shown on TV since 2009 on all Ukrainian TV channels (the share of its premiere on 1+1 is 28.4% by 18-54 (50+) audience).
“In the modern world, VoD services are becoming the main drivers of the industry, catering to the audience’s wish to watch content anywhere, anytime. And to satisfy this request there should be more of diverse, fascinating and original content created all the time. That is why global streaming services went into the avant-garde of world series production. Netflix Original or Amazon Original labels have long been a seal of excellence telling the audience that this content is worth of their attention. And I am happy to see that Ukraine also starts getting involved in this global process. For FILM.UA, participation in creating the first original series for Kyivstar TV on the basis of our “crazy” franchise is one more step towards comprehensive development of Ukrainian audiovisual market that we consider our strategic priority,” says Viktoria Yarmoschuk, CEO at FILM.UA Group.
For 1+1 Media holding and its joint project with Kyivstar, an online television platform Kyivstar TV founded in 2019, entering the territory of original content is an important and logical step to expand and diversify the audience as well as to develop own creative potential of the production.
“Presently we observe significant interest in Ukrainian original content confirmed by the results of Crazy Wedding screenings; by the way, the third film can be exclusively viewed on our platform. And it is delightful that such request arrives from the audience. Creating the first original series for Kyivstar TV and generally a step towards creating own high-quality content is something we have been coveting for a long time and a dream of millions of Ukrainians, without any exaggeration. I believe in the project’s success and I am convinced that this is a new important milestone in the development of Kyivstar TV,” said Pavlo Rybak, head of Kyivstar TV project from 1+1 Media.
Therefore, Crazy Neighbors is the first original series for Kyivstar TV and the first series based on the most successful and the craziest Ukrainian film franchise. To be continued – and it’s gonna be fun!
Information about Kyivstar TV
Kyivstar TV is a joint project of 1+1 Media and Kyivstar founded on December 11, 2019. This is an online television platform providing the users with access to hundreds of thousands of hours in Ukrainian and international content, live TV programs and regular exclusive pre-premiere project broadcasts. Its advantage is the possibility to view content from five devices at once – including smartphones, tablets, laptops, Smart TVs or TV tuners. As of early April 2021, the platform had 262 TV channels and a VOD library with 10,000 films and series totaling over 50 thousand hours.
