Welcome to our annual selection of the most scorching titles headed to MIPCOM this year, Deadline’s The Hot Ones. Our editorial team, with years of experience and knowledge about what sells globally, has carefully researched and selected the projects we expect to drive the chatter on the Croisette and far beyond.
On the docs front, this year’s selection encompasses everything from a Taylor Swift deep-dive, talent-led series featuring Tony Shalhoub and David Duchovny, and an all-access look at the life of Isabella Rossellini – not to mention the obligatory latest show in the ever-popular shark attack genre. Wouldn’t be MIPCOM without one.
Breaking Bread With Tony Shalhoub
Lionsgate
Length: 6 x 60’
Producer: Lionsgate
Alternative Television
Network: CNN
Big stars like Stanley Tucci and Eva Longoria have led something of a revival of the celebrity-led food travelog of late and now five-time Emmy winner Tony Shalhoub is getting in on the act too.
Lovers of television will be familiar with Shalhoub from roles ranging from the eponymous lead in USA Network’s Monk, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and NBC’s Wings, but in Breaking Bread with Tony Shalhoub he is taking on something entirely different.
The CNN series sees Shalhoub embark on a mouthwatering journey around the globe to make and break bread with local bakers, top chefs, home cooks and others. With each bite, he takes viewers along for an adventure, while creating deep connections with communities and exploring his own past.
The show feels like it has all the winning ingredients of a hit travelog and had been percolating with Shalhoub for quite some time, according to Tania Jacobson, SVP, alternative television, international for Lionsgate.
“When Lionsgate met with him to talk about some different ideas, this one floated right to the top,” she says. “He has such a passion for food, culture and history, and then for how all these things interlink. Tony has been amazing to work with. He is super invested in these stories, and he has been very authentically involved.”
Given its “strong history in the genre” with the likes of Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico and Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, Jacobson feels CNN is the perfect partner. “Not only is CNN investing in these kinds of stories, but internationally we think these global universal stories really resonate,” she adds.
Jacobson is hopeful about Breaking Bread’s prospects at MIPCOM and says she will particularly be looking to sell to the territories in which Shalhoub appears in the show, such as Latin America and France.
MIPCOM also gifts an opportunity for Lionsgate to shop projects on which it is “working as a 360-degree company” by both producing and distributing the project, which has become more of a reality after it acquired eOne’s unscripted assets nearly two years ago, Jacobson says.
On the scripted side, Lionsgate is also selling the likes of MGM+’s Robin Hood epic and USA Network: ’s John Grisham adaptation The Rainmaker.
Taylor
Blue Ant Studios
Length: 2 x 60’/1 x 90’
Producer: Sandpaper Films
Network: Channel 4
The global fascination with Taylor Swift continues unabated following her mammoth two-year Eras tour, meaning distributor Blue Ant Studios has a very good chance on the international market with this doc, Taylor.
What sets it apart from the likes of the Netflix’s 2020 doc Miss Americana is the fact the show acts as “a macro lens that reveals as much about America as Swift herself,” according to Lilla Hurst, Blue Ant’s global head acquisitions & content strategy.
U.K.-based Sandpaper Films, the docs house led by Susannah Price and Henry Singer, has focused on Swift’s 20-year career as a performer, a period that has seen her transcend the realm of pop star to become a cultural icon. Hurst says beyond this, the two-parter asks, “What the Swift phenomenon actually is and what is that says about the U.S. and nations plural.”
Swift’s level of fame is remarkable, being the highest-grossing live musician of all-time, the wealthiest female musician ever and record holder of the highest-grossing concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour from 2023. The new film aims to explain exactly how the 35-year-old Pennsylvania native achieved this much at such a young age.
A contributor line-up of music industry insiders, PRs, mega fans, scholars and psychologists help build the picture, along with video from eight hours of footage taken early in Swift’s career when a Rolling Stone journalist spent a week with her and her family.
“We look at how she has scaled the dizzying heights and managed to survive, and what price she has paid to keep this level of prominence,” says Hurst, who will be in Cannes selling the show before exiting Blue Ant to take a sabbatical year in 2026. “She has done a brilliant job of wearing her heart on her sleeve, but at the same time protecting herself.”
Hurst landed the production for Canada-based Blue Ant after Sandpaper’s Price, a long-time industry friend, told her about it 18 months ago. Since launch, former Lightbox exec Price and 9/11: The Falling Man producer Singer have focused on pop culture figures such as Swift and other lightning-rod characters like self-proscribed misogynist Andrew Tate and Karen Read, the American woman who was tried and found not guilty of murdering her boyfriend. Earlier this year, another Sandpaper doc, A Deadly American Marriage,was named the streamer’s most-watched unscripted movie of 2025.
Blue Ant has two versions on offer at MIPCOM, with original broadcaster Channel 4’s order being for the two-parter. The international cut runs to 90-minute to cater for those slots.
Sounds like it’s time for buyers to “Shake It Off” and get their check books out.
Untitled Earth,
Wind & Fire Film
Fifth Season
Length: 1 x 90’
Producer: Sony Music Vision
Network: N/A
If you fancy a break from the MIPCOM sales chatter, you could do worse than heading outside to the Fifth Season yacht and checking out some of the tailor-made Earth, Wind & Fire Spotify playlists expertly compiled by Questlove.
In one of MIPCOM’s more innovative techniques of recent times, the Oscar-winning director has made playlists of his favorite tracks for each of Fifth Season’s sales executives, and this will be a nifty jumping off point for them to promote his new feature.
Questlove, who won an Oscar for Summer of Soul, is behind what Fifth Season SVP Acquisitions Kate Laffey terms the “definitive” history of the band that brought “September,” “Boogie Wonderland” and “Let’s Groove” to the world.
“As one of the first Black bands to have mass crossover appeal, Earth, Wind & Fire imbued their music with unrelenting positivity and displayed Black joy and excellence to the world,” the doc’s synopsis reads.
Questlove has used his smarts and influence to gain once-in-a-lifetime access, including to Stevie Wonder, the Obamas and Lionel Ritchie, along with Marilyn White, the ex-wife of Earth, Wind & Fire founder Maurice White, who offers a unique spotlight on the man behind the music.
“They have achieved so much because of Questlove’s access to Maurice’s estate,” says Laffey. “Maurice died 10 years ago, and this is a moving story about his life. He was abandoned by his mother and gained resilience from that, but he was also a very insecure person.”
At the same time, the doc doesn’t hold back from also celebrating the commercial success of Earth, Wind & Fire. “The concerts they put on were so big,” says Laffey. “And the energy and costumes they brought just proved they really wanted to engage audiences with these amazing performances.”
Spotify hasn’t only been used to juice up Fifth Season’s musical knowledge as data from the music platform was also leveraged when compiling the top territories to target.
Along with North America, Laffey says Earth, Wind & Fire had huge followings in Japan, Korea, France, Germany, Brazil and Argentina. “They toured a lot, so this is a very commercially broad film,” she adds.
The film is unlikely to be given a theatrical run, but Fifth Season is targeting streaming services or the “premium marquee market on linear,” Laffey says.
Investigation Shark Attack
Cineflix Rights
Length: 6 x 60’
Producer: Cineflix
Network: National Geographic
The 50th anniversary of Jaws hands networks around the world an unprecedented opportunity to spotlight those most feared creatures, sharks.
“Jaws is still the cultural reference point when people think about sharks,” says Tanya Blake, EP of Nat Geo and Cineflix’s Investigation Shark Attack. “Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, I saw firsthand how it shaped our collective fear of the ocean.”
Yet with Investigation Shark Attack, Nat Geo and Cineflix are aiming to myth-bust and flip things on their head by exploring real human encounters from a shark’s perspective.
From Maui’s massive reef to a Florida beach known as the shark bite capital of the world, each episode zooms in on a different geographic hotspot. Then, using an interactive Shark HQ, four of the world’s leading experts deconstruct local encounters to determine why sharks mistake humans for prey. Harnessing these forensic investigations, the team leverages the latest science to reveal superpower adaptations and migration patterns that have been taking place for eons. Drone footage also proves just how often sharks are near humans — without incident.
Blake says the show’s basic structure “borrows from a true-crime investigation, only the suspect is the motive, and the weapon is the shark.”
“Most shark series focus on the victims: Their story, their trauma,” she adds. “We took a different approach and told the story from the shark’s point of view. We never name the victims or include their testimony. It’s not because we don’t recognize the impact of these encounters on people, but because this series is about understanding the shark’s behavior.”
Cineflix and Nat Geo have a close relationship, having partnered on the long-running Mayday: Air Disaster/Air Crash Investigation for decades. Blake was therefore given leeway to dive in, building a database of every shark encounter since 2022 and analyzing the patterns: location, species, time of year and severity of each attack.
The result, she reckons, makes Investigation Shark Attack stand out from the crowd, coming a few months after ITV Studios took the Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters gameshow to market.
“Sharks have always stirred a primal mix of fear and fascination with the unknown and so the ‘shark’ genre continues to be a proven success internationally,” she adds. “Our unique take on the series offers something different in that it’s the science behind an attack which we think will really resonate with audiences.”
Cineflix Rights is also selling The Walsh Sisters at MIPCOM, the adaptation of Marian Keyes’ bestselling novels starring Derry Girls’ Louisa Harland.
A Season with Isabella Rossellini
Escapade Media
Length: 1 x 60’
Producer: Elephant & Cie
Network: Ciné+ OCS
A Season With Isabella Rosselliniis a portrait of the Oscar-nominated star. The daughter of actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini, her on-screen career includes roles in David Lynch classic Blue Velvet and more recently Edward Berger’s Oscar-winner Conclave. She has also had a long modeling career, gracing the cover of Vogue 23 times. The film takes in the associated glitz and glamor, but also a more recent chapter in the star’s story, running a farm in Bellport, New York.
Documentary filmmaker Marian Lacombe is behind the project, which Escapade Media will launch internationally at MIPCOM.
“People know different things about Isabella,” says Lacombe. “Maybe they know about Blue Velvet, and the younger generation all know about Conclave,” Lacombe said. “People in fashion know her: You may remember when she was on the cover of Vogue several months in a row. People who know about Isabella and her farm may not even know how famous she is as an actress. You probably know things about Isabella, you’ve seen her face. Here, you will learn about the different parts of her life.”
Access is all-important in the world of documentary filmmaking and Rossellini says that she let Lacombe capture her at home and work. “She filmed everything,” says the star. “Sometimes, some sets were closed to her. We did an advertisement for Lancôme where she filmed the preparation, but it was difficult to film me interacting with the other stars of Lancôme, like Julia Roberts or Amanda Seyfried. When we did a series for HBO called Julia, she was not allowed on the set, but in the Alice Rohrwacher’s film La Chimera, she was allowed.”
Lacombe’s film shows the different sides of Rossellini’s work. The actress says, having seen the finished doc, she is grateful to the filmmaker although she had never felt compelled to speak about the diversity of her work and interests. “I’m an actress when I’m in films, I am a model when I work with Lancôme or Vogue,” she says. “Then I run my farm and manage it. I connect my own dots. I know that people might follow one aspect or another of my life, but I don’t feel to the need to explain myself to anyone. It was Marian that was interested in seeing the many facets and interests in my life.”
Heist: Robbing the Bank of England
BossaNova Media
Length: 2 x 60’
Producers: Soho Studios Entertainment, Homecoming Studios, Krempelwood
Network: Hearst Networks EMEA
Heist: Robbing the Bank of England is the latest co-production between British producers Ian Lamarra and John Farrar, who run Soho Studios Entertainment and Homecoming Studios, respectively. It’s also the second collaboration of theirs involving British journalist and filmmaker Marcel Theroux.
The two-part doc follows the extraordinary story of the 1990 robbery of over £290 million ($395 million) — now closer to $1 billion thanks to inflation — in bond certificates and Treasury bills in the City of London’s financial district. “This is the biggest heist in history, and no one has heard of it,” says Farrar.
Staged to look like a random mugging of a courier, the robbery was, in fact, a sophisticated heist that would ultimately involve the Provisional IRA, the New York mafia and the Colombian cartel. Multiple players alleged to have been involved were murdered and much of the money has never been recovered.
“It’s an international story that just happens to start in England,” says Lamarra. “The Bank of England is where the robbery took place, but the story takes you across the world.”
Theroux, brother of Louis Theroux, fronts the story, just as he did with Lamarra and Farrar’s ITVX crime doc The Playboy Bunny Murder, which Blue Ant Studios launched at MIPCOM Cannes in 2023. “Thisreally felt like a real natural successor to The Playboy Bunny Murder,” says Lamarra, who notes it has been directed to ape the feel of a Guy Ritchie crime caper.
“Traditional heist docs are about the plan for the heist, whereas in our story the heist element is quite simply a man with a knife to a teller’s throat, and it is actually about the story of what happens next,” adds Farrar.
Krempelwood, the U.K. content financier, is also attached, having worked with Farrar and Lamarra in the past. Hearst Network: s EMEA’s Crime + Investigation channel is the commissioner and Paul Heaney’s BossaNova will be selling rights to all territories not already tied up. The series will soon launch on C+I, meaning there will be ratings data available to provide context for buyers in Cannes.
Heaney says there is “certainly a need for the two-to-four-part boxset.” In this case, he says BossaNova expects cut-through thanks to Farrar’s know-how in access and Lamarra’s “expertise and experience” in talent-led doc projects. Heaney will be targeting deals in the U.S., Australia and Germany “for starters,” he says. “We have high hopes.”
Secrets Declassified with David Duchovny
A+E Global Media
Length: 10 x 60’
Producers: Nutopia, GroupM Entertainment
Network: History
“This is real life X Files, pure and simple,” says A+E Global Media Executive Vice President, Head of Programming for Global Content Sales and International Liz Soriano of Secrets Declassified with David Duchovny. “It’s an investigative history series about crazy and bizarre government activity from long ago. David takes us through with the same curiosity and obsession for the truth that X Files fans will know and love.”
Duchovny, who made his name as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder opposite Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully in Fox drama The X Files, was announced for Secrets Declassified earlier in the year alongside new unscripted series from the likes of Henry Winkler and Ving Rhames, as A+E Network: The History Channel leaned deep into talent-led docs.
“The mystery and unexplained phenomenon genre has become a specialism of ours, with shows from Laurence Fishburne, William Shatner, Dan Ackroyd and Danny Trejo,” says Soriano. “David Duchovny is the next in that line.”
The series, which debuted on History in the U.S. in April, sees Duchovny looking into black sites, strange weapons, army psyops tests, dark Cold War science and unholy alliances between governments and cults.
“The performance in its time slot drove us to rank as the number one entertainment Network: on cable,” says Soriano. “There was tremendous success in total viewers aged 5-64.”
International History channels have begun to premiere the show around the world, but A+E will be shopping the post-pay-TV exclusive windows in Cannes. “What we tell buyers who want to cluster shows is Secrets Declassified really does complement series in the mystery and unexplained space,” says Soriano. “If you’re a digital streamer that has a title for the genre, this is a great complement to the lineup, and these shows are really built to repeat.”
The series comes from Jane Root’s London-based Nutopia in association with GroupM Entertainment. Root, Duchovny and GroupM’s Richard Foster are among the exec producers.
Nutopia is best known for shows such as Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, The World According to Jeff Goldblum and Shark Beach with Anthony Mackie: Gulf Coast on Netflix, so certainly has the pedigree in the talent-led doc series space. The move into the unexplained phenomena space comes as Soriano says appetite for the genre has become “insatiable,” adding, “When you look at the History U.S. portfolio, it makes up a third of the content. That is significant and speaks to how much audiences want it.”
The truth, as Duchovny would say himself, is out there.