PREMIUM SPOTLIGHT ON RUSSIAN EPIC TV SERIES JANISSARY WITH ILYA MALAKOV: A STORY OF HONOUR, FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE SET IN THE LATE 17TH CENTURY

  JANISSARY EPIC SERIES  

TO LAUNCH TOMMOROW!

Janissary will start in Russia tomorrow

Now I cannot tell you if the plan is still on given the current situation over in dear old Matushka Rossiya, but according to official schedule new historical series JANISSARY ((Русский пленник or Янычар) should start on the First Channel of Russia's national broadcaster tomorrow, February 28th with the action set in the dark and blood thirsty Ottoman empire within lavish new 12 episodes! Beside our dearest Ilya Malakov (whom you remember from their historical movie Kolovrat or Furious) in the lead role, the cast also includes actors from Serbia, Georgia, Ethiopia, Latvia, Lithuania, Azerbaijan, Belarus, thus making it a panslavic and international project with more than 150 actors involved in total. The shooting started back in the summer of 2019 so it was a very long production process. The story is set at the end of the15th and the beginning of the 16th century so beside the infamous Turkish sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (Serbian actor Ivan Bosiljcic), the series will also include Russian tzars Fedor Ivanovich (Vladimir Koshevoi) and Boris Godunov (Artur Ivanov). Samvel Tadevosian, controversial Serbian actress Milena Radulovic, Arina Zharkova, Richard Lepers also star. Ivan Shurhovetzkiy, who helmed Kolovrat, is also directing this one. A whole city was built in Turkey for the needs of the production and some of the mass scenes include more than 2000 people on screen. It it interesting that the sets were done by Tims Production which also did famous Magnificent Century, Turkey's most popular historical series ever. The series has already been sold to ex Yugoslav countries, Turkey, and some of the Middle East and North African countries.

THE STORY OF THE PRISONER 

 Alekha (Ilya Malakov) is an honest, strong, freedom loving Cossack from the end of the 16th century, who decided to fulfill his father's last will. As a result, he goes to a foreign land in order to bow to the Virgin Mary. By the will of fate, he finds himself in the palace of the Sultan Mehmed (Serbian star Ivan Bosiljcic) of the Ottoman Empire. Here the Russian is taken prisoner and sent to become one of the evil Jannisaries (sultan's elite squads made from the children and prisoners who are taken from the enslaved regions of the empire and then trained and forced to turn against their own families and people). In an instant, not only plans, but also the life of the protagonist goes downhill. The man tries to fight fate, but the circumstances are stronger. As a result, he becomes an Ottoman prisoner who must serve the hated sultan. Here Alekha will face many trials and hardships. But during the whole journey, he does not give up on the faith that one day he will return home - to his native land. In parallel, he finds the love of his life. But even here difficult tests await him. But for a real Cossack there are no barriers when he loves. He is ready to give his life for his beloved, because in a true Cossack, love for a woman is equated with love for the Motherland. Check out the trailer for the series below and tell us what you think:

CHRISTIAN BALE TO LEAD HISTORICAL ADVENTURE JANISSARY FROM DARA OF JASENOVAC DIRECTOR, SHARON STONE IN TALKS TO JOIN! SAMARA WEAVING JOINS KELVIN HARRISON JR IN CHEVALIER DE SAINT GEORGES MARIE ANTOINETTE COURT SET MOVIE

  CHRISTIAN BALE TO LEAD  

JANISSARY HISTORICAL MOVIE

I think we are the first ones to break this news in English, but Gaga Antonijevic, who directed last year's Serbian Oscar representative

The production should start next year

Dara from Jasenovac, is preparing a massive new historical adventure JANISSARY based on real historical custom of the Ottoman empire to steal babies from occupied lands and then raise them as killer Janissaries who would then be sent to pillage their own villages often unknowingly killing their own mothers and sisters in the process. He has already set Christian Bale as the male lead in the film that he has been preparing for twenty years now. 

 

    Set at the end of the 16th century, the film will see Bale playing a Serb taken as a child to Istanbul where he becomes a pasha in their army. The sultan eventually sends him to his fatherland to end the Serbian rebellion and this is where he gets faced both with his past and with a moral dilemma of what to do.

 

Gaga has also revealed that he is currently negotiating with Sharon Stone to take the role of Bale's mother in the film. Bale, who is married to a Serbian woman in real life, has worked with the director on the script which should start shooting sometime next year in Serbia and Turkey.  

 SAMARA WEAVING TO JOIN 

CHEVALIER DE SAINT GEORGES

We mentioned the movie a few months ago, and now Hollywood Reporter writes that Samara Weaving has joined CHEVALIER DE SAINT GEORGES historical drama as opera singer! Kelvin Harrison Jr plays the

Samara Weaving will take the female lead

lead as Joseph Bologne, or the Chevalier de Saint Georges, also known as the Black Mozart. Born in the Caribbean, Bologne was the illegitimate son of a plantation owner and a slave who was then educated in France and became a fencing master, which served as an entrée into French high society. With his music and operas, he ascended to the upper echelons of Marie Antoinette’s Paris society until a court scandal laid him low. Weaving will play Marie Josephine, a woman who yearns for creative fulfillment outside of her empty, loveless marriage and defies her controlling husband to become the voice of Bologne’s opera. Stephen Williams is directing for Searchlight.