“[The move] will allow us to strengthen our many creative partnerships and work on a growing offer of movies and series made in Italy,” Netflix’s vice president of international originals, Kelly Luegenbiehl, told Variety in a statement.
“Since the launch of the service in Italy in 2015 we have been welcomed with enthusiasm by many Italian subscribers and have had the good fortune of working with a wide range of talents, some well-established while others emerging.”
The announcement comes after reports that Italian prosecutors had opened an investigation into Netflix for suspected tax evasion, given that the company generates profits in Italy but has neither a headquarters nor employees there and pays its taxes abroad.
Netflix is estimated to have attracted around 2 million Italian subscribers by the end of 2019.
The service has said it plans to invest €200 million in Italian productions by the end of 2021, calling Italy “a cradle of great storytellers and amazing talent”.
Available Italian originals include Suburra, an organised crime drama set in Rome’s underworld, Baby, a teen melodrama inspired by a real-life underage prostitution scandal in a rich Roman neighbourhood, On My Skin, a hard-hitting recreation of the final days of a young man who died in police custody, and mafia film The Ruthless.
Next up for release are Black Moon, a series about women accused of witchcraft in 17th-century Italy that debuts this week, Fedeltà (Fidelity), based on the bestselling novel by Marco Missiroli, Curon, a supernatural drama about a “drowned” village in South Tyrol, and Zero, about a young second-generation Italian with superpowers.
