The Romanée-Conti forger is out on bail, and he’s talking
A man convicted of faking Romanée-Conti is on bail in Paris and talking. Plus a London trial over dirty gold, a woman held fifteen days in a Texas psychiatric hospital, and the year’s big history prize.
Every Friday you get the best optionable true stories we found that week, each with the rights route, and a section from Hollywood Wizard, our system for tracking what buyers say they want.
This week: the BBC’s head of specialist factual on cheaper, riskier history, Sky on what gets an unsolved case commissioned, and three buyers at the American Film Market. Then five things you could option, starting with the man who has twice been accused of faking Romanée-Conti and is now on bail in Paris, a London trial that asks whether the gold industry’s standard-setter can be liable for deaths at a mine, and the book that has just won the Baillie Gifford. At the bottom, three deals and one number.
| In this edition | |
| 01 | Hollywood Wizard five buyers, in their own words |
| 02 | The Board five things to option |
| 03 | The Market three deals and a number |
| 04 | Watchlist what we are tracking |
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Here’s the latest from Hollywood Wizard, our system that scans hundreds of sources every week for signs of what buyers actually want. Five things from this week, biggest buyer first.
| BBC Specialist Factual |
| “But don’t assume that low cost means low ambition, because the opposite can be true. When financial risk is lower, our creative risk can be higher.” |
Jack Bootle, the BBC’s head of Specialist Factual, to Televisual, 11 November. His department covers history and science as well as natural history, and he was telling producers that an idea might work better as a weekly video podcast, ten 15-minute films for iPlayer and YouTube, or a project with a creator the BBC hasn’t used before. “I’m also commissioning for YouTube, TikTok, and Sounds,” he said. If you hold a history story that can’t carry three hours of traditional television, that is a smaller, quicker door, and he says it is open to riskier ideas.
| Sky Documentaries |
| “With remarkable access to both sides of Amy’s family and those closest to her, this series brings new perspectives to a case that has remained unresolved for so long, while always keeping Amy at its heart.” |
Hayley Reynolds, head of documentary commissioning at Sky, announcing Don’t Forget Me: The Disappearance of Amy Fitzpatrick on 10 November. It is a three-part series from The Slate Works on an Irish teenager who disappeared on the Costa del Sol, and it starts on Sky Documentaries and NOW on 29 November. What she singles out is access to both sides of a divided family, plus testimony that hasn’t been heard before. For an unsolved case, that is what gets you through Sky’s door: people nobody else has on camera.
| Constantin Film |
| “So we’ll be on the lookout for projects that stand out, that feel fresh and unseen. There’s no real pressure to buy really.” |
David Kehrl, head of acquisition and co-production at Constantin Film, to Screen, 10 November, at the American Film Market. Constantin bought Backrooms at AFM, and Screen says the film has taken €11 million in German-speaking territories this year. Kehrl says the slate for 2027 and early 2028 already looks good, so the Munich company will be selective. A true story that German audiences haven’t seen told before will get a look. A familiar one won’t.
| IFC Entertainment Group |
| “If you have a unique perspective, great access, a filmmaking talent, a story that people want to talk about, that still is, I think, at the core of moviegoing.” |
Scott Shooman, head of IFC Entertainment Group, to Variety, 10 November, ahead of AFM. He said this year’s surprises at the box office haven’t changed his thinking. So a US independent buyer is still putting access and a story people argue about ahead of genre. He buys finished or packaged films, though, so bring him a director and a way in, not just the rights.
| Kino Świat |
| “Original and zeitgeist stories and conversation starters.” |
What Dorota Eberhardt, chief executive of the Polish distributor Kino Świat, told Screen she is looking for at AFM, 10 November. She says Gen Z makes up a fifth of Poland’s population but two-fifths of its cinemagoers, and she wants filmmakers who can reach them. If your true story can hold a young cinema audience, a mid-sized European buyer is asking for it by name.
Everything Hollywood Wizard holds is now in the Buyer Database, searchable by buyer. Every buyer page has a free preview, and Insider members see every statement, deal and job holder.
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Five things a buyer could option this week. The lead first, then the rest in rough order of how fast I’d move.
01 · The lead
The Romanée-Conti forger is out on bail, and he’s talking
Aleksandr Iugov was born Aleksandr Anikin in Siberia in 1984 and changed his name in 2013. Between 2011 and 2013, investigators said, he sold more than a hundred bottles of fake Romanée-Conti to wine merchants across Europe; around twenty buyers paid at least €2 million between them. A French court convicted him in January 2017 and gave him four years, two suspended, and ordered €300,000 in damages to the Domaine itself. Then better fakes started turning up. In September 2024 French, Italian and Swiss police, with Europol, searched fourteen addresses in Turin and Milan and arrested five of his associates; Europol said hundreds of bottles had been made in Italy and sold for up to €15,000 each. Iugov was picked up at Milan airport. When he saw the French investigator from his first case, he laughed: “Isn’t this a bit too far from Dijon for you?”
