Sky and Peacock announce new drama based on Lockerbie disaster

Sky and Peacock have announced new mini-series, Lockerbie, that will be based on the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 and the search for justice by Dr Jim Swire and his wife Jane who lost their beloved daughter, Flora, in the air disaster in 1988.

The five-part series will be written by Academy Award nominees Jim Sheridan (In The Name of The Father, My Left Foot) and Kirsten Sheridan (In America, Dollhouse).

All 259 passengers and crew were killed when the bomb exploded over Lockerbie 38 minutes after take-off, with a further 11 residents losing their life as the plane came down over the quiet, Scottish town. Thirteen years later, in 2001, Libyan national Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of the crime and later released on compassionate grounds in 2009.

Shortly after the Lockerbie bombing, one of the worst terrorist attacks in history, some families of the victims joined together to launch a campaign for truth and justice. Among them was Dr Jim Swire whose campaign has taken him to the sand dunes of Libya to meet face-to-face with Colonel Gaddafi, to 10 Downing Street to meet with successive Prime Ministers and to the corridors of power in the US where he worked with the American victims’ groups to mount pressure on Washington for tighter airport security, well before 9/11.

The moving series will explore events from 1988 to the present day, while providing an intimate account of a man, a husband, and a father who pushes his marriage, his health, and his sanity to the edge.

Jim and Kirsten Sheridan, said, “The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 was one of the world’s deadliest terror attacks that continues to have widespread implications for the meaning of justice in the US, Scotland and Libya. Over 30 years on, this series takes an intimate and very personal look at the aftermath of the disaster, and we are grateful to all of those, particularly Jim and Jane, who have entrusted us to tell their story, and the story of their loved ones, on screen.”

The series, which is due to begin production later this year, is a co-production between UCP and Sky Studios, produced with Universal International Studios’ Carnival Films for Sky and Peacock. Both Universal International Studios and UCP are divisions of Universal Studio Group. It is the first scripted co-commission from Sky and sister company Peacock, NBCUniversal’s streaming service.

The series is written by Jim and Kirsten Sheridan, with Naomi Sheridan guest writing an episode. Nigel Marchant and Gareth Neame are Executive Producers for Carnival, with Samantha Hoyle as Executive Producer for Sky Studios. Oskar Slingerland also serves as Executive Producer. The series was commissioned by Gabriel Silver, Director of Commissioning for Drama at Sky Studios for Zai Bennett, Managing Director of Content at Sky UK. It will be produced with support from Screen Scotland’s Screen Commission.

The series is expected to air in 2023 on Sky in the UK, Ireland, Germany and Italy. It will stream on Peacock in the US. NBCUniversal Global Distribution will be handling international sales.

The drama is based on the book The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search for Justice by Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph, along with multiple other sources.

Background

About Sky

Sky is Europe’s leading media and entertainment company and is proud to be part of Comcast Corporation, a global media and technology company that connects people to moments that matter. Across six countries, Sky connects 23 million customers to the best entertainment, sports, news, arts and to our own award-winning original content. 

Following the launch of Sky Glass, we now offer customers our strongest ever line-up of products and services. As well as the new streaming TV with Sky inside and everything integrated, customers can enjoy the award-winning Sky Q with all your favourite channels and apps in one place, and with Sky Go you can now access an even better experience on your devices. Sky TV has new channels, new shows and new deals with Peacock, Paramount+ and more. Sky Mobile was voted Best Pay Monthly and Best Value Pay Monthly network by Uswitch, and with Sky Broadband we’re offering our fastest speeds yet.

Building on the success of Sky Originals like Chernobyl, Gangs of London and Brassic, we are doubling our investment in original content by 2024 through Sky Studios. Our new TV and movie studio, Sky Studios Elstree, is expected to create over 2,000 new jobs and generate an additional £3 billion of production investment in the UK over the first five years alone. Sky News provides impartial and trustworthy journalism for free, Sky Arts is the UK’s only dedicated free-to-air arts channel making the arts accessible for everyone and Sky Sports, our leading sports broadcasting service, brings customers some of the biggest and best global sporting events from the Premier League to Formula 1 and everything in-between. Sky Cinema is the home of Sky Original films with brand new films launching every month alongside an unrivalled range of the latest cinema releases and on demand library.

We believe that we can be a force for good in the communities in which we operate. We’re committed to being Europe’s first net zero carbon entertainment company by 2030 and we’re proud to be a Principal Partner and Media Partner of COP26 – the UN Climate Change Conference. We take pride in our approach to diversity and inclusion: we’ve been recognised by The Times and Stonewall for our commitment to diversity, and we’ve set ambitious 2025 targets to continue to increase diversity and representation.  We’re also committed to investing £30million across our markets over the next three years to improve our approach to diversity and inclusion, and to tackle racial injustice.

About Sky Studios

Sky Studios is Sky’s original programming arm across Europe, responsible for the development, production and commissioning of drama and scripted comedy, while also delivering Sky Original documentary to Sky’s 23m customers and beyond.

Building on the success of critically acclaimed Sky Originals including Emmy-winning Chernobyl, Bafta-winning Patrick Melrose and international hits Das Boot, Gomorrah and Gangs of London, Sky Studios is the creative home of new Sky Originals, such as Blocco 181, The Rising and The Fear Index.

We’re an agile Studio, seeking out the best untold stories from new voices while working in creative partnership with today’s best writers, producers and on-screen talent to bring viewers stories they wouldn’t find anywhere else.

About Peacock

Peacock is NBCUniversal’s streaming service. Peacock delivers a world-class slate of exclusive originals, on-demand libraries of hit TV shows, plus critically acclaimed films from the vaults of Universal Pictures, Focus Features, DreamWorks Animation, Illumination, and Hollywood’s biggest studios. In addition, Peacock taps into NBCUniversal’s unmatched ability to deliver a broad range of compelling topical content across news, sports, late-night, Spanish-language, and reality. NBCUniversal is a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation.

About UCP

Universal Content Productions (UCP), a division of Universal Studio Group, is a best-in-class content studio that leverages the power and scale of NBCUniversal while collaborating with visionary storytellers. The studio is responsible for commercially successful and critically acclaimed scripted and unscripted docuseries programming, including “The Umbrella Academy,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “Mr. Robot,” “The Act,” “Monk,” “Dr. Death,” “Homecoming,” “The Sinner,” “Suits,” “Dirty John” and “Psych.”  Upcoming titles include “Gaslit” starring Julia Roberts and Sean Penn as well as “JOE vs CAROLE” with Kate McKinnon and Kyle MacLachlan.

About Carnival Films

Carnival Films is a London-based television and feature film production company, part of Universal International Studios, a division of Universal Studio Group. Led by executive chairman and producer Gareth Neame, the company is one of the UK’s leading drama producers, having produced hundreds of hours of compelling content viewed around the world. 

Carnival Films produced all six seasons of the award-winning and beloved TV phenomenon Downton Abbey, which aired in over 250 territories worldwide and set a Guinness World Record for being the most critically well-received show in the world. The company produced the hit feature film of the same name, which earned more than $193 million at the worldwide box office in 2019, making it the highest grossing film of all time for distributor Focus Features. The movie sequel Downton Abbey: A New Era is set to be released in the UK on April 29 and in the US on May 20 this year. Other Carnival Films productions include hit series The Last Kingdom for Netflix, which is also being produced as a movie, plus Belgravia for ITV and EPIX, and Jamestown for Sky One.

Having received more than 200 international awards and honours including Primetime Emmys, Golden Globes and BAFTAs, Carnival has also produced landmark series such as Poirot, Hotel Babylon, Whitechapel and Dracula, as well as award-winning mini-series Traffik, Any Human Heart, The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies and The Hollow Crown anthology. 

For more information, please visit www.carnivalfilms.co.uk

 

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