Montreal’s Connect3 Media and U.K. prodco Racine Media have optioned the TV rights to the mystery thriller The Butchers of Berlin, written by British author Chris Petit.

The companies have tapped screenwriters Leonardo Fasoli and Maddalena Ravagli, whose credits include the acclaimed Italian crime series Gomorrah, to adapt the book for television.

Connect3, a subsidiary of Montreal-based Cineflix Media, is developing the Canada/U.K. copro alongside Racine, with Cineflix also on board as a development partner.

Published in 2016, The Butchers of Berlin is a murder mystery novel set in war-torn Nazi Germany in 1943. The book follows a financial crime investigator who is assigned to a homicide case and finds himself immersed in a world full of questions with no easy answers.

Connect3 president Pablo Salzman and Cineflix’s SVP of global scripted copoductions Julien Leroux will introduce the series to buyers at upcoming markets including MIPCOM and the Italian conference MIA.

Connect3 was launched in November 2017 with a view to facilitating more coproduction opportunities for the producers, writers and showrunners that Cineflix collaborates with. A month after its official launch, Connect3 revealed it was partnering with Brazil’s Boutique Filmes on a scripted series, The Chase (working title), about Nazi hunters. Creator and writer Rodrigo Castilho is attached to develop the series.

The company is also working on a six-episode spy thriller, Mirage, created by Bénédicte Charles, Olivier Pouponneau, and Franck Philippon. The series is a coproduction between France’s Lincoln TV, Germany’s Wild Bunch and Connect3 and is being produced for France Télévisions and German broadcaster ZDF. Cineflix is handling international distribution.

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