Two new Israeli teen series from Nutz Productions in the pipeline

Sky tells the story of a smart and assertive alien girl named Sky whose spaceship crashes in a small town on earth.

By HANNAH BROWN
A SCENE from ‘Rising.’ (photo credit: AVIA FARCHI)
A SCENE from ‘Rising.’
(photo credit: AVIA FARCHI)
The Israeli television company, Nutz Productions, a subsidiary of Ananey Communications Group, has two upcoming teen/tween series which might well become Israel’s newest international television exports: one is a witty sci-fi series and the other a historical adventure/romance set just before the War of Independence.
Giora Chamizer, the creator of the English-language Netflix series, Greenhouse Academy, which was based on his earlier Israeli Hebrew-language series, Ha-Hamama, is at work on a new series, Sky, with writer Noa Pnini, which will begin filming in February 2020 in various locations all over Israel.
Sky tells the story of a smart and assertive alien girl named Sky whose spaceship crashes in a small town on earth. While waiting to be rescued, she hides by transforming herself into the body of the most popular girl in high school, who happens to be out of town. Sky must survive two weeks on earth without being discovered.
Sky is from an advanced civilization whose citizens can change their DNA at will, but Sky retains her original personality.
“She needs to pretend to be a mean girl, but she really isn’t,” said Chamizer in a recent telephone interview. “She finds a group of nerds who become her protectors. They’re onto her secret and they help her.”
Eventually, “there will be a love story with one of the nerds.” The catch is that the mean girl she’s pretending to be is into a jock. “She needs to be pretend to be into a jock but really likes [the] nerd.”
If it’s a hit here, it’s likely there will be a remake abroad, Chamizer said.
Chamizer’s Greenhouse Academy, which is about a brother and sister who are studying in an academy that trains spies, has been renewed on Netflix for four seasons.
“It’s been an amazing experience. Audiences all over the globe are responding to Greenhouse Academy,” he said.
A very different series, Rising, which has just wrapped, follows a brother and sister, Emile and Elinore, illegal immigrants to Israel in 1946. They join a group of exceptional teens training in a secret base and recruitment center to act as strike forces against the British Mandate troops. At first, they are mocked by native Israelis for being foreign, but soon they all realize they better stick together if they want to survive the exhausting training and the dangerous missions.
The fictional characters and events are juxtaposed against actual historical occurrences and real-life political and cultural figures, among them: Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Shoshana Damari and Yitzhak Shamir.
Much of the filming was done in the Beit Jimal monastery near Beit Shemesh.
Rising was created by veteran television producers, Eden Gurion and Yehonatan Bar Ilan. Gurion is a writer on the television series, Eilat on HOT. Bar Ilan was a writer on Till the Wedding, which CBS is making into an English-language pilot.
Rising will be broadcast on 2020 on Israel’s Teen Nick channel on the YES cable network.


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