True crime, sports, and gladiators



Perhaps it’s a by-product of excitement for the upcoming market: our call for submissions for this year’s installment of our annual MIPCOM Picks brought a veritable deluge of clips from international distributors who are obviously keen to get back to the Croisette. As you’ll see from our selections throughout this week, there’s a dazzling array of content from a wide range of genres to attract buyers: from engrossing true crime, to inspiring sports documentary, to the myriad specialist factual genres and formats that fill catalogs each year. stay tuned for the rest of our picks, appearing here over the course of this week.

THE BOX
Partners: Top Hat Productions for Paramount+ UK; distributed by All3Media International
Length: 3 x 60 minutes
Premiered: August 2022 (Paramount+ UK)
Rights available: All rights excluding the UK

For one of the first unscripted commissions for Paramount+ in the UK, Top Hat Productions delves into a murder case that had gone unsolved for more than 45 years. Sixteen-year-old Pamela Maurer of Woodridge, Illinois was found dead on the side of a road in 1976, but substantial leads at the time remained elusive. Years later, detective Chris Loudon decides to revisit the case, and in the course of investigation finds a box of evidence that was discovered years ago, but had been unopened up to that point. Within that box are dozens of photos of young women, leading Loudon and his team further along a trail that…