Australia’s highest-rated, free-to-air broadcaster, Channel 9 (The Nine Network) has partnered Gold Coast-based Red Empire on Interface, a sci-fi series revealing a breeding ground for gifted hackers, the Circuit Games, secretly exploiting new mind-controlling, military methods.

Created by Queensland based Ellie Popov of Red Empire Productions, the international co-pro eSports series is produced by Red Empire’s Amie Casey, Justin Jones, and Zeus Zamani’s Los Angeles-based Thriller Films, Adam Horner’s Ignite Pictures Australia, and Steve Chicorel and Kelly Mi Li for Organic Media Group – Taipei.  

Season 01 will log in ten one-hour episodes: six shot in Australia and four shot in Taiwan with production planned to commence Q1 2021.

As a second anchor platform, Taiwan-based Creative Century Entertainment has acquired the exclusive premiere Taiwan rights in advance of production and will be broadcasting Interface on Taiwan’s largest SVOD service, MOD. Operated by Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan’s largest telecom provider, MOD also delivers Netflix to the island nation.

Executive Producer, Kelly Mi Li, explains one reason why the series is unique in terms of diversity: “We’re excited for the opportunity to create content that empowers both Asian and Western stars to share lead roles for English language content. We believe this production and others like it can help improve diversity standards in the global market.”

Television powerhouse, Sonar Entertainment, (Hunters, The Son, Das Boot, Mr. Mercedes, Shannara Chronicles) will distribute Interface globally and is produced by the same team as another Sonar distributed title – Cypher, an FBI series debuting this month to number-one positions in numerous Netflix territories and also acquired by Taiwan’s Creative Century from Sonar and streaming now on Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom’s MOD. 

Sonar’s CEO David Ellender praised the Cypher/Interface team on the timeliness of its current productions: “While the rest of the industry struggles with COVID-19 challenges, we’re thankful we can deliver more quality content now with Cypher and next year for Interface. Sonar says it will seek a US platform for Interface once casting and production are complete.

Interface producers Amie Casey  Adam Horner, Steve Chicorel, and Justin Jones are represented by Ignite Elite Artists.