EXCLUSIVE: Netflix is approaching its decade in Poland so what better time to unveil its biggest production from the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region by a distance.
Netflix launched in Poland in 2016 and quickly realized the territory – a gateway to CEE with a hefty talent base and a population of nearly 40 million – was a crucial one. By 2019 the streamer had expanded to other CEE nations and in 2022 it opened a hub in the Polish capital of Warsaw. The hub has brought with it big-ticket originals like High Water, 1983, three Harlan Coben adaptations and an upcoming local verison of Love is Blind.
As it turns 10, Netflix is celebrating by today (November 5) launching disaster mini-series Heweliusz, estimated to be one of the biggest Polish TV productions of all time (the streamer declined to reveal its budget) and certainly the biggest that Netflix has commissioned.
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“I have been lucky to witness the Netflix experience and how we’ve grown and developed in CEE,” said Łukasz Kłuskiewicz, recently promoted to run TV and movies out of the region, who has been there through it all. “[Netflix U.S.] looked at Poland and saw how Polish viewers love local content. We quickly realized that it’s a great opportunity for us to move forward with original stories. Viewer reaction and excitement made us confident that we should be present and support local talent.”
Heweliusz is the biggest gamble so far, although it comes with some chops in the form of the creative team behind High Water, a hit for Netflix Poland that was also based on a disaster. Starring big Polish names including Magdalena Różczka and Michał Żurawski, Heweliusz is based on the sinking of a Polish passenger ferry on the Baltic Sea in 1993, which killed 55 people, leading to a huge rescue effort and the prime minister eventually establishing a commission to investigate the disaster. The event is believed to be the deadliest peacetime maritime disaster involving a Polish ship.
The Netflix re-telling has been a colossal undertaking. Filmed across nine months in a whopping 70 locations in and outside of Poland, the show is touted by Kłuskiewicz as “one of the most ambitious projects in Europe and maybe the biggest Polish production since [the fall of the Berlin Wall in] 1989.” Coming from the High Water duo of writer Kasper Bajon and director Jan Holoubek, it features 120 actors, 3,000 extras and a crew of around 140 people.
“In the beginning they thought no one would be interested and the show would be impossible to produce,” said Kłuskiewicz. “But they approached us and we just thought about how we could support our trusted partners on this journey because the vision they presented was absolutely compelling. We knew the way the story was crafted it would be super precise, super nuanced and had the potential to be multi-layered.”
Those multiple layers are what drew in Kłuskiewicz, who says the resulting series mixes genres including disaster, thriller, character and family drama along with exploring the event via different precincts. In this vein, it has much in common with Chernobyl, the hit Sky-HBO historical drama from 2019. At the same time, its creators are “fascinated by cinema” and the show is “shaped by the hundreds of titles they have watched in the past,” Kłuskiewicz said. He notes some “fantastic plot twists,” including an occurence at the end of the second episode that will “change your optic” on the story.
Kłuskiewicz said Netflix prioritized quality over speed on the making of Heweliusz and this taps into his broader strategy for projects in the region. “We may not be the fastest but at the same time we really care about the quality of our stories,” he added.
Making a show of this ilk involves treading sensitively but Kłuskiewicz stressed that Heweliusz is very much “fiction based on true events” and will focus mainly on “humans rather than disaster itself.” “Plenty of elements are fictionalized and some characters are blended into one,” he said. “We learn more about families and how they deal with tragedy. Kasper invites viewers to grow through the investigation.”
Vote of confidence
Heweliusz represents a huge vote of confidence from Netflix in CEE as the streamer celebrates its decade in a region that punches above its weight and has a bustling local entertainment sector.
While things may not have always been plain sailing (in 2019, Netflix amended a Polish docuseries about concentration camps after drawing the ire of then-Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, while a consumer watchdog recently accused Netflix of hiking subscripion fees without consent), Kłuskiewicz said “the skillset is there and we want to take care of the industry and invest.”
Upcoming, Netflix Poland has Lead Children, which features Cold War star Joanna Kulig, along with its first medical procedural, Anaesthesia. The former is based on true events and charts a pediatrician’s fight to treat children with lead poisoning, while the latter is about a renowned neurosurgeon who starts anew at a small-town hospital. There is also Mateusz Rakowicz’s drama The Riot about the largest ever prison riots in Poland in 1989, along with an adaptation of beloved Polish classic The Doll and a biopic of rock legend Jan Borysewicz.
The team has also in recent years enjoyed the fruits of Netflix adaptation supremo Harlan Coben’s labor with successful versions of The Woods, Hold Tight and Just One Look. Kłuskiewicz was tight lipped on future Coben adaptations but described the American author, who penned last year’s most-watched English language show on Netflix, Fool Me Once, as “a great partner for us.” And then there is unscripted, with a version of Love Is Blind Poland in the offing.
Kłuskiewicz stressed that Netflix CEE’s goal “first and foremost” with shows like Heweliusz, High Water and Lead Children is to please local audiences, before thinking about whether projects break out globally, in a similar vein to generation-defining, authentic hits like Squid Game that ushered in a new era of viewing to non-English language shows. Reaching audiences outside of CEE is “not the goal per se, and we want to connect local viewers with local stories,” he added. “If a story travels then it is because of the quality and power of the storytelling.”
He recalls an anecdote that made him smile about one of the stars of Polish action movie Lesson Plan, who was stopped by a cop during vacation in Argentina before realizing the cop was a Lesson Plan fan and simply wanted to take a picture.
High-octane TV shows, factual drama and movies along with romcoms and unscripted formats comprise a core part of Kłuskiewicz’s strategy, he said, floating that committed Netflix subs tend to watch around six genres each. Romcoms are a way of leaning into the full diversity of Poland, Kłuskiewicz explained, as he pointed out that they gift an opportunity to set Polish stories outside of Warsaw, in cities like Kraków and Wrocław.
Those stories have started travelling better to other nations in the CEE region like the Czech Republic and Romania, according to Kłuskiewicz, who cited projects like High Water and sports movie Boxer. “There was a belief that CEE content didn’t travel [to other CEE countries] for many years but we now see that this is less strong,” he added. “CEE has a common mutual history so we can understand each other and certain stories can resonate.”
Kłuskiewicz is responsible for licensing to the other CEE nations but he said there are no plans to commission originals from those countries at present. “The goal is to build a big story in Poland and if it resonates in Romania then that is an additional win,” he added.