Netflix has beefed up its Australian programming by acquiring international rights to all three series of Matchbox Pictures’ teenage fantasy action adventure Nowhere Boys.
The deal concluded by NBCUniversal International Distribution includes future series, which could make the prospect of a fourth season even more attractive for the ABC.
Matchbox Pictures already had a relationship with Netflix, which acquired the first season of supernatural drama Glitch and came aboard as a co-producer of the second season with the ABC and Matchbox.
The Netflix deal for Nowhere Boys excludes the US. In the UK the series created by Tony Ayres and produced by Ayres and Beth Frey has screened on CBBC and Amazon Prime Video.
The streaming giant co-produced with the ABC, See-Saw Films and Jump Film & TV the children’s series The Legend of Monkey and with the ABC and Giant Dwarf comedy The Letdown as well as acquiring the features Cargo, Casting JonBenét and Berlin Syndrome.
In Queensland next year Hoodlum Entertainment will shoot Netflix’s first original Australian series Tidelands.
Nowhere Boys has won 17 awards including best kids’ series at the International Kids Emmys (2015), multiple Kidscreen Awards, Australian Academy of Cinema Television Arts awards and Screen Producers Australia awards.
The first 13-parter followed four boys who get lost in the forest and realise when they return home they are in an alternate world in which they were never born.
In season 2 Felix (Dougie Baldwin), Jake (Matt Testro), Sam (Rahart Adams) and Andy (Joel Lok) discover they aren’t the only ones who crossed back to this universe.
Season 3 introduced a new cast as Luke (Kamil Ellis), a tech nerd and sci-fi aficionado arrives for his first day at Bremin High. Luke and fellow classmates Jesse (Jordie Race-Coldrey), Nicco (Luca Asta Sardelis) and Heath (Joe Klocek) find themselves in a terrifying empty wasteland that was once their home town.