4 Blocks Zero<\/a>\u2018<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHBO Max<\/p>\n
\n\tGreifeneder heaps praise on HBO head honcho Casey Bloys and her boss, HBO Max programming chief Sarah Aubrey, who she speaks with all the time. She describes HBO\u2019s output as \u201cextraordinary.\u201d \u201cEveryone has a different image of HBO, you\u2019ve got the \u2018Wire guys\u2019, the ones who love Game of Thrones or a classic like Sex and the City. There is this common understanding of the disruptive way of inventing a genre. Look at The Sopranos, this is a mafia story that was twisted and made unique.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHer first trio of local shows look to this model. Greifeneder\u2019s team is working on a prequel to hit TNT show 4 Blocks, a thriller from Dark producers Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar starring Dark\u2019s Lisa Vicari and based on the tales of Struwwelpeter, and a Beetz Brothers documentary about the theft of the Big Maple Leaf gold coin in Berlin.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Sopranos-esque 4 Blocks Zero is now in the edit and speaks to everything Greifender\u2019s team wants to achieve. Set in the 1990s just after the fall of the Berlin wall, it tells the origin story of Tareq Nassery\u2019s Ali, who became famous as Toni Hamady in the hit series about an Arab crime family in Berlin. \u201cWe keep the fire of what is interesting but we do not keep the ashes,\u201d says Greifeneder. \u201cWe always wondered how this whole clan thing started in Berlin. How did we end up here, with police not going to certain areas? With the right wing coming back and the Turkish and Arab communities being attacked? So many mistakes were made. It\u2019s not an excuse for crime but the whole situation is something we thought was very interesting to look at.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen she first received the 4 Blocks pitch in her previous role at TNT, Greifeneder says it was conceived as a \u201cpolice series,\u201d but she quickly wanted to switch the narrative. \u201cI felt like we\u2019d seen this topic 1,000 times,\u201d she says. \u201cIf the SWAT team goes in I don\u2019t want to go in with them, I want to sit in the apartment with the others and tell it from their point of view.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tThe German Lena Dunham<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Lena](\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-deadline-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tLena Dunham in HBO\u2019s \u2018Girls\u2019.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHBO<\/p>\n
\n\tMoving forwards, and with instruction that will excite Germany\u2019s creative community, Greifeneder refuses to stick rigidly to one particular genre but is seeking \u201ccreative variety,\u201d while she is on the lookout for the defining German voices of a new generation. \u201cIt can be something like what Lena Dunham did with Girls, or what we have with [Richard Gadd\u2019s new HBO show] Half Man. Getting that contemporary zeitgeist is something I want to try and do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWorking for some of the biggest American brands including MTV, TNT, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies and Boomerang has given her the ability to tap into these voices during a varied career.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn fact, Greifeneder, whose father was a scientist and who grew up without a television at home \u2013 \u201cI was just reading books and playing the piano\u201d \u2013 started out as a novelist. She has written several Bridget Jones-esque romcoms, one of which was made into a German movie titled Flaschendrehen, translated as Truth or Dare.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen she moved into TV and landed a job at MTV international in the UK, she no longer wanted to write books under her own name because \u201cI was working with so many writers and didn\u2019t want them to say, \u2018Oh but this is how you write\u2019.\u201d She did, however, continue penning books under a pseudonym, publishing several children\u2019s novels.<\/p>\n
\n\tAt MTV, which was moving into original programming, she found her true calling, and speaks fondly of overseeing a local version of worldwide hit Pimp My Ride called Pimp My Bicycle. <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAt first it was all about storytelling and music,\u201d she adds. \u201cI wanted to be at MTV because I liked music so much and then suddenly I was responsible for programs, acquisitions and production. It was such a free time. I\u2019m really glad I was there back then. It broke my heart to see how [MTV] developed [as the years went on], but I had an amazing time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter MTV, she effectively built up TNT in Germany \u201cfrom scratch,\u201d she explains, which she loved. \u201cThis spirit felt like a startup in a big corporation,\u201d she adds. \u201cYou had the support and knew what the brands were like, and it was very exciting to do that in Germany. With TNT it was about saying, \u2018Hey we\u2019re not a library channel, we do something else\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tBack to the present day, and Greifender is relishing what\u2019s to come. She appreciates German audiences\u2019 love for American TV and feels she simultaneously has the platform to champion the next generation of local streaming originals, while she will soon start making shows out of her new territory, France. <\/p>\n
\n\tShe doesn\u2019t take her disruptor position lightly and will keep banging that particular drum. \u201cI really like the name of the award because it is very specific,\u201d she adds. \u201cTo me disruption is a powerful thing, it means challenging the status quo.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tSeriencamp runs June 9 to 11.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: \u201cI try to produce things that have the potential to be the talk of the town.\u201d This…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[236943,236944,236945,156,1223,2592,3484,111,139,69,236946,437],"class_list":["post-468281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-4-blocks","tag-4-blocks-zero","tag-anke-greifeneder","tag-entertainment","tag-germany","tag-hbo","tag-hbo-max","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-seriencamp","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}