Happy New Year everybody. As we are patiently waiting for the release of Sky’s “Django”, international fans can now set their calendars. The 10-part series, starring Matthias Schoenaerts and Noomi Rapace, will be released on the German Sky Q and the streaming service WOW, starting February 17 with double episodes and on Sky Atlantic on February 21, 2023. I couldn’t find a press release for Sky in the United Kingdom, but I’m pretty sure it will be released in other international territories around the same time. Here’s the official synopsis:

Loosely based on Sergio Corbucci’s cult film Django, the series is the story of a gunman in search of the truth about the massacre of his family; he will find himself fighting for an even bigger cause. Texas, late 1800s: Django is a jaded cowboy in search of the daughter he thought he’d lost. In following her trail, he comes upon New Babylon, a town at the bottom of a crater, where all outcasts are welcome and where everyone is equal and free. Here, Django discovers that his 20-year-old daughter Sarah is alive and set to marry John Ellis, the founder of New Babylon. Sarah – who blames her father for the death of their family, massacred many years earlier while he was at war – wants Django to leave. But he refuses to give up and does everything in his power to get a second chance with her, becoming a valuable ally for Ellis, while they must defend New Babylon against the powerful Lady of Elmdale, Elizabeth Thurman, launched on a personal quest to get rid of this community of thieves and sinners. Unbeknownst to them, all of our main characters are linked by a web of secrets and a dark past bound to resurface.

A batch of new production stills as well as the international keyart for the upcoming “Django” have been added to the photo gallery.

On Sunday, Noomi Rapace was a guest at the 17th Rome Film Festival to promote the world-premiere of the upcoming SKY series “Django”. And while there, she also picked up the festival’s Premio Progressive alla Carriera (Progressive Lifetime Achievement Award). Pictures from the photocall, premiere and ceremony have been added to the photo gallery, alongside screencaptures from a press junket and new production stills from the series. Enjoy.

According to various Italian sources, such as SkyTG24, Noomi Rapace will receive the Progressive Lifetime Achievement Award during the seventeenth edition of the Rome Film Fest. This was announced by the Artistic Director Paola Malanga, in agreement with Gian Luca Farinelli, President of the Cinema for Rome Foundation, and Francesca Via, General Director. The award ceremony will be held today, Sunday 16 October at 19.30, at the Sinopoli Hall of the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone, on the occasion of the world premiere of the Django series, produced by Sky and Cattleya with Atlantique Production and Canal +, directed by Francesca Comencini, in which Noomi Rapace plays the role of the powerful and ruthless Elizabeth Thurman. The award will be presented by the Iranian director and cartoonist Marjane Satrapi, president of the jury of the Progressive Cinema Competition.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, “Django” will celebrate its world-premiere at the Rome Film Festival this Sunday: Set, like the original film, in the period after the American Civil War, the series combines plot elements from both Django and its official 1987 sequel Django Strikes Again, themes from Tarantino’s film — particularly the role of Black people and freed slaves in old West — as well as adding several original ideas of its own. Even Django’s famous weapons-packed coffin makes an appearance, though in a very different setting than the original. The series’ main story sees Django, played by The Old Guard and Amsterdam actor Matthias Schoenaerts, searching for his lost daughter, whom he believes survived the murder of his family years before. His journey takes him to New Babylon, a town run by the visionary John Ellis (Top Boy’s Nicholas Pinnock), who has created a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic utopia walled off from the violent divisions of 19th century Texas. “Django is extremely contemporary: it touches upon themes that go from characters’ psychology to family and from inclusivity to diversity,” says Nils Hartmann, executive vp of Sky Studios Italy and Germany, of the new show. Django will roll out 2023 exclusively on Sky across its European pay-TV footprint, on Canal+ in France, Poland, Switzerland and Africa, and via M7 in Benelux, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic and Slovak Republic. Studiocanal is selling the series worldwide. The complete article can be read over at The Hollywood Reporter.

In a recent article by WWD, Noomi Rapace was interviewed during the Paris Fashion Week’s Givenchy show and talked about “Django”, its upcoming premiere at the Rome Film Festival and the ongoing filming of “Constellations”.

Her series “Django” will have a splashy premiere at the Rome Film Festival later this month, and Rapace is looking forward to reuniting with the cast and crew, including costar Matthias Schoenaerts. “I love my character. She’s a villain with a broken heart. She’s really something different, something very intense,” she said. “I worked really closely with the writers and added and rewrote a lot of the scenes. I had a crazy dream one night and I told them about it, and they kind of wrote it into the script. It was a very collaborative process, so she’s very much me,” she said. She did a fitting for her red carpet premiere in Paris, but wouldn’t divulge designer details. Rapace said she was heading back to Berlin after the show to continue shooting her Apple TV+ show “Constellations.”

The English-language reimagining of the world of Sergio Corbucci’s cult 1966 spaghetti western “Django” is set to launch from the Rome Film Festival in October. The high–concept TV series, titled “Django,” will play in 2023 exclusively on Sky and its streaming service NOW in all countries where Sky operates, including the U.K., Ireland, Italy, Germany and Austria. It will also air on Canal+ in France, Switzerland, Benelux and Africa. The Rome Film Festival runs from Oct. 13-23. The 10-episode “Django” show stars Matthias Schoenaerts as the iconic gunman who is the title character, alongside Nicholas Pinnock as John Ellis, described as the “visionary founder” of the town of New Babylon. Lisa Vicari plays Django’s daughter Sarah and Noomi Rapace has the adversarial role of John’s powerful and ruthless enemy Elizabeth Thurman. The first four episodes are directed by Francesca Comencini who also handled the show’s overall artistic supervision. The remaining six episodes are directed by David Evans and Enrico Maria Artale. Filming took place in Romania, between Racos, Bucharest and the Danube area. Here’s the teaser trailer and screencaptures.

Another fantastic interview with Noomi’s in yesterday’s i Newspaper: For a few years when she was growing up in Iceland, Noomi Rapace lived on a farm, but she was too young to get involved with any of the day-to-day labour. So when, on her first day on the set of her new film, Lamb, she had to drive a tractor and deliver a lamb, it was something of a baptism of fire. “I knew I could not f**k up,” she tells me over coffee in a London hotel. “But I didn’t have a lot of adrenaline. There was a strange calmness.” Still, her foray into midwifery left its mark. “The weirdest thing was the very specific smell. It just wouldn’t wash off. It stayed for a week or something.” The Icelandic film, directed by first-timer Valdimar Jóhannsson, was the break-out hit at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Rapace, 41, plays a woman caught between two brothers, who loosely resemble Cain and Abel: she’s married to one and had previously been involved with the other. It is not the only biblical element to the tale; her character is called Maria, after all. When the childless couple discover a newborn in their barn, they are so excited that they fail to notice there is something odd about it – namely that it is half-lamb, half-human. The complete interview can be read over at i News – here’s Noomi’s quote on the recently wrapped “Django”, which will span over ten episodes:

I wanted to take a break. I had a Skype call with the director and writers who wanted to create a role. Then Nicholas Pinnock texted me for a coffee and I took him to work out with me in a climbing class. As we were leaving, he tells another friend: ‘I’m off to Romania tomorrow and Noomi’s going to play my sister’. And I thought: ‘I haven’t said yes yet’. The character is the most beautiful, brutal villain. I dream about her. I told the writers this, and some of my dreams have become part of the script. I have accepted imperfections and allowed myself to feel sadness, vulnerability and weakness. That’s not weakness. I was raised in a way never to cry, never show weakness. So I became very tough. I don’t want to live like that. I don’t want to accept that way of living, and carrying myself, to bleed into my son’s life. I want him to be a human that has access to all emotions, where everything is allowed.