Italy: Netflix to open Rome base near Via Veneto

Rome: Netflix, the American media services provider, has underscored its strong links with Rome by choosing to open a base in the Via Veneto area of the capital.

The Rome launch by the US steaming giant was delayed by the covid-19 pandemic however it now plans to open in the Italian capital in the second half of 2021, according to Variety.

The new Netflix base will be in the historic Villino Rattazzi on Via Boncompagni, a prestigious street hosting the US embassy to Italy and the American parish church of St Patrick’s.

The villa’s offices will host the Italian team – numbering around 40 and previously based in Amsterdam – working in the marketing, public relations and new production sectors, according to Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

The three-storey building, which dates to around 1900, was designed by the architect Giulio Podesti, for the family of the statesman Urbano Rattazzi, one of Italy’s founding fathers.

In addition to the existing American connections to Via Boncompagni, the choice of location by Netflix is not casual: the nearby Via Veneto is synonymous of Italy’s dolce vita golden era of cinema and Hollywood actors.

Netflix, which sponsored Rome’s Spelacchio Christmas trees in 2018 and 2019, also filmed the hit series Suburra and Baby in the Eternal City as well as movies such as The Two Popes.

So what can we expect in the near future? Netflix gave Variety an insight into what is on the horizon? Zero will mark the first Italian series focused on the life of young black Italians and is in post production; then there is Fidelità from the Missiroli novel; and Luna Park, set during the “Dolce Vita” days of Rome.

Generazione 56K revolves around a group of teens “overwhelmed by the arrival of the internet on the threshold of adolescence”; Strappare lungo i bordi di Zerocalcare is a dive into the animated world of the Italian cartoonist Michele Rech; and filming has begun in Turin for a new Italian Netflix original series titled Guida astrologica per cuori infranti, based on the writings of Silvia Zucca.

However the biggest investment by Netflix is reserved for an adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s hit novel La vita bugiarda degli adulti (The Lying Life of Adults) which is scheduled to hit our television screens in 2022.