Campbell Ryan Film Productions To Produce UK/Irish Interactive Teen Drama 'Sofia's Diary'

Irish company Campbell Ryan Film Productions Ltd has been selected by Sony Pictures Television International (SPTI) and the social networking site Bebo to produce the first UK/Irish interactive teen drama, 'Sofia's Diary'.
Due to start this autumn, the series shows in real time the day to day life of UK teenager Sofia and will include daily videos and text updates posted on her Bebo profile. Written by BAFTA-winning Irish writer Danny Stack, the show will combine real events with fictional stories, and keep viewers attention with real-time interaction with characters, in order to help direct the storyline.
Sofia's Diary started life in Portual in 2003 as an experimental web and mobile service created by Nuno Bernardo and BeActive and now claims some 200,000 visitors per month online, plus 19,000 mobile subscribers. Portuguese state broadcaster RTP2 has aired three series of the show on TV and with world wide rights held by Sony Pictures and Television International, the series has since been revised for the US, Germany, Brazil, Chile, Turkey and Vietnam.
The move to the UK/Irish market follows the success of Bebo's first interactive drama 'Kate Modern', which debuted this summer and garnered three million views in eight weeks.
Bebo international president Joanna Shields said Sofia's Diary would take drama to the next level by embracing the web as a new a medium for storytelling. "It's not enough for a piece of content to exist on a single medium - broadcasters, producers and writers need to consider the potential of telling multiple media", said Shields. "For an audience that's spending less and less time in front of traditional media, Sofia's Diary presents a new form of entertainment that makes the audience an integral part of the show."
Campbell Ryan Productions Ltd, established in 2001, produced the feature film The Crooked Mile which was the first Irish/Jersey Channel Islands co-production and the first feature outside to North America to win the Tribeca First Look Award.
Since then the company has produced programmes for local national broadcasters TG4, TV3 and RTE and sold programmes to ARTE France, YLE Finland and SBS Australia.
Since 2006 the company is expanding its activities, producing content to new platforms with an extended cross-media approach.
(DS)