News archive

FilmBrigade has won a bid to produce a new television series for Prima TV, 
The Miracles of Life. The new contract means that we will be producing two TV series at the same time.

While shooting second season of the successful Cold Feet, we are simultaneously developing and preparing to shoot the series about relationships. Starring Tatiana Vilhelmová, Jana Plodková, Jiří Ornest and Roman Zach, The Miracles of Life is written by scriptwriter Eva Papoušková (Pojišťovna štěstí) and will be directed by Jaromír Polišenský and Radim Špaček.


The premiere of the new series Cold Feet gives Prima TV a boost. The ratings and quality of the episode furthermore indicate which way to go in the future.

On Wednesday, September 23, 2009, an average of 978,000 viewers watched the first episode of the new series Cold Feet on Prima TV. And during the most watched minute of the show, there were 1.235 million viewers in the target group D 15+. Expressed in other numbers: its share of the D 15+ group was 27.19% and it captured 29.33% of the D 15–54 group. And that is a huge achievement for Prima.

Thursday, July 2, marks the first day of filming for the new thirteen-part series produced by FilmBrigade.

Prima TV has declassified the project, which aims to attract a younger audience to the station. The brand new series Cold Feet, subtitled A Middle-aged Comedy, focuses on the lives of today’s thirty-somethings. “You definitely shouldn’t expect a substitute for Very Fragile Relationships. Missteps aims to reach different target group and will run concurrently with VFR,” remarks Prima spokeswoman Jana Kocová. 
The show will be shot partly in the Vysočany studios where the sets of the six main characters’ apartments have been built. Greater part of the story, however, will take place on location, both outdoors and indoors.

Between June 2 and July 4, 2008, a series of charitable commercials drawing attention to discrimination in the labor market will be aired regularly on Czech Television’s channels.

Between June 2 and July 4, 2008, a series of charitable commercials drawing attention to discrimination in the labor market will be aired regularly on Czech Television’s channels.

The creative concept comes from the studios of the production company FilmBreak, which also spearheaded production of the whole campaign. The three commercials are directed by FAMU graduate Martin Duda, whose graduation project, I’m Bigger and Better, was nominated for an Oscar for best student film and shortlisted with five other entries. Whether he wins the prestigious award will be decided in Los Angeles on June 7.

The anti-discrimination campaign was conceived and realized on the basis of an order from Gender Studies, a non-profit organization that financed the campaign with support from the European Social Fund and the Czech national budget.

Each of the trio of 30-second commercials depicts a variation of a regular job interview or conversation with HR officers. Three interviewees – a young female job applicant, a male employee asking for maternity leave, and an older female employee – are consecutively interviewed by two HR officers. Each of the commercials then climaxes with their unscrupulous humiliation of the interviewees, which is emphasized by a special effects sequence. The motto of the whole campaign is “Don’t let discrimination happen to you” and prompts viewers to familiarize themselves with their rights as employees and job applicants.

The commercials were made for the Půl na půl – Equal Opportunities for Women and Men project.

Starting in April, you can watch and download first 30 episodes of the TV series The Airport online, completely legally and free of charge.

Through the Prima iVideo service, Prima TV and Kinomania.cz, an online video rental server, have decided to launch an innovative service in the Czech Republic – free access to the station’s own TV shows.

“The internet is an important component of support for television broadcasting. That’s why we, as the first in the Czech Republic, have decided to let viewers watch our own productions for free. We intend to gradually expand the portfolio of shows being offered,” says Marek Singer, CEO of Prima TV.

FilmBreak is a new advertising and full service production division of two companies – FilmBrigade and Bionaut Films.

FilmBreak strives to take full advantage of the production experience of both of its parent companies, FilmBrigade and Bionaut Films, and to provide its clients with the best service and know-how the Czech film industry has to offer. Under the FilmBreak label, you will find the rare combination of film and television experience gained while producing artistically strong feature-length films and very popular television projects.

FilmBreak not only produces television commercials and video clips for clients, but also aims to provide full services to foreign crews. So if you are considering shooting in the Czech or Slovak republics, we will gladly attend to all your needs, whether your budget is 1.5 or 10 million euros. For interesting film projects, we can also join in as co-producers.

FilmBrigade celebrated the end of the making of the TV series The Airport at its Boarding Party on November 1, 2007 in La Fabrika.

Besides a private performance by the band T.O.P. Dream Company (with Vojtěch Dyk among others), the evening included a charity auction of memorabilia from the TV series that generated 61,500 crowns. The producers handed over the proceeds to the Christmas Bazaar, a charity event organized each year by actresses Aňa Geislerová and Táňa Vilhelmová that will take place from December 14–17, 2007.

D-Day for the TV series The Airport came on Monday, September 4, 2006. At 8 p.m. on prime time TV, TV Prima aired the first episode of the series produced by FilmBrigade. The first season had 84 parts, and was followed by a second season with 34 episodes.

The final episode of The Airport – number 118 – will air on December 19 of this year, when the stories in this Czech soap opera will definitively come to a close. The last clapperboard naturally clapped shut before that – on October 27. Without giving away too much, we can divulge that a large part of the action took place in the maternity hospital, where two newborns came into the world and onto the show. Besides audience popularity, The Airport chalked up two other gains this year: it was nominated for the TýTý popularity awards and even sold to a TV broadcaster in the United States.

FilmBrigade began filming the second season of The Airport, which will run on TV Prima from September to December 2007.

In comparison with the previous season, almost half of the sets were changed and several new cast members were introduced (e.g., Linda Rybová, Pavel Zedníček), while the plot will focus on true stories from the airline environment much more than before. Shooting will take place until the end of October by directors Petr Zahrádka, Radim Špaček, and Jaroslav Fuit.

The first season of The Airport closes with growing ratings. The 82nd show entitled ‘Václav’ had the largest share of all aired episodes this year.

On Monday, June 18, 2007, over 900,000 viewers over the age of 15 tuned in to the show, giving it a market share of 28.6 percent, i.e., the largest in 2007 and the second largest since the series premiered on September 4, 2006. Monday’s episode in which we buried the show’s main heroine, Anna Schindlerová, formerly Holubcová (Anna Šišková), was the most successful, particularly with the target group of women over 15, a segment in which it gained a 34-percent market share. Ladies, thank you! Anna, sorry.

On May 10, to mark the occasion of the opening of the new offices of FilmBrigade and Bionaut Films and the end of the first season of the television series Airport, a gala party for several hundred guests was held in the newly reconstructed La Fabrika building.

The evening climaxed with a performance by the band Nightwork in which one of Airport’s actors, Vojtěch Dyk, plays and sings. But he was not the only ‘Airport face’ among the band members.

The band’s set featured a special guest performance by actress Zuzana Norisová, who, under the identity of air hostess Petra, sang Roman Holý’s cult country hit ‘Life is a Runway’.

We would like to thank everyone who turned out for the party on May 10, and to hereby extend an invitation for next year, when we plan to repeat the event.

Although the last clapboard of the first season of Airport was snapped on Monday, April 30 as thee crew wrapped up shooting on location at the Prague Motol golf course, the next season of the series has been confirmed.

After a two-month break, shooting of the next episodes of the series will resume in the Vysočany studios in early July. Prima TV will begin broadcasting the next season in September 2007.

During May and June, about fifty percent of the sets will undergo changes, as the new episodes of Airport will feature plots set on passenger planes and in an international airport.

In early May, casting will begin for new characters in the series, including a new female lead.

From February 1, 2007 you can find us at our new address – Dělnická 47, Prague 7.

Our offices are located in the recently reconstructed factory La Fabrika. Besides our offices, the building houses our film studio, editing room, sound post-production facilities, and theatre space, where, e.g., director Miloš Forman rehearsed the new jazz opera ‘A Well Paid Walk’ for the National Theatre.

The interior of FilmBrigade’s offices were designed by Maxim Velčovský and Jakub Berdych from Qubus Design Studio. Cotto was chosen as the exclusive producer of the atypical furniture, and the chairs were supplied by the Swiss firm Vitra.

Prima TV is gaining in popularity with television audiences. The February 12th episode of Prima TV’s original series Airport broke another audience record.

The number of adult viewers who watched this original series from Prima TV jumped yesterday to 1.13 million, thus making it the most watched episode in the year 2007 and the second most watched since the series was launched on September 4, 2006. The show’s share of over-15 viewers yesterday was 28.5-percent. Even in this indicator, it set a record for 2007.

FilmBrigade decided to try its luck gaining financing for several films at once, a feat which Stillking Films managed last year.

FilmBrigade, which operates as the sister company of Bionaut and is currently producing the television series Airport, brought together several projects – X, Dream Team, Monte Christo File, and Budulín – for slate funding.

Media Desk has operated in the Czech Republic since 2002, and obtains money from European funds for producing and distributing films, for film festivals, and for education. The majority of funding goes to distributors who import European films, as they receive automatic support for films that have been box office hits in the Czech Republic. The second most frequent recipients are filmmakers. Almost nine million crowns have come to the Czech Republic from European funds in the form of grants for preparing new films. Those funds have been divvied up among six film companies that will produce a total of thirteen new Czech films in the next few years.