The Saints - hosted and narrated by Martin Scorsese

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Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints

Distributor: Fox Entertainment Global
Length: 8 x 60’
Producer: Sikelia Productions, Weimaraner Republic Pictures, LBI Entertainment, Halcyon Studios
Network: Fox Nation (U.S.)

Before Martin Scorsese was a famed filmmaker winning every accolade under the sun, he wanted to be a priest. A little-known fact about the Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas auteur is that he attended a preparatory seminary that could have led to him becoming a man of the cloth, but dropped out after he failed a semester. Fast-forward several decades and numerous gongs, and the man who imbues Catholicism into many of his movies is still fascinated by the religion to this day.

Scorsese, who is self-financing a biblical epic called The Life of Jesus, narrates and exec-produces docudrama The Saints, which tells the stories of eight historical religious figures from Joan of Arc to Mary Magdalene to lesser-known influences such as Maximilian Kolbe.

Fox Entertainment Global (FEG) is selling it on the Croisette. “It’s not often that we get a chance to hear these stories from such a renowned and respected filmmaker’s access point,” says David Smyth, FEG’s Executive Vice President Content Sales and Partnerships. “I’m excited to see how consumable and appealing these stories are as docudramas. It signals a real moment in FEG’s journey.”

Each episode will take one saint, combining Scorsese’s narration with scripted, dramatic elements, in a similar vein to Jesus Crown of Thorns, another soon-to-launch Fox Nation docudrama.

The first tranche of The Saints episodes will drop shortly after MIPCOM and Smyth says interest has been coming in “from right across the board”. With the show’s theme in mind, FEG will be targeting buyers from Europe and Latin America, where large Catholic populations reside, although its narrator’s draw has left Smyth confident that it can sell around the world.

“We would expect it to do well in any market in the world that has touchpoints with faith, and touchpoints with Martin Scorsese, which is almost all,” he says.

In Scorsese’s The Saints, FEG will be hoping to secure buyers’ holy seal of approval, thanks to Scorsese’s divine intervention.