EXCLUSIVE: ITV and Oscar-nominee Jeff Pope are teaming on a drama inspecting the devastating impression of social media on kids, an concept that got here to the broadcaster from Simon Cowell’s associate Lauren Cowell.
The as-yet-untitled collection will comply with the story of a number of households and campaigners together with Ellen Roome, who believes that the tragic dying of her beloved 14-year-old son Julian ‘Jools’ Sweeney may have been linked to dangerous social media. Roome has spent the previous 4 years looking for out why her son died in April 2022 after a typical day enjoying with associates, making it her mission to struggle for solutions from expertise corporations on each side of the Atlantic because the household don’t have entry to her son’s social media platforms.
ITV mentioned the drama will “depict the devastating international impression of social media on kids and study the extent to which expertise corporations are in a position to evade duty and scrutiny.”
Having campaigned alongside Roome and different households, Lauren Cowell approached ITV with the thought some time again and the present comes from Pope’s ITV Studios-backed Etta Photos in affiliation with documentary indie Featuristic Movies. Roome, who was initially creating the drama with Featuristic, is consulting and dealing with Pope’s staff all through manufacturing, whereas Lauren Cowell is an EP.
“Ellen’s story is likely one of the strongest, heartbreaking and vital tales I’ve ever come throughout,” mentioned Lauren Cowell. “What she and the opposite bereaved households have endured is past devastating, and but via unimaginable grief they’ve discovered the power to face up, converse out and struggle for change in order that different kids and households don’t endure the identical ache.”
Bereaved dad or mum Ellen Roome shows a picture of her late son Jools whereas talking on the opening of the “Misplaced Display Memorial”
Frederic J. BROWN / AFP by way of Getty Pictures
Roome added: “The truth that ITV and Jeff Pope are dedicated to this drama has genuinely given me an enormous sense of hope and reassurance. I really really feel they won’t solely inform my story, however most significantly Jools’ story, with the care, sensitivity and integrity it deserves. What occurred to Jools modified my life eternally, but when telling his story will help defend different kids and make folks really perceive the fact of what households are going through, then I do know there may be goal in doing this. Thanks all once more for believing on this and for committing yourselves to such an vital story.”
The present spotlights a subject that has been within the information loads of late.
UK campaigners have been lobbying for years for tighter social media regulation and final month Prime Minister Keir Starmer introduced a full social media ban for under-16s, which he mentioned will go even additional than the world-first ban in Australia. Extra particulars have been unveiled this morning about plans for a midnight social media curfew for older teenagers.
ITV and factual drama supremo Pope have labored collectively lots down the years, most not too long ago on Imagine Me, about “Black Cab Rapist” John Worboys. For the reason that standout success of Mr Bates vs the Put up Workplace, ITV has continued to often greenlight campaigning dramas like Sheridan Smith-starrer I Fought the Regulation and Peter Moffat’s upcoming present on the contaminated blood scandal.
The social media drama is the primary massive ITV greenlight to be unveiled since Sky formally confirmed it was shopping for the 70-year-old broadcaster final week.
