EXCLUSIVE: The upcoming ABBA feature, which will air on 14 broadcasters including the BBC and CW, is an attempt to give the global superstars the Asif Kapadia-style doc treatment for the first time while combatting “Anglo-American” snobbery, according to its director.
James Rogan said previous docs about ABBA have been “lovely, full of joy and in the style of the arts programing of the late nineties and noughties,” while his team wanted to hand the show a modern narrative treatment, seen in the work of auteurs like Amy and Senna director Kapadia.
Produced by Rogan Productions, ABBA: Against the Odds is a documentary first in that it has been funded by 14 broadcasters including the BBC, CW and Scandinavian networks to help take on the might of the streamers, organized under the auspices of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which runs Eurovision. The 90-minuter will launch a week before the 50th anniversary of ABBA’s Eurovision Song contest victory in Brighton, England, which catapulted them to global superstardom with the song ‘Waterloo’.
Rogan was approached by Danish commissioning exec Anders Bruus around four years ago, and noted “there hadn’t been any modern docs about ABBA” that reflected how doc storytelling had changed over the past decade. As a producer of “serious” docs, Rogan said he has repeatedly been asked, “Why are you making a film about ABBA?” since embarking on the journey.
“The challenge was the scale of it,” he added. “We discussed the project for a long time and it was always about trying to find the right shape.”
Having buy-in from Scandinavian broadcasters allowed the producers to challenge Anglo-American stereotypes and traditional criticisms of ABBA, which have held through the decades, according to Rogan. The team trawled through thousands of hours of archive, utilizing older interviews with the four-piece to overlay the footage.
“[Our doc] captures a snobbery that was endemic to Anglo-American criticism,” said Rogan, whose back catalog includes Steve McQueen’s Uprising, Riz Ahmed’s Defiance and Freddie Mercury: The Final Act. “What I love in storytelling is a strong outsider story. When you think about ABBA and cut through all the kitsch and costumes you realize there is this band that did something that no other band had done before or since. As a non-anglophone band singing in their second language they conquered the world.”
Rogan cites an American interview with ABBA shown in Against the Odds from a journalist whose first question is: “You write the music, you perform it, doesn’t that make it all a bit ‘samey’?.”
“This [interview] was in America in the midst of them being the biggest selling artists in the world producing difficult, complex music, and this is the type of question they were getting,” said Rogan. ABBA struggled to conquer America, and it is notable that The CW is airing the doc later this year.
The production team wanted to showcase the stumbling blocks ABBA experienced in their early years, such as the two couples’ divorces and protests by hundreds and thousands of Swedes that took place in Sweden the year after the band won Eurovision. Ostensibly, these protests were targeted at the government for failed cultural policies but they were led by a progressive music movement that opposed the success of bands like ABBA.
“We were quite shocked when we found out about the protests,” added Rogan. “I knew [ABBA] were seen as ‘not cool’ but I didn’t know that transpired in protests and nasty, belittling language.”
ABBA Voyage bus. Image: Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty
Over the past few years, ABBA’s popularity has been given a second wind with the smash hit London performance ABBA Voyage, in which avatars of the four performers sing through their catalog in an impressive spectacle, which is rumored to be launching in Vegas.
Rogan said Voyage’s popularity has tapped into a “form of collective memory,” a similar feeling he gets when producing landmark music documentaries.
“There is something about [Voyage] and the place where ABBA’s music exists in our lives,” he added. “Everything about Voyage feels like it could lead to a cold experience, but then you go and everyone around you is just weeping.”
With Against the Odds, Rogan hopes his team has landed an innovative funding model that could help it compete with the streamers in a genre replete with high-end premium fare.
“This is a way of creating premium PSB TV docs in a way that offers value to all,” he added.
Commissioning editor Bruus told Deadline the feature is “testament to the strength of storytelling in bringing together communities across Europe.” “ABBA’s music knows no boundaries, and neither does the spirit of collaboration showcased by the European TV stations joining forces for this unprecedented broadcast event,” he added.