‘The Testaments’ To Open Series Mania With World Premiere

The Handmaid’s Tale prequel The Testaments will be given its world premiere at this year’s Series Mania.

Showrunner Bruce Miller (The Handmaid’s Tale, Eureka…) and members of his creative team will attend the premiere, reinforcing Series Mania’s role as a “strategic launch platform for premium international content,” the fest said.

The Testaments is a huge launch for Hulu and Disney+ internationally this year. Launching two weeks after Series Mania and created by Miller, it is set in the dystopian theocracy of Gilead more than 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale, finding a new generation of young women grappling with the bleak future that awaits them. Cast includes Ann Dowd, who returns from The Handmaid’s Tale, Chase Infiniti and Lucy Halliday.

In more buzzy out-of-competition screenings, Peaky Blinders movie The Immortal Man will be shown in the same week it launches on Netflix. Series Mania kicks off March 20, the day of the Peaky launch.

Series Mania has also revealed international competition lineup, with 2026 “signaling a shift toward sharper editorial positioning and high-impact storytelling,” it said, noting that TV drama is a “contracting market” with fewer series, shorter formats and reduced episode counts.

In competition will be AMC’s The Audacity from Jonathan Glatzer, which stars Billy Magnussen as a self-appointed “inventor of the future” tech CEO who becomes engulfed in scandal.

British series include A24 and Molly Manning Walker’s Major Players about women’s soccer for Channel 4, along with the BBC’s prison memoir adaptation Waiting for the Out, while there is also Dustfall, the Australian “tropic noir” murder mystery that has been picked up by the BBC and is sold by Federation.

Other competition shows include Disney+ Latin America’s Dear Killer Nannies, HBO Max France’s Paolo, Movistar’s The Anatomy of a Moment, HBO Max Poland’s Love is Enough and Nordic co-pro My Brother.

The jury for the international competition will be unveiled shortly. The international panorama competition includes a trio of BBC shows, Babies, Small Prophets and Prisoner 951.

Series Mania runs March 20 to 27. The industry section will feature the likes of Russell T. Davies and Nicola Shindler, Disney+ EMEA content chief Angela Jain and Fremantle’s Jennifer Mullin.