A series about the group “Combination” will be filmed in Russia

A series about the group “Combination” will be filmed in Russia. Who else from the glorious perestroika and post-Soviet past can be reanimated on the screen with music, I tried to imagine Igor Gavrilov.

The video service Wink.ru, which hosts such serial hits as “Fisher”, “Ballet”, “Actresses”, “Nadvoe”, “Chicks” and others, begins filming an eight-episode biopic of the group “Combination”. The essence of the idea is very clear: the songs of the most popular late Soviet and post-Soviet group are now, together with their videos, perceived as a historical document. All these “American fight, I’ll leave with you”, “two pieces of sausage” and “debit and credit have not been reconciled” are a Polaroid snapshot of the values ​​of the late 1980s – 1990s. “Combination” seemed to be specially invented in order to make its history a chronicle of the era in an entertaining, dance-like binding. Against the background of the successes of “The King and the Jester” (see “Kommersant” on March 2), the series, in a word, was a matter of time.

The film company Lunapark, which also filmed The King and the Jester, will film the story of “Combination” in partnership with NMG Studio. In the credits are the names of producers familiar from this project: Dmitry Nelidov, Alexander Syrov, Elena Melnikova and Igor Gudkov. Nikita Kologrivy, known for his role as Kashchei in The Boy’s Word, will star in the role of “Combination” producer Alexander Shishinin. The stars of “Combination” Alena Apina and Tatyana Ivanova will be played by Anastasia Ukolova (“Molodezhka”) and Elizaveta Bazykina (“In Two,” “The Boy’s Word”). Apina’s husband, influential producer Alexander Iratov, will be played by “major” Pavel Priluchny.

The very biography of “Combination” is conducive not only to nostalgia for the stage of the end of the last century, but also to deciphering the detective intrigue. In 1993, Alexander Shishinin was killed, the crime has still not been solved. The criminal line in the history of “Combination” can be very impressive, if, of course, the scriptwriters are not embarrassed by the fact that many of its participants are alive and well

“Cooperative pop music,” that is, pop music from the times of the first self-supporting associations and early non-state show business, provides enormous scope for imagination for screenwriters. The popular TV series “The Boy’s Word” showed the other side of this period in Russian music – there young group members dance at discos to “Tender May” and “Mirage”, and “Gray Night” is sung in a prison choir. The new Soviet pop was gaining momentum in sync with private enterprise and criminal associations. The stories of “Mirage” with its countless soloists and “Tender May” with phonogram compositions that simultaneously traveled around the country also beg to be shown on the home screen.

A tasty morsel in this sense is Kino, a truly folk group, the only one whose popularity among the general public can be compared with the pop artists of the late 1980s and early 1990s. In addition, next to Viktor Tsoi in such a narrative, along with his colleagues in the group, the figure of Yuri Aizenshpis, one of the first Soviet producers, could look colorful, and the criminal line here could turn out to be no less effective than the musical one.

Both existing full-length films about Viktor Tsoi and his entourage, “Summer” and “Tsoi,” were heavily criticized either by the hero’s relatives or associates and did not receive total audience support. Making a series about “Kino” is a worthy task, although not an easy one: everyone needs to like it and not offend anyone. The market is ready for such a project, there are draft scenarios, but there is no word yet on implementation.

Real series about “The King and the Jester” and “Combination”, as well as possible ones about “Mirage”, “Tender May” and “Cinema” – this, among other things, is a new round of depreciation of group catalogs, and on an astronomical scale. The impetus for filming the series “The King and the Clown” was the growing popularity of the band’s songs on Yandex.Music. Yandex took part in the production of the series and its promotional campaign and received a new round of auditions.

Sergei Zhukov understands all this perfectly well. Filming of the band’s biopic “Hands Up!” is in full swing, which, according to the musician, will reflect “the history of the formation of the entire Russian show business in the 90s and early 2000s.” Sergei Zhukov in the mass consciousness is the personification of well-being. He is a singer and composer, a successful businessman and a happy family man from glossy covers, for whom sold-out crowds at the Luzhniki Grand Sports Arena are a common occurrence. So for the film, the scriptwriters had to come up with a criminal intrigue in the form of an assassination attempt on Zhukov. And it will be strange if the project does not eventually grow into a series.