News

FilmSharks has reported a strong buyer response to Warner Bros’ local-language erotic drama and Spanish box office hit Ask Me What You Want (Pideme Lo Que Quieras), with deals closing in the US, German-speaking Europe, Japan, and Latin America.

Lucia Alemany’s adaptation of the bestseller from Megan Maxwell has gone to Capelight for the US, Canada, and German-speaking Europe, while CineStar has acquired Latin America and Max has taken the pay-1 window.

Rights have also gone in Portugal (Cinemundo), South Korea (First Run), Japan (At Entertainment), and India (Mvp). Advanced discussions are ongoing for France, with talks also continuing for Australia,...

Buenos Aires-based FilmSharks has closed new distribution deals for “I Can’t Live Without You” (“No puedo vivir sin ti”), the latest comedy from Argentina’s most bankable star, Adrián Suar.

Warner Bros. Discovery clinched rights for Eastern Europe, while New People Film Company secured rights to Cis, which includes Russia, and the Baltic states, Tanweer for Greece and Av Jet for Taiwan. Distribution rights for France, Germany, Korea, Australia and China are under discussion.

FilmSharks subsidiary The Remake Company has also sealed remake deals for the social satire with Italy’s Federation and Mexico’s BH5 with French, German, Chinese and Korean adaptation talks underway.

“This modern and realistic high concept comedy about cell phone addiction has translated globally very well, raising its distribution and remake potential,” said FilmSharks CEO-founder Guido Rud.

The latest from the producers of Spain’s reigning #1 Comedy “Ocho Apellidos Vascos” (“Spanish Affair”), the Spanish-Argentine co-production...

In the film I Can’t Live Without Youfrom director Santiago Requejo (Grandfathers), Argentine rom-com powerhouse Adrián Suar (So Much Love to Give) plays a workaholic on a quest to eradicate his smartphone addiction after his wife threatens to leave him for good. Starring Paz Vega as his fed-up wife, the film traces Suar’s path to redemption and — hopefully — freedom from his blue-light fixation. For more will they, won’t they comedies about marriages and the ultimate sacrifices that go along with them, read on.

In this romantic comedy, one man must choose between his two greatest loves: his phone or his wife. Will he win his wife back before it’s too late? Directed by Santiago Requejo (Grandfathers), the Argentine film I Can’t Live Without You stars Adrián Suar, Paz Vega, and Ramón Barea.

Stream it now.

Check it out at the top of this page.

Business consultant Carlos (Suar) loves his job and his life, but he’s in a toxic relationship with his phone. When his addiction ruins a family gathering, his wife, Adela (Vega), gives him an ultimatum: Ditch the phone or I’m done. When he fails to do so, Adela leaves, leading Carlos on a journey to save his marriage. But will his efforts — including signing up for smartphone-addiction therapy — really help him turn his life around?

It was filmed in various locations across Spain, including Bilbao, Getxo,...

“I Can’t Live Without You” (No puedo vivir sin ti) is a Spanish romantic comedy starring Adrián Suar and Paz Vega. It is directed by Santiago Requejo.

Adrián Suar headlines this comedy about a mobile-addicted executive, delivering a charming performance that anchors the film. It’s a lighthearted, unpretentious tale, elevated by Suar’s engaging portrayal.

Complementing him is Spanish actress Paz Vega, who adds a dramatic touch to the otherwise straightforward narrative. Together, they craft an enjoyable comedy centered on a man consumed by his cell phone.

Our Take

This comedy unfolds predictably: a cell phone addict loses his life and wife, then embarks on a journey to reclaim them. “”I Can’t Live Without You” on Netflix: A Perfect Comedy for Adrián Suar” offers no unexpected twists or fresh innovations, progressing from one familiar point to another.

Nevertheless, it serves as an ideal showcase for Adrián Suar’s comedic prowess,...

Netflix Argentina executives have been promoting the upcoming slate featuring new work from Ricardo Darin, Santiago Mitre, and Juan José Campanella including series adaptations of two of the most iconic graphic novels and comic strips in Latin America.

Leading the new productions at the Made In Argentina showcase unveiled to industry members in Buenos Aires on Monday night was 27 Nights (27 Noches), Daniel Hendler’s adaptation of the family drama novel by Natalia Zito inspired by actual events.

Mitre, who wrote and directed the 2023 Oscar-nominated Argentina, 1985, will serve as producer on 27 Nights.

Campanella, the writer-director of The Secret In Their Eyes...

Buenos Aires – Mafalda, the beloved and wily six-year-old drawn into acclaim by celebrated Argentine artist Quino, will bring her socially-conscious hijinks to the screen. News of the adaptation, which will be ushered in by Oscar-winner Juan José Campanella, was announced Monday evening as Netflix unveiled their 2024 ‘Made in Argentina’ slate to a spirited crowd of industry and media professionals.

Campanella will direct, produce and showrun the project, while Gastón Gorali co-pens and acts as general producer of the Netflix Original series and Sergio Fernández boards as production director. Netflix and Campanella and Gorali’s Mundoloco CGI, the studio behind “Metegol,” the largest Latin American animated production to date, produce.

“Mafalda and her friends not only made me laugh a lot, but from time to time, they sent me to the dictionary. And each new word I learned came with the reward of a new laugh,” Campanella revealed in a July statement.

Buenos Aires-based FilmSharks has acquired international sales and remake rights to the Spanish comedy I Cannot Live Without You (No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti).

The project is in post and stars Argentinian superstar Adrian Suar from 30 Nights With My Ex and A Boyfriend For My Wife and Paz Vega, whose credits include Lucia y El Sexo, Spanglish, and Rambo: Last Blood.

I Cannot Live Without You centres on a successful middle-aged executive addicted to his devices whose world falls apart when his wife demands a divorce and he signs up for an unusual therapy for cell phone addicts.

Santiago Requejo...

Buenos Aires-based FilmSharks has acquired international sales and remake rights to the Spanish comedy I Cannot Live Without You (No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti).

The project is in post and stars Spanish superstar Adrian Suar from 30 Nights With My Ex and A Boyfriend For My Wife and Paz Vega, whose credits include Lucia y El Sexo, Splanglish, and Rambo: Last Blood.

I Cannot Live Without You centres on a successful middle-aged executive addicted to his devices whose world falls apart when his wife demands a divorce and he signs up for an unusual therapy for cell phone addicts.

Santiago Requejo...

Lionel Messi made his acting debut in the Argentian soccer show Los Protectores in a five-minute scene where he stars as himself.

The show focuses on three soccer agents that are about to go bankrupt and decide to work together when a famous soccer play appears.

In the episode, Messi is still in the soccer club Paris Saint-Germain. Three agents, played by Gustavo Bermudez, Adrian Suar and Andres Parra, pay him a visit to discuss a new project that would support young soccer players that compete in European clubs.

Messi begins to get annoyed as he discovers that the agents aren’t interested in discussing the project and instead request photographs, videos and autographs from him.

One of the men, Renzo “Mago” Magoya, pitches a bizarre proposal where Messi would have to play one game in every club in Argentina. Messi disapproves of the idea, making everyone feel awkward. His...

Adrian Suar’s Argentinian comedy hit sells to US, Spain, Taiwan.

FilmSharks has licensed territories including the US on Adrian Suar’s Argentinian comedy hit 30 Nights with My Ex (30 Noches con Mi Ex).

Deals have closed for the US (Somos TV), Spain (Moviestar+), Taiwan (Av), and Eastern Europe and Central Europe (HBO Max), with Spafax and Anuvu taking airline rights.

Suar’s feature directorial debut about a divorced couple prescribed to live together for a month as part of their psychiatric treatment sold more than 800,000 tickets across Latin America through Disney’s Star Distribution. Suar and Pilar Gamboa star.

Argentinian company also pacts on remake of 30 Nights With My Ex.

FilmSharks division The Remake Co. continues to report steady business with global producers on its slate of Argentinian titles led by a deal with Sony for a new version of Ten Days Without Mom.

Sony Pictures International Productions has picked up Middle East remake rights to Ariel Winograd’s 2017 comedy hit Ten Days Without Mom (Mama Se Fue De Viaje) starring Diego Peretti and Carla Peterson. Talks are ongoing for English-language, Korean and Chinese versions.

Dlo Producciones, owned by France-based Banijay Group, has optioned Spanish remake rights to Adrian Suar’s directorial debut,...

Pamplona, Spain — Forging a new axis in the Spanish-speaking TV world, Warner Bros. Itvp España and top Argentine production house Pol-ka have joined forces to create an eight-episode dark comedy thriller.

Symptomatic of the fast-forming new Spanish-language TV landscape, where series from Spain now rank consistently among the most watched on Svod platforms in Latin America and Latin American stars are ever better known for Spanish audiences, the still-to-be-titled series’ action will take place between Spain and Latin American. The show boasts a pan-regional cast.

The project will also combine traditional linear broadcast and Svod play, while generating social media content in line with the new consumer habits of an ever more diversified and segmented audience, the partners confirmed in an announcement made out of Conecta Fiction.

“This agreement is another step forward in our bet on breaking frontiers and developing formats with Latin America, here via an alliance with Pol-ka,...

Pamplona, Spain — Taking a new expansive step as an international content player, top Argentine production house Pol-ka, has optioned small-screen rights to “El cielo a tiros,” the latest novel from “Rosario Tijeras” author, Colombian novelist Jorge Franco.

Pacted via Scenic Rights, the deal sees Pol-ka planning to shoot a drama series based on the book in Medellín, Colombia in 2020.

“El cielo a tiros” will become the first Pol-ka series produced entirely outside Argentina, marking part of a long-term expansion at the Adrián Suar-headed company as it adapts to the challenges and opportunities of a new TV landscape.

Published in 2018, “El cielo a tiros” turns on the children of Medellín’s drug lords of the 1990s, following one, Larry, who returns to Colombia after 12 years abroad to reclaim his father’s remains from a mass grave. He reencounters his childhood best friend, Pedro, and his mother, a former Colombia beauty queen,...

Argentina sales company handling Marcos Carnevale, Fabián Bielinsky projects.

Buenos Aires-based FilmSharks has picked up worldwide sales and remake rights from Latin American production powerhouse Patagonik to the upcoming high-concept comedy Crazy Heart and remake and format rights to the iconic 2005 thriller The Aura.

Argentine ace Marcos Carnevale is scheduled to direct Crazy Heart (Corazon Loco) in the third quarter of this year. Box office darling Adrián Suar stars as Fernando, whose two wives finally find out about each other after nine years and set out for revenge.

Patagonik co-owner Disney holds Latin American rights and plans a second quarter 2020 release on 300 screens in Argentina.

Miami — Boldly taking on the challenges of TV’s future as it turns 25, Argentina’s Pol-ka Producciones, one of Latin America’s few historic independent TV companies, is turning to the past.

Shooting from Jan. 2, but set in Buenos Aires from 1936 to 1945, “Argentina, Land of Passion and Revenge,” intertwines the contrasting fates of three emigrants who flee Europe for Argentina. Torcuato mixes in high-society; Bruno, his brother in arms in Spain¡s Civil War before an act of extraordinary treachery on Torquato’s past, suffers far worse luck; and Raquel, a Polish ingenue, even worse, ending up in a brothel.

Starring Benjamín Vicuña (“Vis a Vis”), and requiring 100-meters of 1930s’ Buenos Aires street facades on a 1,200 square-meter set in Pol-ka’s Estudios Baires, plus 100 extras for the arrival of the boat about from Europe, “Argentina” is one of Pol-ka’s big fiction bets for 2019, indeed one of its biggest...

Miami — Pol-ka Producciones has just dropped a trailer of “Argentina, Tierra de Amor y Passion,” a historical long-format series for Artear’s El Trece which marks one of the biggest bets of any Latin American primetime broadcaster in 2019.

A trailer suggests why and also for the first time exactly what ghastly act of treachery sparks the epic story which plays out of two continents and ten years from 1936. It also hints at a new turn in the career of Chilean heartthrob Benjamín Vicuña, who has just taken a starring role in Season 4 of one of Spain’s big international hits, Mediapro/Fox’s “Vis a Vis.” In “Argentina, Land of Passion and Revenge” he visibly ages up to play the sinister opportunist Torquato Ferreyra.

Spain’s Albert Baró, a standout in the Catalan TV3 soap “Merlin,” plays his brother in arms, Bruno, in Spain’s Republican army in the early...

Cannes — Two of the power axes on the new worldwide TV production scene, Argentina’s ElTrece, Pol-ka, Cablevision on one hand and Mediapro Group-Oficina Burman on the other, have pacted to produce together a brand new dram series, scheduled to air from 2019.

The series turns on the campaign of a man who runs for the presidency of his country. Humberto Ortega, who co-wrote with “La Casa de Papel’s” Alex Pina on series such as “El Barco” and “Los Serrano,” is writing the screenplay for the series.

“Dominated by imposture and pressures, both self conceived and external,” a press statement reads, the candidate will suffer deep transformation, discovering his true self, as his ambitions conflicts with traditional ethics. Corralled, seemingly facing inevitable defeat, or so his team thinks, he will find a way, however, to face up to adversity.

That solution will no doubt cast caustic comment on the way...

Cannes — Adrián Suar, Latin America’s most extraordinary hyphenate, sits in Cannes’ Palais des Festivals, the Croisette behind him, ready to talk up his latest pioneering move in the Latin American TV entertainment scene.

That’s no minor detail. As Fox pushes ever more into a digital cord-cutting world, Suar’s show, “The Host,” currently rates as the No 1 original production from Fox Networks Group Latin America on the new Fox + app.

Suar’s at Cannes, because, in a world of ever more global localization, the idea could also export as a format to other countries too.

“The Host” is just the latest move in a remarkably broad career.

For the Argentine public, Suar’s one of the most recognizable faces of a hugely popular line in Argentine comedy of manners: 2008’s “A Boyfriend For My Wife,” “Just Like Me” in 2010, 2012’s “2 + 2” and last year’s “I Married a Dumbass,...

HBO Latin America has greenlit a second season of Argentine thriller series “The Bronze Garden” (“El Jardin de Bronce”), which has aired across 50 HBO international markets, including HBO Spain and HBO Nordic.

The eight-episode thriller centered on an architect in desperate search for his four-year-old daughter who vanished with her babysitter in a Buenos Aires subway. He is aided by a brilliant, if unconventional, private detective.

Co-produced with leading Argentine production company Pol-ka, the second season is based on a new set of scripts by Gustavo Malajovich, author of the eponymous bestseller which inspired the first season, and scribe Marcos Osorio Vidal.

Production kicks off in Buenos Aires in August. Joaquin Furriel reprises his role as the architect who in this new season helps resolve a case that had gone cold. Hernán Goldfrid and Pablo Fendrik direct the series once more.

Luis F. Peraza, Roberto Ríos and Paul Drago of...

Madrid — Driving ever more into originals in Latin America, Netflix has placed an order for “Puerta 7,” the U.S. platform’s third Argentine original series, which is created by “Ozark” and “Narcos” writer Martin Zimmerman and produced by leading Argentine production house Pol-ka.

“Puerta 7” is written by Patricio Vega, whose credits include crime-fighting commando thriller “Los Simuladores,” created by “Wild Tales’” Damián Szifrón, which broke out to large international success.

The series is described by Neflix as an “unflinching exploration of Argentina’s infamous (and world famous) soccer “barra bravas,” bare torso-ed soccer fans feared by the public and even police responsible for fatalities at soccer matches.

One narrative line follows “a woman’s attempt to cut through this male-dominated world and cleanse one club of its corruption and criminal element in order to redeem her family name,” Netflix announced.

Another charts one young man’s transformation into a “barra...

Santiago De Compostela, Spain — Gael García Bernal’s political thriller “Aquí en la tierra” (“Here on Earth”), a searing indictment of Mexico’s ruling elite, has been re-upped for a second season by Fox Networks Group Latin America.

The announcement of the renewal comes as, at Spain’s Conecta Fiction, Fngla senior vice president Mariana Pérez unveiled a new thriller, “Buenas Intenciones,” whose development is set up at Fox Telecolombia, confirmed a third season of “Sitiados” (Besieged) and sneak peeked “The Host,” an innovative non-scripted format starring Adrián Suar, one of Fox’s first two non-scripted shows in Latin America.

Pérez’s presentation underscores various trends at Fox Networks Group Latin America, a driving force behind new generation TV in the region:

*Fng Latin America is upping the volume. It has 10 series in production for 2018, more than last year, said Pérez, and “three-to-four times” as many series in development. Fox needs ever more contents,...

Director of global contents and international businesses at Argentine broadcast network Telefe over 2011-16, Tomas Yankelevich steered it into a modern broadcast age. That meant repositioning it as a proactive content factory, not a passive distributor. Another move was a drive it into international-standard content production and ownership via shorter-format fiction and co-development and production alliances from 2015 with Keshet Intl., Endemol Shine and FremantleMedia, which gave Telefe a cut in international IPs.

Relocating from Buenos Aires to Miami and Telefe to Turner Latin America after Viacom’s purchase of Telefé in November 2016, Yankelevich, now Evp & Chief Content Officer, general entertainment, Turner Latin America, is one executive at the controls of another partial strategic makeover, this time of Turner Latin America, fast emerging as one of Latin America’s premium content production powerhouses. In an interview, Yankelevich takes Variety through the main paradigm shifts, product of sea-change in the content industry and consumer habits at large.

2+2 (2013) DVD Review, a movie directed Diego Kaplan and starring Adrián Suar, Julieta Diaz, Juan Minujín, and Carla Peterson. Release Date: June 4, 2013 Plot In the film (known in Spanish as Dos Más Dos), two couples decide to take their friendship to the next level. Diego and Emila and Richard and Betina have been [...]

Continue reading: DVD Review: 2+2 / Dos Mas Dos (2012): Diego Kaplan’s Steamy Romp Film...

Richard (Juan Minujín) and Diego (Adrián Suar) are best friends. They have known each other for 15 years and have co-owned a highly regarded heart clinic for ten years. Diego is married to Emilia (Julieta Díaz), with whom he has one child, Lucas (Tomás Wicz). Richard and Bettina (Carla Peterson) have been together for about ten years, but they are still unmarried and childless. While Emilia and Diego have given in to the monotony of monogamy, Bettina and Richard have kept their love life fresh with polyamory. The term "swingers" is batted around quite a few times in reference to Bettina and Richard; they like to go to parties, swap partners and watch each other have sex with other people. They are open and honest with each other and their extracurricular relationships are all consensual. As the saying goes, variety is the spice of life. Emilia recognizes that she and Diego...