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Lb Entertainment, behind “Sintonía,” Netflix’s biggest Brazilian hit, has signed a first-look deal with Universo Online (Uol), the biggest news website in Brazil which had 99 million unique users in March 2024.

In a groundbreaking swing for Brazil, but in line with the deal struck in 2022 by Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment and The Washington Post, the Brazilian strategic partnership will expand Uol’s brand of storytelling to all forms of filmed entertainment.

Owned by Folha de São Paulo, Brazil’s No. 1 and best-respected newspaper, Uol has a 78% Internet reach, only bettered by Google and Facebook, according to company estimates. It is renowned for the depth, rigor and time spent of its investigative journalism.

Headed by Felipe Braga and Rita Moraes, Lb Entertainment (formerly Los Bragas) created and produced pioneering Netflix Brazilian sitcom “Samantha” (2018) and co-created with KondZilla “Sintonia,” Netflix’s biggest Brazilian hit which has now run to five seasons.

The creators of Netflix’s “Sintonia,” one of South America’s biggest streaming show hits, KondZilla and Lb Entertainment (formerly Losbragas), are re-teaming to co-produce a slate of series.

Ending speculation on what is next for KondZilla, a YouTube phenomenon and Lb, both based out of São Paulo, the three series – “After the End,” “A Close Call” and “South” – look set to broaden the partners’ compass from “Sintonia,” the coming of age story of three friends set against the crime and vibrant culture of São Paulo outskirts life, its gangs, thriving music scene, religion and sense of community.

The new series come in at such themes from novel angles, changing the setting or expanding the canvas of favela culture to take in a penitentiary-set drama and a string of major metropoli in the Southern Hemisphere.

The project announcement comes just after Konrad Dantas – KondZilla – delivered a keynote at this week’s Rio2C,...

Is Netflix too square, or too costly, for most young Brazilians? Or just not the place where they’d ever sample cool Brazilian content?

The U.S. streaming giant may soon find out. Simply put, its latest Brazilian series, “Sintonia,” launched globally Aug. 9, can be seen as an acid test of Netflix’s ability to leverage original series in order to grow its audience outside the U.S. in a core demographic: Young adults.

As established players, especially in Europe, target more mature audiences, Netflix’s future, identity and part subscriber appeal as a company depends to an extent on such success.

Already, six of the Netflix’s 15 Brazilian Original Series broadly target the Ya crowd with futuristic, fantasy and horror plays, whether teen dystopian thriller “3%” now in its third season; “Reality Z,” reworking Charlie Brooker’s comedic zombie bloodbath “Dead Set”; or “Boca a Boca,” just announced, a teen contagion thriller.

One of the first measures enacted by Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who took office on Jan. 1, was to merge Brazil’s Ministry of Culture with a newly created Ministry of Citizenship, embracing sports, communications, social policy and culture.

While performing artists came under fire from Bolsinaro supporters in the runup to the elections, subject to threats, pickets, and a smoke bomb, it remains to be seen what impact the new government will have on the film industry.

By mid-January, trade bodies were reaching out to key governmental figures to guarantee the continuation of policies for promotion, investment and control of the industry, the creative industries being the second-most popular career choice in Brazil, says producer Fabiano Gullane.

“It’s illusory to think that Brazil’s film industry can do without subsidies,” says Leonardo Barros, at Conspiraçao, one of Brazil’s biggest film-tv producers. “You’d need a 30%-35% market share to start reducing them.

Netflix is working on a new original series with Brazilian YouTube creator KondZilla and Brazilian production house, Losbragas. The series, called Sintonia, will follow three friends growing up in a “favela” (essentially, a poverty-stricken town) just outside of Sao Paulo.

KondZilla, whose real name is Konrad Dantas, created the series, which he will also direct. His background lies in creating and producing electronic music videos, of which there are easily hundreds on his YouTube channel. Dantas has over 29 million subscribers on the video platform, making him one of the most popular YouTube creators in Brazil. Some of the music from his channel, Dantas told Variety, will appear in the Netflix series.

Dantas comes from just outside of Sao Paulo, like Sintonia’s central characters and Alice Braga, an actor who also heads up Losbragas along with Felipe Braga, a director and screenwriter, and producer Rita Moraes. The team previously worked...