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Paramount+ today released the official teaser trailer for the second season of the Spanish-language thriller series The Envoys (Los Enviados).  The original series features an all-star cast, including Luis Gerardo Méndez and Miguel Ángel Silvestre.  Oscar winner Juan José Campanella (El Secreto de Sus Ojos) serves as showrunner, producer and director. All eight episodes will be available to binge exclusively on Paramount+ soon. In the second season, Priests Pedro Salinas (Méndez) and Simón Antequera (Silvestre) delve into a web of mystery and murder in a Galician convent. With ... Read more...

Spanish star Miguel Ángel Silvestre is set to topline in miniseries “Lucio’s Treasure,” a real-life inspired project co-produced by Spain’s Vértice360 and Friki Films with Red Arrow International Studios.

Silvestre will play the leading role of Lucio Urtubia, considered a modern Robin Hood who nearly bankrupted Citibank of America in the 1980s. Whether he was caught is another matter.

Structured as a six-episode, one-hour drama, the series is scheduled to lens in English by 2025.

Created by brothers Hugo and Roger Menduiña, “Lucio’s Treasure” is produced by Friki’s CEO Ana Manresa and Alberto Rull, Vertice’s EVP production and content.

The U.K.’s Anthony Alleyne (“Sunburn”) has joined the series as co-creator, writer and executive co-producer.

Defined by Rull as “an ambitious series, both creatively and in terms of budget,” “Lucio’s Treasure” is set in Paris and New York, “aimed at being a world-class co-production...

Romance, suspense and drama dominate the 2023 slate of Telemundo Global Studios, which presented its 2023 lineup at Content Americas under the banner The Telemundo Edge. Speaking to Variety before hosting Telemundo’s presentation, Karen Barroeta, executive VP of production and development, noted: “We have evolved the genre so much that we now call them contemporary dramas, not telenovelas.” The long-form format runs an average of 80 episodes, stripped Monday to Friday, instead of the 120+ count of the traditional telenovelas.

Telemundo’s programming is also buoyed by its action-packed Super Series, the International Emmy-winning franchise “El Señor de los Cielos” (“Lord of the Skies”), which just launched Season 8 on Jan. 17 to stellar ratings. Inspired by real events, the show stars Rafael Amaya as the titular drug lord who undergoes plastic surgery in order to evade capture. “The show is always rooted in reality,” said Barroeta who added that writer/creator Luis Zelkowicz has some 800 hours under his belt.

Academy Award winning director Juan José Campanella (“The Secret in Their Eyes”) has gone into production in Mexico on the first title from ViacomCBS International Studios (Vis) for Paramount Plus, “Los Enviados,” an eight-part series action thriller about “two men searching for their souls,” the director told Variety.

Vis has shared in exclusivity with Variety some first photos from the shoot.

First fruit of a first look deal between Vis and Campanella, “Los Enviados” has also added to key cast Irene Azuela, star of Mexican movies such as “Miss Bala” and “The Obscure Spring,” as well as Netflix series “Monarca.”

Azuela joins two of the Spanish-world’s biggest names, Luis Gerardo Méndez, an actor with a rich comedic vein, exploited in Netflix soccer club comedy “Club de Cuervos,” and Miguel Angel Silvestre. A sex symbol thanks to his breakout role as El Duque in “Sin Tetas No Hay Paraíso,” Sylvestre...

If you thought the Academy Awards were dominated by foreigners, wait until you see this year's TV pilot season.

Of the five pilots ordered by the broadcast networks last week, four were based on international formats -- British drama Ny-Lon and Israeli drama Mythological X at CBS and British comedies Outnumbered and Spaced at Fox.

"I think the strike had a lot to do with it," said Dana Walden, chairman of 20th Century Fox TV, which produces Mythological X as well as the ABC pilot Life on Mars, based on the BBC series. "You had that incredibly speculative time in the production business when there was uncertainty if we would be working together again."

Walden and her team spent time during the strike-imposed hiatus watching the 11 completed episodes of Mythological.

"You get the great benefit of being able to see the great twists and turns the characters take (beyond the pilot)," she said. "The network also was excited to do a reasonably priced show that is still compelling and has a fantastic character at the center but doesn't have car chases and 85 scenes."

Most foreign series don't rely on big production values but on storytelling, which also proves attractive to U.S. studios that have been searching for ways to lower production costs in the wake of the writers strike.

Sparked by the success of The Office and Ugly Betty, the rise of foreign-scripted formats came into its own last year when a record eight broadcast pilots were based on British series. With the thick of pilot ordering still days away, that number already has been surpassed this year.

Nine pilots ordered by the broadcast networks so far -- Ny-Lon, Mythological X, Outnumbered, Spaced, Life on Mars, CBS drama Eleventh Hour and comedy Worst Week and NBC comedies Father Ted and "Kath & Kim" -- are based on international formats, as is Fox comedy Don't Bring Frank, which is close to a pilot order.

Additionally, Canadian imports The Listener and Flashpoint were picked up as series by NBC and CBS, respectively; the British-produced series Robinson Crusoe set sail at NBC; and NBC is doing a highly publicized adaptation of the 2006 Colombian telenovela Sin Tetas No Hay Paraiso.

The foreign format wave has also reached cable shores, with HBO adapting the Israeli drama In Treatment and Showtime acquiring British series Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

"It's like an ever-growing frontier where people are looking for the next big thing anywhere in the world," said Chris Coelen of Pangea, which co-produces Ny-Lon. The company is developing several series based on U.K.