News

Fabula-Fremantle’s “Hot Sur,” The Mediapro Studio’s “El Mal” and “Two Nights in Lisbon,” from Portugal’s Hop Films and the U.K’s Heroes Films, look like potential standouts at next week’s Content Americas Copro Pitch 2024, one of its industry centerpieces.

These series projects will be joined by crime mystery thriller “Delito,” from Barcelona’s Grup Focus TV & Films, behind banner Amazon Original “Reina Roja,” “Iron Woman,” a tumultuous political saga from Brazil-based Jarsom Wayans, two high concept doc series – Argentina’s “Climate Migrants” and Brazil’s “Mystery of the Megafauna” – and bio doc feature “Farraquito, a Flamenco Story,” profiling the famed flamenco bailaor.

Shaping up as one of the biggest new titles to be brought onto the market at Content Americas, “Hot Sur” marks the latest from a fruitful 2019 multi-year first-look deal between Fremantle and Fabula, headed by Pablo and Juan de Dios Larraín, which has already yielded “La Jauría,...

The infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper has been transplanted to America in ViX Original Series “El Dentista” (“The Dentist”) (working title) with Oscar-nominated Demián Bichir (“A Better Life”) in the titular role. Behind-the-scenes pics of the series, now shooting in Mexico, have been exclusively shared with Variety.

Based on the novel by prominent Chilean scribe Julio Rojas, creator of podcast sensation “Caso 63” and a co-writer on Pablo Fendrik’s “El Refugio,” the period thriller series is produced by Oscar-winning brothers Pablo and Juan de Dios Larrain and their powerhouse shingle, Fabula, along with the top Spanish pay TV/SVOD service Movistar Plus+, which will also handle international sales.

This is possibly the second time that Fabula handling a mythical figure after Pablo Larrain’s horror satire “The Count,” which world premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is now streaming on Netflix. However, in “The Count,” Larrain reimagines...

“Roma” producer Nicolas Celis’ of Pimienta Films is coming on board as lead producer of “Freeland,” the first English-language pic by “Emily in Paris” director Katina Medina Mora, Variety learned at Madrid forum Iberseries & Platino Industria.

To be co-written with Chilean scribe Julio Rojas, creator of podcast sensation “Caso 63” and a co-writer on Pablo Fendrik’s “El Refugio,” the project was put together by producer Nestor Hernández, a former Sony and HBO development exec for Latin America, who attended the San Sebastian Film Festival in September to present the project.

MadAvenue PR director Eva Herrero serves as an executive producer on the film.

“We have long been following Katina Medina Mora’s remarkable career and her impressive accomplishments over such a short time span,” remarked Celis who has been attending Iberseries to take part in a panel and to meet with contacts.

“I am also more than thrilled to...

Mexico’s Mónica Lozano, producer of Alejandro González Iñarritu’s “Amores Perros” and Eugenio Derbéz’s “Instructions Not Included,” has boarded “Cepeda,” an envelope-pushing Mexico-set procedural, turning on a Mexican cop who’s an Indigenous woman and great at her job.

Development over the last two years has been financed by Acuña’s Chile-based Promocine. Put back, however, by the pandemic, the project is now set up at Lozano’s Mexico City production house Alebrije Producciones, one of Mexico’s most active forces in international production, behind Carlos Carrera’s Quirino Award winner “Ana y Bruno” and Fox’s “Run Coyote Run.”

“Cepeda” is written by Chile’s Julio Rojas, who has shot to global fame as creator of Podcast phenom “Caso 63.” Rojas also served as story editor on Lucía Puenzo’s “La Jauría,” and writer on Pablo Fendrik’s “El Refugio” and Matías Bize’s “The Life of Fish,...

Mexico’s Katina Medina Mora, director of Netflix hits ‘Emily in Paris’ and ‘Firefly Lane’ and Apple TV+ standout “Swagger,” is teaming with Chile’s Julio Rojas, creator of podcast phenom “Caso 63,” to direct and co-write with Rojas “Freeland.”

Medina Mora, Rojas and “Freeland” producer Nestor Hernández, a former Sony and HBO development exec for Latin America, will attend the San Sebastian Film Festival, which kicks off on Sept. 22, to present the project.

Longtime MadAvenue PR director Eva Herrero will also serve as an executive producer on the film.

One of the most ambitious movies now in the works from Latin America and Spain, “Freeland” is set in America’s Midwest, and combines a teen first love romantic drama, a building thriller propulsion and the kind of anticipatory near future science fiction for which Rojas is hailed as a master.

Sparking a successful U.S. podcast remake starring Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac,...

Lionsgate+, formerly known as Starzplay, has set March 3 as the premiere date of its darkly comic original series ‘Nacho’ across all Latin America.

The news comes as Atresplayer Premium in Spain has announced that “Nacho” will bow on its service on March 5 as an Atresplayer Premium Original, in other words an exclusive in Spain on the adventurous service whose recent Originals include “Cardo,” produced by Los Javis.

Bowing its international trailer exclusively on Variety, the eight-episode series stars Martiño Rivas (“Cable Girls”) who plays the legendary Nacho Vidal whose notable physique makes him a star in Spain’s incipient porn industry in the ‘90s.

“Proving his talents reach far beyond his most infamous 25 cm [9.8 inches], Nacho changed the rules of the game in the 1990s when he became an international superstar,” the synopsis goes.

Shot in Spain, “Nacho” tells the story of the people behind the country’s porn industry, which...

Lionsgate-owned Starzplay, Starz’s premium international streaming service, and Spain’s Bambú Producciones, producer of “Cable Girls,” are wrapping production on “Nacho,” one of Starzplay highest-profile productions as it builds its burgeoning international originals portfolio.

Premium U.S. Spanish-language SVOD service Pantaya – already a partner with Starzplay on Lucia Puenzo’s “Señorita 89,” Pablo Fendrik’s “El Refugio” and Sofía Auza and Silviana Aguirre’s “Yellow” – will release “Nacho” in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

Starzplay distributes in Spain and Latin America. Elsewhere, Lionsgate will oversee international distribution.

Starzplay has shared with Variety a first-look image from the eight-part series, inspired by the life and times of Nacho Vidal, an adult film industry legend. Taken to California by Rocco Siffredi in 1998, Vidal became the sector’s first Spanish international mega-star.

The series is associate produced in Spain by La Claqueta. Caught on a late June set-visit, few productions look...

In an early scene in Episode One of Pablo Fendrik’s “The Shelter” which is suffused in oneiric chromatic blue, Emilia, a little girl in bed at night, spies a figure down a corridor who looks like her dead older sister, Daniela.

Following her to a barn door, Emilia enters to discover its chicken slaughtered as a huge light flares in the night sky outside. Emilia wakes up. Next days, the chicken are discovered slaughtered in the barn.

Bowing on Pantaya and Starzplay on June 23, six-hour sci-fi series “The Shelter” (“El refugio”) is the first major premium sci-fi TV series from Latin America. That tells. Classic sci-fi flowered after the unbelievable horror of World War II, showing humankind defeating an alien enemy through courage and the force of reason.

What could a Latin American sci-fi series look like 75 years later? “The Shelter” gives one answer, which having grabbed the viewer in early stretches,...