News

Disney+ has released an international trailer for its upcoming original Spanish comedy series “Shared Custody,” directed by “Champions” creator Javier Fesser, which will debut globally on the platform on Jan. 24.

An accomplished filmmaker, Fesser, who makes his TV debut with “Shared Custody,” is best known for creating the Goya-winning and Oscar-submitted heartwarming comedy “Campeones” (“Champions”), adapted in 2023 as the Woody Harelson starrer “Champions.” In 2007, his short film “Binta y la gran idea” was nominated for the live-action short film Oscar. “Shared Custody” marks his series debut.

Over eight episodes, the series will examine the challenges faced by two parents, Cris and Diego, after their separation. The show delves into the complexities of modern co-parenting as the couple strives to maintain a mature, amicable relationship for the sake of their young daughter.

However, financial difficulties force them to move back in with their respective parents, setting the stage for awkward and often humorous family dynamics.

Catalan public broadcaster 3Cat, formerly known as Televisió de Cataunya (Tvc), is in talks to make Season 2 of ‘This is Not Sweden’ with the same creative team and producers of Season 1. A distribution deal with a platform is pending.

The Prix Europe-winning series set in a tony middle-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Barcelona was co-produced by Spain’s Rtve and TV3 with Sweden’s Svt, Germany’s Ndr and Finland’s Yle. In the family dramedy series, a young Spanish couple relocates there to provide their children with an optimal quality of life, drawing inspiration from northern European models.

“I’m convinced that we will end up collaborating further with Nordic countries,” said Pío Vernis, 3Cat audiovisual business director, who added: “They are quite small countries with their own language, but with high production standards, as we are.”

Speaking to Variety just before Mipcom, he stressed 3Cat’s push for more international co-productions,...

Miami — In two signs of the growing dynamism of Catalonia’s TV scene, Barcelona-based film-tv indie studio Filmax has licensed “Dating in Barcelona” to Amazon’s Prime Video.

Produced by Filmax, Catalan public broadcaster 3Cat and Prime Video in Spain, “Dating in Barcelona” bowed last year in Spain to big ratings, both on its first-window debut on 3Cat and on Prime Video, where it bowed to become one of the streaming service’s most-watched debuts. A modern take on romance and sex in an online age, “Dating in Barcelona” also reflects a swing in TV towards a lighter, more episodic fare, whether in crime thrillers or other categories. Each episode features two dates which, as Variety has observed, play off each other.

Powered in creative terms by Pau Freixas, behind iconic series from “Red Band Society” to “I Know Who You Are” and “Todos Mienten,” all produced by Filmax, “Dating...

Featuring a women screenwriters pitching session sponsored by Netflix, the biggest fiction series commissioner in Latin America, Ventana Sur has added this year a big spread from Chile’s TV agency Consejo National de Televisión, which could be a reaction to global platforms pulling out of Chile.

In terms of original titles there’s good word on Colombia’s Laura Otálora (“Impermanence”) and Argentina’s Carlos Lascano (“Lina”). Talent track records vary from the multiple near neophytes pitching in Tuesday’s Flixxo session, to name producers in the Cntv spread, from Gabriela Sandoval on “Box 205” and Leonera González on “Dangerous Love.” The Cntv showcase also features animation hit “Petit.”

A quick breakdown of titles:

Netflix

“Divorce Hotel,” (“Hotel de Divorcio,” Guadalupe Yepes, Gabriela Tagliavini, Argentina)

The latest from Yepes, winner of SoloSeries’ 2022 BBC Studios award with “Fugitives” and Tagliavini (“Christmas with you”). In this project, a jaundiced divorce attorney with...

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...

As the back-to-school rush arrives, Netflix has dropped a perfect mix of new titles and classic flicks right in time to procrastinate homework, work and whatever else life has in store.

This month, the streaming service will serve up a dark comedy featuring Camila Mendes, Ana de Armas’ rendition of Marilyn Monroe and a highly anticipated reunion episode of “Love is Blind.”

As far as library titles, “A Little Princess,” “Clueless,” “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “The Notebook” and “This Is 40” will find a home on Netflix. The streaming service will also add parts of beloved film series, including “Despicable Me,” “Austin Powers” and “Resident Evil.”

Also Read:

‘Resident Evil’ Canceled at Netflix After 1 Season

Check out the complete list of what’s coming to Netflix this month:

Sept. 1

Fenced In

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Stone Ocean Episodes 13-24

Liss Pereira: Adulting

Love in the Villa

Off the Hook...

Latino AVOD phenomenon Vix, which controls the biggest multi-platform Latino digital media audience in the world, is extending its reach as it pushes to underscore its relevance, premiering three Covid-19 confinement-themed series, all produced entirely during Covid-19 lockdown.

Making its world premiere on Vix, “The New Normal” is an eight-part doc-series featuring self-interviews and real-life moments of Brazilians around the world. Locales include Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, New Zealand, England, Israel and China. The series is produced by Vix’s in-house creative team led by director of Ott content, Ines Salles.

Created and produced by Maria Albinana and Luke Eve, directed by Eve and inspired by real-life circumstance, 10-part “Cancelled” turns on a man who is forced to cancel his wedding in Spain – and plunge into lockdown with his fiancee and his mother.

Already announced, “La Treintena,” which bowed late last week on Vix, marks Vix’s first series from...

Leading Spanish sales, production and distribution company Filmax has secured sales rights for first-time director Carol Rodriguez Colas’ “Girlfriends,” currently in post-production. The company has already started sharing a promo reel with distributors.

Filmax has anchored itself as one of the premier sales companies for independent films from new, female filmmakers in Spain such as Lucía Alemany’s San Sebastian New Directors player “Innocence” and Paula Cons’s “Island of Lies,” a main competition player at this year’s Shanghai Festival.

“Girlfriends” is produced by Madrid-based Balance Media and stars four of Spain’s most exciting young film and TV stars in Vicky Luengo (“Barcelona Summer Night”), Elisabet Casanovas (“Merli”), Carolina Yuste (“Carmen & Lola”) and Angela Cervantes (“Perfect Life”).

In the film, young Marta (Luengo) finds herself jobless after losing her dream job as a photographer at a trendy fashion magazine. With few options, she is forced to leave behind her modern,...

After grinding to a halt because of the pandemic, this feature debut produced by Marta Figueras, starring Carolina Yuste, Vicky Luengo, Ángela Cervantes and Elisabet Casanovas, has restarted shooting. The feature-length fiction debut by Carol Rodríguez Colás will wrap its shoot at the end of June, having resumed after the break forced upon it by the coronavirus crisis. Chavalas (lit. “Lasses”), which is being filmed in the Barcelona neighbourhood of Poblenou and in Cornellà, stars Vicky Luengo (The Laws of Thermodynamics and soon to appear in the series Antidisturbios – see the news), Elisabet Casanovas (famous for her role in the series Merlí), Carolina Yuste (winner of the Goya Award for her turn in Carmen & Lola and set to grace screens in Sky High in August) and Ángela Cervantes (Perfect Life). The cast is rounded off by Ana Fernández, José Mota, Cristina Plazas, Mario Zorrilla, Biel Durán, Maite Buenafuente,...

Madrid — Movistar Plus’ upcoming original series “Tell Me Who I Am,” based on Julia Navarro’s popular Spanish novel “Dime Quien Soy,” has finished shooting and will head to post-production for delivery later this year.

Set across multiple decades of the 20th century, the story kicks off with 30-something internet journalist Javier, tasked by his aunt to investigate the life of his great-grandmother, Amelia Garayoa, who left her husband and son behind her as she fled Spain as a result of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

Amelia becomes embroiled in some of the most important historical events of the century, from Franco’s ascent in Spain, the uprising and liberation of Berlin, the rise of Stalin’s communist U.S.S.R., the barbarity of Warsaw’s ghettos, Rome in the final years of Mussolini and the decline of Nazi Germany in occupied Athens. With a foot in both the past and future,...

Miami — It’s official. Two of the Argentine industry’s biggest name actors, Natalia Oreiro (“Gilda”) and Ernesto Alterio (“Clandestine Childhood”), are attached to star in “Santa Evita,” produced by Salma Hayek and co-directed by Rodrigo García (“Nine Lives”), who will also produce.

Confirmed by Buena Vista Original Productions on the eve of this year’s Natpe conference in Miami, which kicks off Tuesday, Jan. 21, the seven-part drama series looks like the one of the biggest in the pipeline from Latin American – in terms of talent attached, expectation, and its central on-screen figure: Legendary Argentine First Lady Eva Perón.

Eight years in the works, but now the first series to go into production at Disney’s new Buena Vista Original Productions label in Latin America, headed by Leonardo Aranguibel and Mariana Pérez – and a passion project of Pérez’s when she drove original production at Fox Networks Group Latin America...

Movistar Plus is betting once more on the re-branding of original Spanish content via “spin offs” wrapped in higher production values and an identity of their own. A bet which had worked previously on “Velvet Collection” and most likely will again with new production “Merlí: Sapere Aude.”

In the last few years, a clutch of Spanish series have managed to become global hits, still pretty small productions – judged by Hollywood standards – with solid core concepts and dynamic direction that greatly benefited from the distribution of the new platforms. Yet the case of “Merlí,” a Catalan series produced by Barcelona-based Catalan public broadcaster TV3, also broadcast on Atresmedia’s La Sexta and bought by Netflix – remains quite unique:

Rarely if ever has a show that blatantly deals with philosophical conundrums inside a class room become a world-wide phenomenon and created a fandom in almost all Spanish speaking countries.

After character Merlí...

In Variety’s third Mipcom Roundup Alibaba’s streaming platform Youku gets BBC programs, Lagardère buys full ownership of Barcelona’s Veranda, Banijay rolls out Guinness World Records series, Blue Ant International sells and renews and All3Media Intl. extends into Japan and Taiwan.

All3Media Strikes Deals in Japan, Taiwan

All3Media has grown its footprint in Asia thanks to newly announced deals with U-next, Disney and Wowow in Japan and Catchplay in Taiwan. The U-Next deal includes 22 hours of primetime drama including Neal Street Productions’ Bafta-nominated “Informer,” two seasons of Screentime’s Australian drama “Playing for Keeps” and The Forge Entertainment-produced mini-series “Dark Money.” Catchplay in Taiwan and Tohokushinsha in Japan have secured rights to Bafta-nominated mini-series “Mrs. Wilson,” produced by Snowed In for BBC One and Masterpiece. All3Media also sold two factual entertainment series to Japanese broadcasters, “Travel Guides (Australia)” in the company’s first-ever...

Dominic Minghella.

Australian producers who lament the time and resources devoted to developing projects that don’t eventuate can take heart from Dominic Minghella.

Despite a stellar track record as the creator of Doc Martin and Robin Hood, the UK producer/writer says his strike rate is just one in six of all the projects he’s developed.

“I have been incredibly lucky, but what you don’t see are the projects I wrote which I was sure would work and didn’t work,” he tells If via Skype from his home in London. “Development isn’t fun.”

Minghella will be a keynote speaker at Screen Producers Australia’s Screen Forever conference in Melbourne this November, marking just his second trip down under. In 2008 he took part in Spark, the script development program by the Australian Film Commission run in conjunction with the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (Aftrs...

Spanish production house Dlo/Magnolia, owned by the giant Banijay Group, has revealed an ambitious TV drama slate, led by psychological thriller series “La Caza. Monteperdido,” a TV adaptation of Agustín Martínez’s best-selling novel “Monteperdido.”

Filming in the Aragonese Pyrenees, the eight-episode, 70-minute high-concept TV drama is scheduled to premiere on Rtve’s flagship channel La 1 in first quarter of 2019.

Under managing director José Manuel Lorenzo, Dlo/Magnolia is upping the ante on TV fiction, underscoring the Banijay Group’s aim of building its scripted offering in Spain, as the superindie continues acquiring production assets to increase its TV drama footprint worldwide.

“After many years focused on TV entertainment, Banijay is betting very seriously on TV fiction. As a traveling companion, I could not find a better one, they help you get the projects moving forward,” Lorenzo said.

“Monteperdido” marks the first step in this new era at Dlo/Magnolia,...