Iberseries & Platino Industria Wrap: Salma Hayek Produced Max Title ‘Like Water for Chocolate’ Charms, While Spain, Europe’s Public Broadcasters Stand Strong

Madrid’s 4th Iberseries & Platino Industria’s conferences were packed, foot traffic at Madrid’s Matadero, a former slaughterhouse, was heavy. Delegates came as the industry has been facing a well documented perfect storm of rising costs and an invested pull back from streamers and broadcasters, hit respectively by cost-contention and plunging ad sales. 

Yet the mood at Iberseries, which wrapped Friday, was “hopeful,” said Fremantle’s Manuel Martí. Takeaways from this year’s edition, which ran Oct. 1-4:

Spain Stands Strong

“The big slow-down hasn’t yet got to Spain,” Banijay Iberia CEO Pilar Blasco commented on an Iberseries & Platino panel. Spain’s shoot incentives are among Europe’s biggest – €10 million-€18 million ($10.9 million-$19.7 million) per TV episode. Spain had more and bigger first-half non-English Netflix hits than any other country in the world. In contrast, through September, first-run scripted series production is down in every major market in Latin America, Mexico by 56%, Brazil by 54% and Argentina by 96%, hit by a pull back in streamer and broadcast commissions, according to a report by Madrid-based consultancy GECA. Little wonder that, while just five years ago, Spain was exploring international co-production, now much of the world hopes to find co-financing in Spain. 

Challenges Spur Creativity

“Hopeful” cuts several ways, however. “Almost every broadcaster in every territory wants to spend less. That opens up an opportunity for co-production that didn’t really exist before,” Fremantle’s Olivia Sleiter said at a panel dedicated to the companies, citing the case of Jessie William’s starrer “Costiera,” which was one of the first shows in Italy co-produced by Amazon whose Prime Video took Italy, France and Spain and Fremantle the rest of the world. “The current industry scenario is making us more creative,” such as exploring windowing, which gives an upside to every link of the value chain,” Martí told Variety. “Notwithstanding its complexity and budgetary limitations, the market is beginning to return to what it was, opening the door to co-production, licensing and new models, taking an idea from Daniel Burman and making it in Mexico, for example,” said The Mediapro Studio Colombia’s Juan Carlos Aparicio.

Buzz Titles

If two magical realist clips unveiled at Iberseries are anything to go by – one of a heartbroken Tita watches her beloved Pedro marry her sister and a second of her giving birth in the kitchen – Max/HBO series “Like Water for Chocolate,” produced by Salma Hayek-Pinault’s Ventanarosa Productions, Endemol Shine North America and Endemol Shine Boomdog, promises a visual and emotional feast. Amazon Prime Video’s “Every Second Counts.” A trailer of Prime Video Latin America’s most expensive production to date, “Every Minute Counts” (“Cada Minuto Cuenta”) dazzled with its production values. Disney+ Spain’s venture into original daily melodrama series, “Return to Las Sabinas,” was one of the talking points of Iberseries.Walt Disney Latin America’s upcoming slate for Disney+ were greeted by Variety as “bold new shows.” There was good word also on Atresmedia’s real life gymnast bio “El Gran Salto,” Movistar Plus+’s corruption drama “Marbella,” already a hit in Spain, Globo’s “The Others” Season 2, one of its biggest plays for Mipcom, and RTVE’s double offer of “Las abogadas” and “Asuntos internos,” two tales of women’s belated professional empowerment in Spain.  

Europe’s Public Broadcasters: One Way Forward

A first day Iberseries panel What Are Europe’s Commissioners Looking For? featured honchos from four of its biggest pubcaster: France Televisions, ZDF, RAI and RTVE. That’s little surprise. When it comes to commissioning at a pre-pandemic level, Europe’s state TV networks are the last men standing. Not surprising, when it comes to partnering, their first choice is other pubcasters. Anytime France Televisions is looking for a partner, “We have a Plan A, and a Plan B. Plan A is my colleagues,” said FT’s Morad Koufane, motioning to the other broadcasters on stage. “When we have a no, we go to Plan B, and that is the platforms.” 

Public Broadcasters: Europe’s Ace Card

State-owned broadcast networks are often becoming more active. One case to point: Spain’s RTVE has also resumed its role since 2022 as a significant supporter of Spanish film co-productions with Latin America, backing 17 titles to date, including San Sebastian winner and box office breakout “The Blue Star” and “Surfacing,” a standout at the Festival’s New Directors section this year. Analyst Evan Shapiro, who delivered Iberseries’ opening business keynote, described public broadcasters as one of Europe’s competitive asset. “Public broadcasters are going to gain and will only rise in prominence because Netflix and Amazon are going to need them as co-producers, and certainly the production and the creative community in Europe is going to need public service media as buyers,” he said. They should be cherished, he added. 

Post-Bubble, Post-Pandemic Ways Forward

The TV drama series bubble has burst, and questions are being asked about returns on movies that are dramas. That was seen or commented on at Iberseries. So Magnetic Labs has pivoted from equity investment in titles to lending, where they will see money back irrespective of whether it a film triples or makes a their of its budget, Tyler Gould, chief investment officer at Magnetic Lab, said at an Iberseries panel on the Future of Financing Strategies and Mitigating Risk. He lends against names if they’re big enough and certain genres – action, thriller, horror, sci fi – but “drama is hard to predict,” he added. The bubble has burst especially in the U.S. Jacaranda Group founder Elisa Alvares, who advises clients on investing in companies and slates, commented that “historically clients have been in North America but opportunities here [in Europe] are important,” she said on the same panel.

Audiences Want Blue Sky 

And they’re getting it. At Iberseries, Amazon Studios sneak peeked “Every Minute Counts,” Prime Video Latin America’s most expensive production to date, beginning with Mexico City’s 1985 earthquake. “The story isn’t about the earthquake; it’s about characters who became better because of it,” said showrunner-director Jorge Michel Grau. Multiple procedurals heading to Mipcom are leavened by comedy, especially turning around the dynamics of odd couple investigators, or mix criminal investigation and family issues, or are set in sunny or stunning landscapes or resorts. Equally, dramas are frequently sluiced with humor, making dramedies one of the major trends of this year’s Co-Production and Financing Forum, as Iberseries head Samuel Castro observed. “People want to escape, have feel good shows,” Fremantle’s Martí told Variety.

Pushing Into the Mainstream 

“A lot of buyers are moving towards the mainstream, away from the prestige dramas that global streamers have been chasing over the last few years,” said Fremantle exec Seb Shorr at the company panel, again pointing to “Costiera,” which has sold very well. That said, Fremantle has first-look deals with companies co-owned by Kristen Stewart, Pablo Larraín, Rachel Weisz, Edward Berger and ongoing deals with Luca Guadagnino, Paolo Sorrentino, Angelina Jolie and Michael Winterbottom and here its mission is “to help them control the project,” he added. 

Basque Country’s Bizkaia Rocks

A pound will get you a penny that “The Platform 2,” an even more brutal follow-up to Netflix smash hit “The Platform,” its No. 5 most-viewed non-English film ever, will have hit Netflix global charts as No. 1 after bowing Oct. 5. It shot in Bilbao and is produced by Carlos Juarez’s Bilbao-based Basque Films. Meanwhile, Movistar Plus+ Original “Querer,” produced by Koldo Zazua’s Kowalski Films, and lensed in and around Bilbao, was hailed at San Sebastián as the best Spanish series of 2024. As a local industry and shoot locale, Bizkaia – Bilbao and environs – is on a roll. Thanks to up-to-60% tax breaks, introduced in 2023, shoots filming in Bizkaia supported by the Bilbao Bizkaia Film Commission soared 76% generating a direct spend of €58.5 million and indirect impact of €139,6 million, the Bizkaia government’s Itxaso Berrojalbiz said at Iberseries. Tax measures will now be made more flexible, she added.

Madrid’s Growing Infrastructure and Corporate Mass

As Spain’s film-TV business builds, so does its infrastructure, and company mass. In one move, EFD Studios announced plans for the largest virtual production set in continental Europe. In another, the Madrid Audiovisual Cluster outlined a first concrete initiative for a Madrid Audiovisual Observatory. Famed L.A. production group Anonymous Content  launched a Spain-based joint venture with Spain’s Morena Films in May 2023, named Beatriz Campos its managing director this February. “It’s a perfect moment for Spanish-language content in terms of talent and production,” she said at an Iberseries Anonymous Content panel, adding the j.v. had two movies and four TV series in development.  

The Creative Impulse

Two of the Spanish-speaking world’s greatest creators agreed. “When you’re asked what stories you want to tell, they’re ones with which your life will become unbearable if you don’t,” “Yosi, the Regretful Spy” creator Daniel Burman said at a Mediapro Studio panel. “You’ve got to do something which comes from inside, which you really feel, because the work will be so tough over such a long time,” agreed Ramón Campos. Creativity and commercial appeal do not necessarily clash. Campos was schooled in the hugely audience-attuned era of Spanish TV in the 2000s. “If a show didn’t work, it was simply yanked,” he remembers. Burman has always been one of the most consistently popular of New Argentine Cinema auteurs.   

Latin America is Not All Doom and Gloom

Streaming services may have pulled back from smaller markets and a paying a fraction of past rates when licensing. Companies can still look to co-production, however, Martí told Variety. Talent – writers, directors – are crossing borders, working abroad. “Cross-pollination is really good for shows,” he said. Latin American producers can look to invisible partners such as rebates in Colombia, Uruguay and now Peru. Brazil looks set to establish investment quotas for streaming services, he added.

The Deals

15 business deals sealed or announced during Iberseries & Platino Industria: 

*Pablo and Juan de Dios Larraín’s Fabula and Spain’s Alea Media have teamed to adapt Isabel Allende’s “The Long Petal of the Sea,” a tale of displacement – starting from Civil War Spain to Chile – and bonds stronger than any border, The Guardian noted.

*Netflix Spain has unveiled its next feature documentary, “It’s All Over: The Kiss That Changed Spanish Football” (“#SeAcabó: Diario de las campeonas”), which will premiere on the platform worldwide on Nov. 1.

*Secuoya Studios’ CEO Brendan Fitzgerald announced at Iberseries & Platino Industria that it aims to produce more English-language projects as part of its new international strategy. 

*FilmSharks picked up movie “Death of a Comedian,’ the director debut of renowned Argentine actor Diego Peretti, co-directed by Javier Beltramino and co-starring fast-on-the-rise Malena Villa (“The Wailing”).

*Spain’s Zeta Studios (“Elite”) and Brazil’s Conspiração (“DOM”) are team for a Spanish-language version of iconic Globo hit “Under Pressure,” a series shot at a Rio hospital with the dazzling style of a combat drama, a bracing social realism and building romance between a near-to-breakdown surgeon and doctor.

*Argentine helmer Natalia Smirnoff, director of 2014 Sundance title “Lock Charmer,” is attached to direct international co-production project “Mamá (Im)perfecta” (“(Im)perfect Mom”), produced by Colombia’s Laberinto Producciones and Ganas Producciones with Argentina’s Tarea Fina and Canada’s Fait Divers Media.

*”Gangs of Galicia’s” Claro Lago is set to star opposite Chile’s indefatigable Alfredo Castro in Luján Loioco’s Iberseries Co-Production Forum-bound “Queen of the Woods” (“La reina del bosque”), from Argentina’s Libre Cine, Argentine-Spanish company NonStop, Brazil’s Cinefilm and U.S.-based Bosco Entertainment.

*Argentine auteur Paula Hernández (“The Sleepwalkers”) will direct and co-write project series “Duarte. Evita Behind the Icon,” produced by Buenos Aires-based powerhouse Kapow (“La Jauría”).

*FilmSharks, again, has swooped on Luis Tosar starrer  International Trailer for Spanish Amnesia Dramedy ‘Samana Sunrise’: Scooped by FilmSharks

*Chile’s Rizoma, run by Sebastian Freund, and Ángel Zambrano’s Atlanta-based Condeco have launched international sales company, Rizco Content Sales.

*Chile’s Storyboard Media, run by Gabriela Sandoval and Carlos Nuñez, pacted at Iberseries to board crime drama “Wildness” (“Salvajes”) by two of Latin America’s leading women filmmakers, Claudia Huaiquimilla from Chile and Peru’s Joanna Lombardi.

*Filmax will sell international on “Gaua,” the new film from Paul Urkijo, whose “Irati,” a local-legend sluiced sword and mace epic beginning in 778, won Sitges’ main Competition Audience Award in 2022, establishing Urkijo as one of Spain’s most exciting younger genre auteurs.  

*Paz Lázaro’s Spain-based Amore Cine and Basque film-TV force Txintxua Films have boarded Chilean outfit Quijote Films’ wry psychological drama “Morir de Pie” (“To Die on Your Feet”) by María Paz Gonzalez (“Lina de Lima”).

*Thesps Ernesto Alterio (“The Passenger”) and Soledad Villamil (“The Secret in Their Eyes”) are set to star in upcoming feature “A Distant Place” (“Un lugar lejano”) from Argentine filmmaker Alberto Lecchi and Argentina’s Twins Latin Films of Argentina and co-producers Filmakers Monkeys (Spain) and now Chile’s Rizoma.

*The Hague-based Latin Quarter Entertainment, a sales, co-production and distribution outfit, has acquired U.K. and German theatrical rights to “The Bail” (“La fianza”) from debut Colombian-Spanish director Gonzalo Perdomo.