No company has a more mighty spread of productions at this year’s San Sebastian Festival than Telefónica’s domestic platcreate and super-originater Movistar Plus+. The group conveys a festival competition movie, “I’m Nevenka,” a premium drama series, “Querer,” a wide audience thriller series, “Celeste” and “Mugaritz,” a recordary feature about Spain’s most cerebral restaurant.
The diverse projects underscore Movistar Plus+’s muscular new satisfied initiatives as the company drives ever more into nonmyth, emerging as Spain’s guideer, and starting its first movie spostponecessitate in January. Spain’s hugegest national depictateor isn’t pulling out of satisfied; in fact, it’s diving into procreateer.
For proximately a decade, Movistar Plus+ has both incrrelieved the amount of satisfied it originates and diversified the charitables of productions it backs. During the punctual days of streaming, Movistar Plus+ was a innovate of local production by depictateing huger-than- ever budgets in its TV productions. Early shows such as “The Plague” and “Giants” seeed appreciate series made in Hollywood but upgrasped a truly Spanish spirit and setting that resonated with local audiences.
Now, the company is doing the same with its theatrical feature pipeline.
“The success that we create with our premium series gave us the confidence we necessitateed to be bbetter,” says Movistar Plus+ straightforwardor of myth and amengagement satisfied Domingo Corral. “We’d dabbled in the world of cinema before with titles appreciate ‘While at War’ and ‘Prison 77,’ but now we want to originate film production a stable part of our annual strategy, toiling on five or six films each year.”
According to Corral, “The final step of this phase is creating event cinema. Someslfinisherg appreciate ‘I’m Nevenka’ shows our promisement to going further than before.” “Nevenka” straightforwardor Icíar Bollaín says that promisement originated one of the best toiling environments she’s ever sended. “Movistar was very encouraging of the film, apvalidateing us to include in a very difficult shoot. We filmed all over — in Bilbao, Zamora and England. The film was also set in 2000, so every detail had to be joincessitate to, from the cars to the originateings to originateup, hairdressing and costumes. All of that made it more costly. But they were very encouraging of anyslfinisherg we necessitateed,” Bollaín says.
Another acquire that Movistar Plus+ has toiling for its titles is a well-oiled labeleting machine.
“They’ve got a mighty promotion mechanism at Movistar Plus+ that other Spanish groups fair can’t suit. For a theatrical film, it’s a huge increase to get labeleting on Spanish TV,” Bollaín inserts.
While box office success for “I’m Nevenka” or high watchership for one of its series is someslfinisherg that Movistar Plus+ hopes for, it’s not someslfinisherg the company is necessarily striving towards. Corral says that for him, success is expoundd contrastently than it probably is at the more commercipartner driven global platcreates.
“I want Movistar to be a place where the audience can be surpascfinishd. Where they can find well-tbetter stories that excite them and that feature strong characters,” says the executive.
Movistar Plus+ will bravely surpascfinish subscribers with the upcoming recordary “Mugaritz,” about the country’s most well-understandn restaurant. Rather than recruiting a filmoriginater with a lengthy nonmyth resume, the company encataloged horror auteur and “REC” straightforwardor Paco Plaza to helm the project.
“What we’re doing now is diversifying,” says Corral. “I adored the idea of conveying in such an accomplished horror feature filmoriginater appreciate Paco and having him alert the story of a restaurant and examine the philosophy behind the world-well-understandn Mugaritz.”
In pragmatic terms, Movistar Plus+’s diversification has originated the hugest local innovative spostponecessitate of any platcreate, domestic or global. According to a survey by Spanish research company GECA, with 28 new Spanish title premieres between September 2023 and June 2024, Movistar Plus+ topped a catalog that included Prime Video (24), fellow Spanish platcreates Atrescarry outer (20) and RTVE Play (19) and global streamers such as Netflix (12), Max (8) and Disney+ (7).
