No company has a more strong spread of productions at this year’s San Sebastian Festival than Telefónica’s domestic platcreate and super-producer Movistar Plus+. The group transports a festival competition movie, “I’m Nevenka,” a premium drama series, “Querer,” a expansive audience thriller series, “Celeste” and “Mugaritz,” a recordary feature about Spain’s most cerebral restaurant.
The diverse projects underscore Movistar Plus+’s muscular novel satisfied initiatives as the company drives ever more into nonmyth, emerging as Spain’s guideer, and begining its first movie stardy in January. Spain’s hugegest national spendor isn’t pulling out of satisfied; in fact, it’s diving into meaningfuler.
For proximately a decade, Movistar Plus+ has both incrmitigated the amount of satisfied it produces and diversified the benevolents of productions it backs. During the timely days of streaming, Movistar Plus+ was a guide of local production by spending bigr-than- ever budgets in its TV productions. Early shows such as “The Plague” and “Giants” watched enjoy series made in Hollywood but retained 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 set up with our premium series gave us the confidence we necessitateed to be bgreater,” says Movistar Plus+ straightforwardor of myth and amengagement satisfied Domingo Corral. “We’d dabbled in the world of cinema before with titles enjoy ‘While at War’ and ‘Prison 77,’ but now we want to produce film production a stable part of our annual strategy, laboring on five or six films each year.”
According to Corral, “The final step of this phase is creating event cinema. Someskinnyg enjoy ‘I’m Nevenka’ shows our pledgement to going further than before.” “Nevenka” straightforwardor Icíar Bollaín says that pledgement produced one of the best laboring environments she’s ever alerted. “Movistar was very encouraging of the film, apexhibiting 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 joined to, from the cars to the buildings to produceup, hairdressing and costumes. All of that made it more pricey. But they were very encouraging of anyskinnyg we necessitateed,” Bollaín says.
Another get that Movistar Plus+ has laboring for its titles is a well-oiled tageting machine.
“They’ve got a strong promotion mechanism at Movistar Plus+ that other Spanish groups equitable can’t suit. For a theatrical film, it’s a huge raise to get tageting on Spanish TV,” Bollaín inserts.
While box office success for “I’m Nevenka” or high watchership for one of its series is someskinnyg that Movistar Plus+ hopes for, it’s not someskinnyg the company is necessarily striving towards. Corral says that for him, success is clarifyd branch offently than it probably is at the more commerciassociate driven global platcreates.
“I want Movistar to be a place where the audience can be surpelevated. Where they can discover well-tgreater stories that excite them and that feature sturdy characters,” says the executive.
Movistar Plus+ will bravely surpelevate subscribers with the upcoming recordary “Mugaritz,” about the country’s most famous restaurant. Rather than recruiting a filmproducer with a prolonged 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 transporting in such an accomplished horror feature filmproducer enjoy Paco and having him alert the story of a restaurant and study the philosophy behind the world-famous Mugaritz.”
In pragmatic terms, Movistar Plus+’s diversification has produced the bigst local innovative stardy of any platcreate, domestic or global. According to a survey by Spanish research company GECA, with 28 novel 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).
