Telefonica’s Movistar Plus, the pay TV arm of the Spanish telco, one of Europe’s biggest telcos, held a round table on Saturday at the Sebastian Festival to present its first six original TV series. Five things we learnt about the series which confirm Movistar Plus as one of the key drivers, with Sky and France’s Canal Plus, of higher-end premium drama production in Europe:
1.NETFLIX, HBO ET AL… BEWARE
Netflix, HBO or any other digital platform which launches in Spain looks set to face formidable opposition. Attending the round table, Domingo Corral, Movistar Plus original production director, confirmed at San Sebastian that Movistar Plus has 20 series in development. They will begin to be made available on Movistar Plus’ linear Series channel and Yomvi catch-up/pay-per-view service from September 2017, kicking off with brothers Jorge and Alberto Sanchez-Cabezudo’s La Zona. Luis Miguel Gilperez, president of Telefonica España, recently announced that Telefonica will plough about €70 million ($79 million) a year into original productions. That figure takes in original TV series, though Movistar Plus is studying the possibility of financing original movie production as well, Corral said. Netflix announced last March its first original series commission for Spain, Las chicas del cable (literally, Cable Girls) from top Spanish TV production Bambu Producciones, co-owned by Studiocanal. But its Spanish series production looks set, in immediate terms at least, to pale before Telefonica’s.
2. FOR TELEFONICA, THE TALENT CUP RUNNETH OVER
What impresses about Telefonica’s premium TV drama drive is not just its volume but the caliber of its talent. The eight panelists on the Movistar Plus round table on Saturday, all Movistar Plus series writer or directors and mostly both, took in Cesc Gay, whose feature Truman swept the 2016 Goya Awards; Rafael Cobos, co-screenwriter of Marshland, the 2015 Goya winner; Fernando Gonzalez-Molina, director of Palm Trees in the Snow, the highest-grossing Spanish movie in Spain this year; Jorge and Alberto Sanchez-Cabezudo, creators of “Crematorium,” a rare - and hit - premium TV series made by Spanish premium pay TV operator Canal Plus before its purchase by Telefonica; and Juan Cavestany and Alvaro Fernandez-Armero, highly-regarded directors of off-beat, often edgier Spanish come
dies such as Cavestany’s 2013 cult movie “People in Places.”
3. MOVISTAR PLUS’ TV SLATE IS STILL GROWING
At San Sebastian, Movistar Plus revealed that it has placed an order for “Carta al padre,” a four-part Barcelona-set mini-series from Mar Coll, a Goya-winning best first feature director in 2009 for “Three Days With the Family.” It is co-written with Valentina Viso and Peru’s Diego Vega, co-director of Cannes Un Certain Regard and Locarno winners “October” and “El Mudo.”
4. FOR SPAIN, THE PREMIUM FICTION PUSH MARKS A MILESTONE
One talking point at Saturday’s panel was what set Movistar series apart, compared to much Spanish are TV productions.. One factor looks like the length of the creative process: the Sanchez-Cabezudo brothers revealed, for example, that writing La Zona will take them 16 months. Another difference: All the Movistar series will go into production will their screenplays locked, a practice much more common in film than TV to date in Spain.
5.NETFLIX - RAISING THE BAR OF WORLD FICTION
“It would cost an arm and a tooth for any digital platform to compete with Telefonica on its volume of Spanish production,” said one analyst. But Netflix does looks set to raise the bar of original production in Spain. Writing drama for free-to-air TV, Spaniards are competing in part with each other. Writing for Movistar Plus, they are competing with the best in the world; of which they are very conscious. That requires bigger budgets, lengthier development, and larger ambition.
AND NOW THEY ARE SIX: MOVISTAR PLUS’ FIRST SIX ORIGINAL TV SERIES PRODUCTIONS
CARTA AL PADRE (Mar Coll) Confirmed Saturday at San Sebastian, Carta al padre turns on “a completely dysfunctional obsessive father, who loves his children smooch that he makes their lives impossible. It’s a story of control, and the impossibility of carrying that out,” Coll commented.
DIME QUIEN SOY (Fernando Gonzalez Molina). Produced by Banijay’s DLO in Spain, adapting jourvalist-turned-authr Julia Navarro’s tale of the tumultuous life of a Spanish woman from its 1930s Republic to the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
FELIX (Cesc Gay) A “human humor-laced thriller,” said Gay, set in Andorra’s Pyrenees mountains with a Hitchcock-style set up: An innocent man embroiled in a tax-evasion scam. “I’ve always loved Hitchcock, never had the chance to make a film in that style, thought I’d try with this series,” said Gay.
LA PESTE (Alberto Rodriguez) Produced by José Antonio’s Atipica, a procedural-thriller set in a bustling 16th century Seville - part imperial splendor, part mud-grimed peasantry - from Rodriguez, whose Smoke & Mirrors plays San Sebastian competition and Marshland, a film noir, sold worldwide.
‘SHAME’ (Alvaro Fernandez Armero, Juan Cavestany) Created, written and directed by Fernandez Armero (“Sidetracked”) and Cavestany (“Dispongo de barcos”), Movistar Plus’ first sitcom, described by them as an irreverent, romantic dramedy. Production wraps next week.
LA ZONA Brothers Jorge and Alberto Sanchez-Cabezudo have already proved they can create premium TV fiction, writing and directing Crematorium, a property development thriller which delivered a searing indictment of Mediterranean coast influence peddling and graft. La Zona is a procedural thriller unspooling on the margins of a nuclear accident no-go area.
Calls for entries 
