Placing an early bet on the booming Spanish-language market, Starzplay, Starz’s premium international streaming service, has unveiled its first slate of international original productions, made up of four series from Spain and Mexico.
The titles will all be made available across the service’s footprint in Latin America. Select titles will debut in Spain and the U.S. on Starz and Lionsgate-backed Latinx content streamer Pantaya, respectively, Starz announced Monday.
In a sign of Starzplay’s ambitions, the service has allied with some of the Spanish-speaking world’s foremost talent and players, including “Locked Up” showrunner Iván Escobar and Argentina’s Lucía Puenzo, showrunner on “La Jauría, and Spain’s Bambu Producciones (“Velvet,” “Cable Girls”), Spain’s The Mediapro Studio (“The Head,” “The Young Pope”), London-based Fremantle, Chile’s Fabula (“A Fantastic Woman,” “El Presidente”) and Pantaya itself, a joint venture of Starz parent Lionsgate and Hemisphere Media Group.
Following on from “La Jauría,” Fremantle and Fabula, who hold down a multi-year production-distribution deal, will join forces once more with Puenzo boarding as the showrunner on a dark period thriller “Señorita Mexico,” set at a training camp for the country’s Miss Mexico beauty pageant where, the synopsis runs, contestant vie not only to win but make it out of the final contest alive. Fremantle handles global distribution.
Bambu and Spain’s La Claqueta will produce “Nacho Vidal, an Industry XXXL,” an exploration of the adult film industry turning around Nacho Vidal, one of its most engaging and intelligent stars who changed the rules of the game in the 1990s, becoming an international superstar, but one who always had larger ambitions.
Produced byThe Mediapro Studio, “Express” marks the latest show from Ivan Escobar, a long time writer and showrunner on Spanish international breakout series “Locked Up,” who here takes on a crime thriller set in a world where the only crime that has spiraled is express kidnapping. The series is produced by The Mediapro Studio’s Laura Fernández Espeso, Javier Mendez, Javier Pons and Escobar.
Zasha Robles, from Spiral Intl., a subsidiary of the Etcetera Group, will team with Pantaya to produce “Toda la Sangre,” a thriller based on the popular crime novels of Mexican writer Bernardo Esquica, about a journalist who encounters a series of murders performed as if Aztec sacrifices. “Toda la Sangre” will be made available on Starzplay in Latin America.