MADRID — Latido Films has acquired world sales rights outside Spain to “Historias Lamentables,” the new feature from Javier Fesser, writer-director of “Champions,” an extraordinary sleeper blockbuster in Spain, which earned $23.1 million box office last year at Spanish theaters for Universal Pictures International (UPI).
“Champions” also went on to be selected by Spanish Academy members as Spain’s submission to the International Oscar race and this January to win the Spanish Academy’s best picture Goya Award.
Co-written by Fesser and Claro García, a scribe on Fesser’s “Mortadelo and Filemon: Mission Implausible,” “Historias Lamentables” unites near all the team behind “Campeones,” including production houses Películas Pendleton and Morena Films, sales agent Latido and Spanish public broadcaster RTVE, which has acquired free-to-air rights to Spain.
Películas Pendleton’s Luis Mansó and Morena’s Alvaro Longoria will produce “Historias Lamentables,” repeating their credits on “Champions.”
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In a departure from “Champions,” Amazon Prime Video has acquired pay TV/SVOD rights to Spain on Fesser’s new film as it rapidly ramps up its slate of Spanish titles.
Latido, which sold “Campeones” around the world, will introduce the new project to buyers at next week’s Toronto Film Festival.
The story line – or lines – of “Historias Lamentables” is being kept under wraps. What Latido most certainly has in its hands, however, is the latest movie project from Academy Award-nominated Javier Fesser (“Binta and the Great Idea”) who movies often pursue a strong line in choral comedy, incorrigible individuals, a social conscience and a wide audience appeal at home: “Mortadelo & Filemon: The Big Adventure” garnered €22.9 million ($25.0 million) in Spain in 2003.
That can translate abroad into sales business with prominent upscale distributors as buyers open up acquisitions to an ever broader range of movies including popular comedies. Acquired by Le Pacte, “Champions,” for instance, earned $1.0 million in France; Germany’s Concorde and Focus/Universal also picked up the film, the latter for Latin America.
Latido Films current sales slate takes in anticipated dystopian allegory “The Platform,” playing Toronto’s Midnight Madness; “Devil Between the Legs,” from Mexican director-screenwriter partners Arturo Ripstein and Paz Alicia Garcíadiego (“Bleak Street”) a candid, but reportedly affecting take on desire at an advanced age; and animated feature “Buñuel in the Labyrinth of Turtles,” a Gkids U.S. pickup shortlisted as Spain’s International Feature Film Oscar entry.
A recent Latido pick-up, Belén Funes’ buzzed-up “The Thief’s Daughter,” a hard-hitting family drama, will world premiere in San Sebastián competition. Further titles are Argentine Mariano Cohn’s “4 x 4,” a mordant social critique; and Hari Sama’s Sundance-selected “This is Not Berlin,” a semi-autobiographical coming of age drama acquired by Samuel Goldwyn Films for Latin America.
At least one further Latido sales title will be announced shortly.