Paris and Los Angeles-based Federation Entertainment has acquired the TV format and remake rights to Alejandro Amenábar’s debut feature, “Thesis.” It’s a prime example of the value of key older movie titles from standout younger foreign-language auteurs.
Producer of “The Bureau,” “Marseille,” “Bad Banks” and “Hostages,” Federation Entertainment will produce a drama series based on the film along with Raphaël Rocher at Empreinte Digitale, which produced “Missions,” a TV Critics Award winner at the 2017 MipDrama Screenings.
Federation Entertainment’s Lionel Uzan closed the remake deal with Guido Rud’s FilmSharks-owned the Remake Co. and Enrique Cerezo’s Video Mercury.
The move opens up a whole new front for rights-holders to exploit the commercial and artistic value of past movies. Further movie-to-series deals in the Spanish-speaking world look set to be announced in the coming months.
Amenábar’s debut feature, “Thesis” has three elements that make it ripe for drama series adaptation: Sustained thriller tension as Ángela, writing a thesis about violence, stumbles onto a snuff video where a girl — who is a former student at her university — is tortured to death; complex characters, such as Angela’s prime suspect, played by Eduardo Noriega; a specific setting, here a university campus, capable of exploration in a longer format.
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Written as well as directed by Amenábar, “Thesis” swept the 2002 Spanish Academy Awards, winning picture, director and original screenplay and making an instant star of the then-29-year-old filmmaker.
Cerezo will executive produce.