MADRID — Legendary Global, the TV production-financing house launched last December by Chris Albrecht and Anne Thomopoulos, has struck a weighty production alliance with Barcelona’s Spotlight, headed by Anxo Rodríguez, to develop and produce premium content targeting the global Spanish-speaking market.
Announced Thursday, the deal sees Legendary Global committing to develop and produce with ESPotlight 10-plus productions a year targeting streaming platforms, pay TV and commercial networks.
First up, and currently in production, is “La Treintena,” a feel-good dramedy written and directed by Mireia Noguera and co-written by Marta Vives.
Following the lives of four, late-twenties girlfriends living under COVID confinement in Barcelona, the six-part series stars Mireia Oriol, Paula Malia, Marta Vives and David Solans.
Driving into Spanish-language production, Legendary Global has gone straight to the jugular, striking a production relationship with a budding Spanish producer with established talent relations: Barcelona-based, ESPotlight is the content arm of talent agency Alter Ego Talent House whose clients include Mariano Barroso, writer-director of two of Movistar Plus’ most acclaimed drama series to date: “What the Future Holds” and “La Línea Invisible,” an ETA assassinations origins story that has just broken viewer household records for the Telefonica pay TV/SVOD service.
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Also on the books of Alter Ego Talent House, which works in collaboration with CAA, a Legendary Global press statement said Thursday, is writer Alejandro Hernández, a much-courted co-scribe on “What the Future Holds” and “La Línea Invisible,” as well as Alejandro Amenábar’s hit Movistar Plus original movie “While at War” and ground-testing Netflix original series “Criminal.”
Further clients are “Elite” director Dani de la Orden and Alex Rodrigo, director on some of the most impressive episodes of “Money Heist” (“La Casa de Papel”), and multi-prized Spanish director Isabel Coixet who recently wrote and directed “Foodie Live” for HBO España.
“The creative content industry in Spain is exploding and is beginning to resonate around the world. I feel certain that ESPotlight’s partnership with Legendary Global will help fuel Spain’s growing impact,” said Rodriguez whose producing credits include a spellbinding documentary portrait, “Paco Lucía: La Busqueda.”
“Anxo’s ability to identify, nurture and collaborate with talent is unparalleled. We look forward to cultivating must see content that appeals to a world-wide audience,” said Legendary Global’s Anne Thomopoulos.
The battle for supremacy in the Spanish-speaking world will be one for talent. Here, the Legendary-ESPotlight alliance has one advantage from the get-go.
Another is finance. “It’s much cheaper producing outside the U.S., often a fraction of what it would be for the same sort of production quality,” Ampere Analysis’ Guy Bisson said at a Göteborg Festival Masterclass this year.
The Spanish-language market is the second largest in linguistic terms in the world, after Mandarin. The major challenge for many Spanish-language producers is finance. With a €1.5 million ($1.6 million) episode still rating as high-budget by Spanish standards, U.S. companies, however, can afford to fully-finance series, as Legendary Global has done on “La Treintena,” in what is still a sellers’ market for premium content.
