Movistar Plus, Los Javis Bets Big on Bold with ‘La Mesias’
variety.comJohn Hopewell Chief International Correspondent In 2017, Movistar Plus, Spain’s biggest SVOD-pay TV player, rocked the San Sebastian Festival, the highest-profile movie event in Spain and Latin America region, with “The Plague,” the biggest series ever made in Spain.
Movistar Plus, owned by Telefónica, looks set to make waves again at this week’s San Sebastian by world premiering another big, bold series: “La Mesías.” It’s written, directed and produced by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo – known in Spain as Los Javis – marking their follow-up to overseas breakout “Veneno,” a raunchy but highly grounded bio of Spanish trans icon Cristina Ortiz. “Veneno” was picked up by HBO Max for the U.S.
market and made Ambrossi and Calvo among the most courted young showrunners in Europe. “We’ve had to say ‘no’ to a lot of things, to big offers, a lot of money from and outside Spain, to keep faithful to ourselves, and battle to remember we wanted to make ‘La Mesias’ how we have,” Ambrossi recalls.
The very existence of Movistar Plus is itself an innovation. In continental Europe, no other telecom has driven so determinedly into original production, releasing on average 11 new series or returning seasons every year since September 2017. “Many other telecoms in Europe – Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone – don’t produce so much content directly.
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