Marta Ezpeleta: Celebs Rumors

Emiliano De Pablos Spain’s The Mediapro Studio has secured local adaptation rights to Belgian TV primetime hit “The Musical of Your Life,” which won the award for best factual entertainment format at this year’s MipTV International Format Awards.The deal has been negotiated with Belgian international distribution company Be-Entertainment, which represents the format’s rights globally.Created and produced by indie company Dedsit, the first season of the show recently aired on Belgium’s Play4 channel, scoring a spectacular 35.7% average market share. Dedsit is already working on a second season.Set in a theatre, each episode of “The Musical of Your Life” pays tribute to a celebrity, someone beloved and admired by the entire country.  The celebrity is invited to the theater to join the host for a unique up-close and personal interview about all the key moments of his life.

Emiliano De Pablos Spanish super-indie production-sales companies are stepping back in time with vigor, building on opportunities opened up by streamers’ growing market flexibility to retain IP and sell territory-by-territory. Prioritizing bottom lines over market share, global platforms are ever more splitting rights and investing less in single titles. As budgets reduce, projects’ producers are forced to court ever more partners. That often means partnering on productions. “We accustomed customers to enjoying high-quality series with large budgets. In the new context, it is increasingly difficult to continue in this vein if you don’t partner,” says Onza’s Carlos Garde.

Series Mania on March 21 just after a Spanish series, “Wrong Side of the Tracks” from Mediaset España and Alea Media, had scored 149.6 million watching hours in three weeks on Netflix for Seasons 1 and 2.  That platform connection and power of Spanish series threaded most of the series and much of the commentary at Tuesday’s Next from Spain, supported by Audiiovisual from Spain.  At least in terms of titles now ready to hit the market, there’s little sign as yet of platform pullback in Spain. Rather, it remains a ground zero in the streamer wars.

Anna Marie de la Fuente In its continued bid to ramp up its programming content, ViX Plus, the upcoming premium SVOD  service from TelevisaUnivision, has formed a strategic alliance with Spain’s The Mediapro Studio, which will produce exclusive original content for the new Spanish-language streamer slated to launch in the second half of this year.First out the gate are scripted series “Las Pelotaris” and the sports-themed docuseries, “La Sangre y la Gloria” (“The Blood and The Glory”).Welcoming The Mediapro Studio as a crucial partner in its efforts to build “a service that will offer the best content in Spanish for our audience in the United States and Latin America,” Rodrigo Mazón, executive vice president and general manager of ViX Plus, said: “We are very excited to present the first original productions resulting from this strategic alliance and to be able to develop more stories together with the highest of production values.” Commented Marta Ezpeleta, director of international, The Mediapro Studio: “This alliance represents an important step in the international expansion of the studio and in its consolidation both in Latin America and in the United States, where we already have a solid infrastructure, with our own production facilities and a great team of creators.”Set in the 1920s, “Las Pelotaris” follows three pioneering women who broke multiple glass ceilings in order to succeed.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Iberseries Platino Industria guests got a sneak peek at the first episode of “Codigo Implacable,” the first TV series in a production alliance between Sony Pictures TV (SPT) and The Mediapro Studio.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentBest known is its early decades as a sports broker, services provider and producer of auteur films, from Woody Allen and Roman Polanski to Spain’s Isabel Coixet and Fernando Aranoa, few companies have powered so fast and bullishly into high-end drama series production than Spain’s Mediapro.That drive has seen The Mediapro Studio launch in 2919 as one of Spain’s preeminent production forces, and then build even more with new titles set up with Paramount Plus (“Cecilia,” produced with VIS), Disney Plus (“Siempre Fui Yo”), Amazon (“Iosi, El Espia Arrepentido”), Warner Media (“Las Bravas”) and Netflix (“Magic For Humans Spain”).Yet TMS is eager to own IP, still with relations with lineal players