Small Screen Series ‘La Mesias’ Draws Big Buzz
variety.comJohn Hopewell Chief International Correspondent The Spanish world premiere that made the most waves at this year’s San Sebastian Festival was not a film but a series, “La Mesías,” written, directed and produced by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo. “A masterpiece,” proclaimed Spanish website Cineconñ; national newspaper El Mundo greeted it as the first work of maturity from hugely unconventional auteurs.
Now bound for Mipcom, where the series receives a market screening, “La Mesías” says much about the ambitions of its creators and its backer, Movistar Plus.
In 2017, Telefónica-owned Movistar Plus, Spain’s biggest SVOD-pay TV player, rocked the San Sebastian Festival with “The Plague,” then the biggest series ever made in Spain. “La Mesías” follows Ambrossi and Calvo’s overseas breakout “Veneno,” which 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 remember we wanted to make ‘La Mesías’ the way we wanted to make it,” Ambrossi recalls.
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