Spain Bids to Grab Top Spot

variety.com:

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentSince 2018, Spain’s film and TV industries has gone through a revolution. Accustomed to the success of standout movie auteurs – Almodóvar, Amenabar and Trueba – for two decades or more Spain has blown U.S.

shows out of its domestic free-to-air primetime and been one of the world’s most successful exporter of fiction TV formats.Now, Spain’s place on the periphery of global TV business is history.

Through October, four Netflix Spanish shows or movies – “Money Heist” (Part 4, watched by 65 million household accounts), “The Platform,” (56 million), “Below Zero” (47 million) and “Elite” (Season 4, 37 million) – were some of the most watched non-English language Netflix titles of all time.

Spain’s Canary Islands boasts one of the highest shoot incentives – 50% of a first €1 million ($1.1 million) spend – anywhere in the world.Capping that, in March 2021 Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the most ambitious film-TV incentive drive in history: the Spain AVS Hub Plan, worth a total €1.6 billion ($1.81 billion) in investment or state engineered financing.Further pumping the entertainment sector, in January, the government unveiled the Spanish Screenings XXL, an amped up version of the Malaga Festival’s March Spanish cinema showcase.