Different accents, both visual and sound, are part of the six new original Spanish productions that Amazon Prime Video has advanced in Madrid before the media on Wednesday morning. A “western paella” and the adaptation of the successful literary trilogy Red Queen, by Juan Gómez-Jurado, are among the bets that the on-demand content service will debut throughout the year.
Koro Castellano, director of the platform in Spain, defends that diversity. “One of the greatest assets we have in Spain is linguistic diversity and no one needs to force us to take this matter seriously,” he told this newspaper, referring to the General Audiovisual Law. ERC last year linked its vote in favor of the 2022 General State Budgets to the obligation for international platforms such as Amazon Prime to promote production in the co-official languages. Castellano explains that the company’s Spanish subsidiary wishes to increase the availability of its catalog in Basque, Catalan and Galician on its own initiative. All the new Spanish original film and series projects advanced this Wednesday “will be subtitled and dubbed in the three languages,” he advances. María José Rodríguez herself, responsible for original productions for our country, highlights the variety of Spanish landscapes in these projects.
In them you will see much more than the Madrid of Red Queen. Juan Gómez-Jurado, author of the original novels, and Amaya Muruzábal, showrunner of the series, will transfer to television the story of Antonia Scott, a woman whose extraordinary intelligence is a gift and at the same time a curse. Produces the eponymous adaptation Dopamine and Focus. As the writer’s followers expected, this title is one of the fruits of the exclusive agreement for the development of original audiovisual content that the platform announced last year with Gómez-Jurado.
The current Alicante will be very relevant for the tone of no footprints, defined by Sara Antuña and Carlos de Pando, its creators, as a “western paella” of eight episodes. Desi and Cata, a gypsy and a Mexican who are dedicated to cleaning houses, become the target of police, Russian hitmen and a wealthy family when they find a body and a bag full of money in a mansion where they work. The chemistry between these two modern Thelma and Louise, faced with Valencian corruption, is one of the keys to this proposal.
And the old luxury of the Marbella of the eighties will be very present in The Farads, provisional title of this story inspired by real events that also consists of eight episodes. With action tints and thriller, its creators will introduce the viewer to the call jet set of the time through its protagonist, Oskar, a boy who dreams of setting up a gym and ends up delving into the fascinating world of the Costa del Sol, its eccentricities and its geopolitics.
Galicia became, by accident, the destination where a good part of a private matter, which combines action, mystery and drama in the Spain of the forties. This bamboo production (Velvet, Grand Hotel) stars Aura Garrido and Jean Reno. A high-class woman with a police soul tries to discover a serial killer on her own with the help of her butler, given the prejudices that keep the young woman away from the security force. The arrival of the coronavirus pandemic forced the team to lock themselves in this region, which at that time suffered less incidence than the rest of the country. Fate provided many opportunities for a fiction with an ambitious visual bill, producer Teresa Fernández Valdés explained this Wednesday. The fiction will arrive in the Amazon Prime Video catalog “before this summer”.
These different local accents do not prevent the platform’s new bets from trying to be attractive to users from the rest of the world. The claim of international casts, with the presence of a universal Frenchman for his productions in Hollywood like Reno, and the Mexican Camila Sodi in no footprints, so they show it. So does the love for genres such as science fiction and action, which also embraces Awareness, film produced by Juan Solá and Mark Albela. It tells the story of teenager Ian, who lives with his father on the fringes of society and has the ability to project visual illusions into the minds of others.
It also stays on the fantastic plane tomorrow is today a film directed by Nacho G. Velilla (Villaviciosa next door), with Carmen Machi, Javier Gutiérrez and Sílvia Abril in the cast. In the summer of 1991, the Gaspar family begins their vacations on the beach, but an electrical storm makes several of its members travel more than 30 years in time, to 2022. The great change experienced in these decades in the country, dominated by smartphones, music trap and social networks, makes them want to return to the past. Neither of the two films will go through theaters. Its premiere, as the company does with all its original films in the world, will take place directly on the platform.
Gain a foothold in the streaming war
Aware that the war of streaming In Spain it is becoming more and more complicated, with the arrival this year of new competitors such as SkyShowtime, Amazon’s entertainment catalog has decided to continue promoting its local offer. “Soon, the user will understand that they cannot be subscribed to an indefinite number of services and will have to choose. And even more so, when we return to the streets after the pandemic and the time on the sofa is limited, ”Defends Castellano. The value for money of its catalog, which costs 36 euros per year (3 euros per month, compared to 8 or more of its competitors), is one of its strengths, value those responsible for Amazon Prime Video Spain. For María José Rodríguez, less is more: “We are not in the game of volume, but of the appropriate selection of projects, giving each of them the appropriate time.”
Synergies with Twitch, a live video platform that is also owned by Jeff Bezos’ company, will also play a relevant role. Sometimes, like the recent documentary Rubius X, about the content creator with more than 10 million followers on this social network, will happen by attracting these stars from the digital world to his catalog. But it will not be the only way. “We are always experimenting, because it is a new world for us”, advances Castellano.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.