Atresplayer Premium Renews ‘The Gypsy Bride,’ Consolidates as Spanish Series Champion (EXCLUSIVE)

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The family of John Prine has signed a partnership deal with RadicalMedia (“Summer of Soul”) to develop two documentaries about the life and work about the life and work of the late singer-songwriter, the company has announced. Filming will be well underway this weekend as RadicalMedia plans to shoot the week-long series of tribute concerts taking place in Nashville under the banner of “You Got Gold,” including shows at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on Saturday and at the Ryman Auditorium Sunday and Monday. The all-star lineup for these shows is not being publicly revealed in advance. Footage for the “You Got Gold” concerts is being directed by Michael John Warren, who recently helmed the HBO documentary “Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known” for RadicalMedia.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Spain’s Marc Clotet (“The Sleeping Voice,” “15 Hours”) and Argentina’s Juan Gil Navarro (“100 Days To Fall in Love”), Santiago Achaga (“Like, La Leyenda”) and Esteban Pérez (“Limbo”) are attached to star in “Fragile,” a slice of Patagonia noir thriller from Argentina’s StoryLab.  Created and produced by StoryLab partners Nacho Viale and Diego Palacio, “Fragile” is backed by Flow, Telecom’s dominate Argentine SVOD service, and Televisión Publica Argentina, the country’s public broadcast network.  Palacio will direct “Fragile” (“Fragiles”) from screenplays penned by Lucas Molteni, whose has written on five StoryLab series dating back to 201’s “Estocolmo,” up-and-coming scribes Juan E. Cordoni and Luciano Cocciardi and Viale and Palacio. 

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Rodrigo Sorogoyen, director of “As Bestas,” “Riot Police” and the Oscar-nominated “Madre,” is bringing onto the international market “La Guerra,” a six-part drama delivering a new vision of the Spanish Civil War which looks like one of the biggest Spanish series ever made. Sorogoyen will direct all six episodes. Isabel Peña, Sorogoyen, and Eduardo Villanueva, “Riot Police’s”writing team, have fairly definitive version of three episodes with the rest at an initial phase.  “La Guerra” was originally set up at Movistar Plus+. In an amicable settlement – Sorogoyen has gone on to direct and promote an episode of Movistar+ original “Offworld” at last week’s San Sebastián – after Movistar Plus+ pulled out of the series, Sorogoyen and Villanueva’s Madrid-based label Caballo Films have recovered the rights. 

Kym Marsh looked ready to go and get stuck into another week of training as she left Morning Live on Monday (September 26). The former Coronation Street was spotted with her Strictly Come Dancing partner Graziano Di Prima after they appeared on the BBC One show which Kym co-hosts.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Headed by ex-HBO exec James Costos, Los Angeles and Madrid-based Secuoya Studios and Colombia’s Caracol Television have closed a framework deal to jointly develop, produce and finance scripted series over the next year.  The agreement seals an alliance between two of Latin America’s powerhouses, with large international ambitions. Amazon’s Prime Video and now Mediawan have boarded Secuoya Studios’ flagship series “Zorro,” starring “Elite’s” Miguel Bernardeau and Renata Notni, directed by “Money Heist’s” Javier Quintas. Producer of iconic longer-format series, Caracol TV’s “La Reina del Flow” Season 1 sold to over 100 countries; “El Rey; Vicente Fernandez” Season 1 bowed on Netflix Sept. 12 , shooting to No. 3 in global non-English charts. 

Strictly Come Dancing dancer Graziano Di Prima had fans in awe when he referred to Coronation Street star Kym Marsh's parents as his "second family". The professional dancer, 28, said he had "the best day ever" when he met the 46 year old's parents as he went round for tea. "I had the best day ever.

Strictly Come Dancing was back with a bang as this year’s celebrities met their professional partners and performed in the first group dance of the series. Among those competing to lift the Glitterball in a few months’ time is actress Kym Marsh.

Strictly Come Dancing star and OK! columnist Judi Love has given us her thoughts on the newly-announced pairings for the upcoming dance extravaganza. Writing in her column this week, Judi also discusses the current cost of living crisis - made worse by the prospect of an unexpectedly cold winter - as well as the rumours that she's set to appear on the forthcoming series of I'm A Celebrity...

Liza Foreman Murky blue- brown images, bringing to mind a Lorca play developed for today’s premium TV audience, fill the screen in the trailer for “The Gypsy Bride,” from “Penny Dreadful” director Paco Cabezas, which world premiered at the San Sebastián Film Festival. The fiction is produced by ViacomCBS International Studios (VIS), with the participation of Atresmedia Televisión, and in collaboration with Diagonal TV. As well as presenting the first season of the series at the Spanish-speaking world’s highest-profile festival, Cabezas, the show’s creator and director had something else to celebrate on Wednesday. 

Amazon’s Hail Mary play to bring the NFL to streaming looks like a touchdown in Week 1.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent David Zucker and Pat Proft, the veteran American filmmakers behind cult comedy franchises including “The Naked Gun” and “Airplane!,” are set to executive produce a Nordic Noir comedy spoof series called “NoPoFo.” The anthology series is being produced by lkkas’ Creative Studio, a recently-launched Finnish company. BBC Studios Nordics has come on board as a co-producer. Billed as “Nordic Noir meets ‘Police Squad!,‘” the 10-part series follows three elite agents from the Nordic Police Force (NoPoFo) who are tasked with solving the sort of murders that Nordic psychopaths do so well. Each half-hour episode is set in a different Nordic country and features a different cast of supporting characters, including a serial killer who only murders bad heavy rock bands, and an Instagram obsessive who creates ice sculptures out of his victims.

Lise Pedersen French kids entertainment company Millimages has announced it is renewing with Netflix for Seasons 2, 3 and 4 of its hit series “Molang”, already picked up by co-producers TF1 and Canal+.  “Molang” will be rolling out in all territories except Scandinavia and China from Nov. 1, said Millimages general manager Marina Narishkin, adding that the deal bore testimony to the fluffy character’s popularity with audiences of all ages and from all continents.  “‘Molang’ is not just watched by children, our target audience is 15 to 30-year olds, the young co-parents. We’re not making packaged goods for children. “Molang” supports kindness, it’s a character that is non gender specific: That’s really important, and it was done way back, not just because it’s the fashion,” she added.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Paris-based La Fabrica Nocturna Cinéma, producer of Chema García Ibarra’s 2021 Locarno winner “Sacred Spirit,” has boarded Gabriel Azorin’s “Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes,” marking another financing milestone for his buzzy, poetic and time blending Spanish project.  A Locarno Match Me! hit. “Thebes” has been put through both San Sebastián’s Ikusmira Berriak and Madrid’s ECAM Incubator, rapidly consolidating as Spain’s foremost development labs which each attract about 270 applications a year.   La Fabrica Nocturna, whose credits also take in “The Heiresses,” joins Madrid’s Dvein Films, A Coruña’s Filmika Galaika (“They Carry Death”) and Lisbon’s Primeira Idade (“The Metamorphosis of Birds”) as a producer partner on “Thebes,” which won a RTP Award, consisting of the pre-buy of rights from the Portuguese public broadcaster, at late 2020’s Seville European Film Festival.  

A transgender drag queen known as Valencia Prime tragically passed away Monday night during one of her performances.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent In the first shot of “OffWorld” (“Apagon”), the camera focuses on Ernesto – balding, serious, tired, lost in thought. It then pulls back to reveal the whole of his office, a computer-screen packed rom at an emergency intervention unit. The shot says much about the latest series from Movistar+, “Off world,” which world premieres in Official Selection at Spain’s San Sebastian Film Festival and in turn speaks volumes of the ambitions and priorities of Telefonica-owned Movistar+, Southern Europe’s biggest national pay-TV/SVOD service.  Produced with Buendía Estudios, “OffWorld” presents five stories which place very different individuals in the same context, a world where there’s no electricity thanks to a massive power outage; things taken for granted like phones and the internet don’t work. 

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent The San Sebastian Festival opens on Sept. 16 with a bang: Alberto Rodriguez’s “Prison 77,” most probably the biggest Spanish film of 2022, the latest title from one of the Spain’s most preeminent auteurs and a foretaste of one possible future face of Spanish cinema, thanks to Movistar+. “Prison 77” begins as a fish-out-of-water jail survival thriller. Manuel, in 1977, a young accountant, played by Miguel Herrán (“Money Heist,” “Elite”), is sent to Barcelona’s legendary Modelo penitentiary pending trial for embezzlement.  It grows, however, for all of its length, as a character-driven tale of psychological observance, as Miguel gradually befriends Pino, his seen-it-all cell mate, who just wants a quiet life.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Alvaro Longoria, partner-producer at Morena Films, one of Spain’s top production shingles, is teaming with the Government of Cantabria to create El Bosque del Cine, a pioneering reforestation scheme offering producers a simple but inspiring way of cancelling productions’ carbon footprints.  The program is set to be unveiled on Sept. 13 at a round table at this week’s Santander Film Festival. El Bosque del Cine aims to plant 34,000 trees over 40 hectares, lent to the program by the Government of Cantabria. Creation will be divided into two phases of 20 hectares each, the first beginning this year. The forest will absorb 19,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions, equivalent to the footprint of 320 movies. 

Manori Ravindran International Editor “Shantaram” star Alexander Siddig is set to lead a supernatural series for Brazilian streaming service Globoplay. “Fallen,” which has begun principal photography, will star Siddig alongside Sarah Niles (“Ted Lasso”), Jessica Alexander (“Get Even”), Gijs Blom (“The Letter for the King”) and Timothy Innes (“The Last Kingdom”). Produced by Silver Reel and Night Train Media, and co-produced with Globoplay, “Fallen” (8 x 60′) follows the story of Luce, a young woman who is sent to a cult-like rehab facility called Sword & Cross to serve time for a crime she can’t remember committing.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Billie Lourd, Colin Hanks and Aisling Bea have boarded the transatlantic comedy “And Mrs,” which is set to start shooting in east London this fall. The British feature centers on Gemma, a woman living in London (Bea) whose American fiancé Nathan (Hanks) dies shortly before their wedding day. When, with some encouragement from her sister-in-law, she decides to go ahead and marry him anyway, she has to overcome public opinion, the law of the land and even her own family’s objections. Bea is best known for “This Way Up,” “Living With Yourself” and “Doctor Who,” and will soon be headlining the much-anticipated film based on the songs of Take That, “Greatest Day.”

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Munich-based Beta Film, one of Europe’s biggest truly independent TV-film groups, has licensed to PPCW Media for Hong Kong and Macau International Emmy winner “Atlantic Crossing,” starring Kyle MacLachan and Sofia Helin. PPC Media has also acquired Alejandro Amenábar’s Movistar Plus+ original “La Fortuna,” with Stanley Tucci and Clarke Peters, a tale of piracy, court room battles and historical justice set between the U.S. and Spain. Reaching more remote places, Beta has also closed Mongolia with Hulegu Media, on “Sisi” a mix of sex, politics and period glam from RTL, Beta and Story House, a modern mindset take on a film icon.