Spain’s Bullish TV Industry Debates Future, Showcases Series at Berlin

Tom Sizemore, who starred in Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down and in hundreds of other film and TV roles over three-plus decades, died Friday at a hospital in Burbank. He was 61 and had been in a coma since suffering a stroke February 18 that resulted in brain aneurysm.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Spin Master, the large toy, game and kids-TV conglomerate has helped build franchises out of concepts like “PAW Patrol” and “Bakugan Battle Brawlers.’ Now the company thinks it can do the same with a group of young girls who have a knack for riding unicorns. The company and Netflix plan to launch a new fantasy-adventure series, “Unicorn Academy.” Based on a series of books by author Julie Sykes, the animated series will launch with a 72-minute movie premiere and subsequent episodes, all slated for release this fall, followed by a toy line, digital game and licensed consumer product rollout in 2024. Spin Master Entertainment has content planned through 2025, with more than 250 minutes of short and long-form features produced to date including original shorts and music videos.

Bill Murray and star Jeannie Berlin set foot on the red carpet of the 2023 SAG Awards holding hands.Murray and Berlin appeared quite close when they arrived together for Sunday's soiree at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. The star wore a black tuxedo with a colorful bow tie, while Berlin sported an all-black suit and shades.Berlin, who portrayed Hadassah Fabelman in the Steven Spielberg film, was there for the film's nomination in the Best Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture category.

The competition winners of the 73rd Berlinale are about to start rolling in as the festival draws to a close Saturday evening.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian actor-turned-director Andrea Di Stefano, whose gritty police drama “The Last Night of Amore” is launching from the Berlin Film Festival’s Berlinale Special Gala section, reps an Italian anomaly. “Amore,” which refers to a police lieutenant named Franco Amore, oddly marks Di Stefano debut directing an Italian-language film after helming well-received U.S. indie thrillers “Escobar: Paradise Lost,” with Benicio del Toro, and “The Informer.”  Sumptuosly shot in 35mm film and set in present-day Milan, “Last Night of Amore” harks back to Italian genre films of the 70s and 80s but has a fresh contemporary feel. The plot sees the good lieutenant, played by Italian A-lister Pierfrancesco Favino (“The Traitor,” “Nostalgia”) being called on the night before retirement to investigate a crime scene where his best friend and long-time partner Dino has been killed during a diamond heist. Complications ensue, things get very frantic, and we learn how his love for his wife Viviana, played by Linda Caridi (“The Ties”) will help Amore survive the longest and most challenging night of his existence.

Naman Ramachandran Berlin’s just concluded European Film Market (EFM), which had a physical edition this year after two online editions in 2021 and 2022 due to the pandemic, has reported “record results” according to the organizers. There were 230 stands and 612 companies from 78 countries and more than 11,500 market participants from 132 countries. Some 773 films were shown in 1,533 screenings, including 647 online screenings and 599 market premieres. The total number of buyers also rose to 1,302. 629 film projects were presented on the new Producers & Project Pages. “After the past two irregular years, we’re pleased to return to the physical in full force, and with a vibrant, bustling and strong market. The exhibition areas at Gropius Bau and the Marriott Hotel were sold out, and the exhibitors reported strong sales and good business. The decision to group all the market happenings together with the Berlinale Series Market and the market screenings at Potsdamer Platz, and to provide the industry with an efficient infrastructure, was extremely well-received by our market participants,” said EFM director Dennis Ruh.

The restructures, layoffs, cancelations and a maybe-strike currently impacting the U.S. TV industry rippled through the halls of the Berlinale Series Market this week as senior execs forecasted an international future.

Liza Foreman He’s become one of Spain’s most successful auteur directors of big audience hits. Now director-writer-producer Alex de la Iglesia (“The Day of the Beast,” “30 Coins”) and producing partner, the actor-producer Carolina Bang (“The Last Circus”), have turned to wayward soccer players for their latest TV outing, HBO Max show “Headless Chickens.” The starting point for this upcoming Spanish series is curiosity, Bang explained at an afternoon Q&A session at the Berlinale Series Market on Tuesday scheduled in the Next from Spain strand. “Alex and I don’t like soccer very much but we have a lot of curiosity about the industry,” said Bang. “You have a lot of young people that became very rich very quickly. It destroys your head.”

Liza Foreman In 1995, Alex de la Iglesia directed his second feature, “The Day of the Beast,” which marked a milestone in Spanish cinema, yoking full-on U.S. genre tropes – a bloody against-the-clock search for an Antichrist – with a bathetic but very grounded Spanish reality, featuring a downbeat boarding house, a local metalhead and the tawdry star of an occult-themed trash TV show.  The film opened the floodgates for other directors, weened on VHS binging, to mix U.S. and Spanish realities. Now nearly 30 years later, De la Iglesia is at it again. A showreel of movies and series made by Pokeepsie Films, the shingle he founded with Carolina Bang in 2009, dazzled at a Next from Spain showcase panel on Monday at Berlinale Series Market. Standouts included the sheer visual boldness of excerpts, their pop out tones, – such as in Eduardo Casanova’s lush pink in “La Pietá” – or mixture of gore, high-production values and comedy, as in HBO Max series “30 Coins.”

Shades of Blue creator Adi Hasak didn’t mince his words when discussing the state of U.S. television at the EFM’s Berlinale Series Market today.

Marta Balaga Director: Vita Maria Drygas Producer: Vita Żelakeviciute Production companies: Drygas Film Production Sales: Dogwoof Documentary is a journey to places devastated by military conflicts, seen through the eyes of thrill-seeking tourists. (Generation 14plus) Director: Asaf Saban

Berlinale Series Market kicks off Monday as Spanish series “The Snow Girl,” a missing girl suspense thriller produced by Spain’s Atípica Films, has attracted huge heat for Netflix, punching 101.7 million hours watched in its first three weeks. Doing so, it ranked as the streamer’s No. 1 non-English show in the world over Jan. 30 – Feb. 5.  In all, Spain has more shows and movies in Netflix’s all time non-English Top 10s than any other country in the world, seven to France’s two, for example.  Spain, it could be argued, has cracked online. But its drama series industry wants to ring more options. 

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent He was working to the last. Five days before his latest work, “Lorca by Saura,” opened at Madrid’s Infanta Isabel Theater – in what he saw as a new phase of theatre-based creativity –  Carlos Saura died on Feb. 10 at his Collado Mediano home in the lap of the Guadarrama mountains, north of Madrid. Agnieszka Holland and Volker Schlöndorff look set to attend a Carlos Saura Homage Screening which will be held at the Berlin Film Festival on Monday Feb. 20 at 17:30.  Further good and great are still to confirmed at an event backed by the Berlin Festival and the European Film Academy. The tribute will be combined with the double bill of “Rosa, Rosae” and “Walls Can Talk” (“Las paredes hablan”), films which premiered at San Sebastian in 2021 and last year.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent “A Cielo Abierto,” the latest film from Oscar-nominated Mexican screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (“Babel”), is being brought onto Berlin’s European Film Market by Film Factory Entertainment. Produced by Argentina’s K&S Films, whose credits include “Wild Tales,” “The Clan” and “The Summit” — the last by “Argentina, 1985” director Santiago Mitre — “A Cielo Abierto” is directed by Mariana Arriaga and Santiago Arriaga, Guillermo Arriaga’s daughter and son, making their feature film debut.   “A Cielo Abierto” turns on two teen brothers who take a road trip to the Mexico-U.S. border to track down the man responsible for the car accident that caused their father’s death. 

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Madrid-based Buenapinta Media, a producer on Maite Alberdi’s Oscar-nominated “The Mole Agent” and Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s “Lullaby,” has unveiled a development slate that includes new features by Ruiz de Azúa, Cinéfondation alum Guillermo García López, and Borja Cobeaga and Victor García León. The slate announcement comes one week after “Lullaby,” hailed by Pedro Almodovar as “undoubtedly the best debut in Spanish cinema for years,” triumphed at the 2023 Spanish Academy Awards, winning best first feature, actress (Laila Costa) and supporting actress (Susi Sánchez)   The 2023-24 production slate at Buenapinta Media, headed by Marisa Fernández Armenteros, also features Isabel Coixet’s just-announced “Un Amor.”

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Filmax has boarded “The Sleeping Woman,” the new film from Spain’s Laura Alvea, who helmed episodes of Netflix hit series “The Snow Girl,” which has run up over 100 million global views in three weeks. Filmax will present first images of the film, along with a promo, at Berlin’s European Film Market. A horror thriller with supernatural elements, “The Sleeping Woman” turns on Ana (Almudena Amor), a nursing assistant who starts to feel an attraction towards Agustin (Javier Rey), the husband of the woman in a coma whom she’s caring for.  It won’t be long before Ana begins to get harassed by strange, paranormal phenomena that seem to be trying to kick her out of the house and separate her from Agustin.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Kino Lorber has acquired all rights in the U.S. to “Diabolik,” “Diabolik – Ginko Attacks!” and “Diabolik — Who Are You?” from Beta Cinema at the European Film Market in Berlin. The movies are based on the smash-hit Italian comic-book series about a ruthless master thief, which has sold more than 150 million copies worldwide. The stylish crime-comic adaptations are written and directed by Marco and Antonio Manetti. “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Marvel’s Avengers” actor Giacomo Gianniotti stars in “Diabolik — Ginko Attacks!” and “Diabolik — Who Are You?,” and Luca Marinelli (“The Old Guard”) in the first installment, “Diabolik.” Monica Bellucci (“Matrix,” “The Apartment”) stars in the role of Altea, Miriam Leone (“The Invisible Witness,” “Medici”) as Eva Kant, and Valerio Mastandrea (“Perfect Strangers,” “Nine”) as Inspector Ginko.

Riz Ahmed and Lily James are joining forces for the contemporary thriller “Relay,” which will be presented to buyers at European Film Market in Berlin.David Mackenzie, who helmed the Oscar-nominated “Hell or High Water,” will direct from a script he wrote with Justin Piasecki. Production begins in New York and New Jersey in April 2023.“Relay” stars Ahmed as Tom, a “fixer” whose specialty is brokering major payoffs between corrupt corporations and the individuals who threaten to ruin them.

EXCLUSIVE: We’re not quite done yet with the European Film Market packages, with a nice one coming together at the eleventh hour as Oscar winner Riz Ahmed and Baby Driver star Lily James have been set to lead thriller Relay for director David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water).

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent In a sign of a new ebullience in Spain’s film industry, Spain’s Elamedia Estudios, founded by Roberto Butragueño, is launching Sideral, an integrated production-distribution-sales label. It launches with feature “Cheaper Than Stealing” at the Berlinale Co-Production Market. Sideral titles include “In the Sultan’s Bedchamber,” from San Sebastian best director winner Javier Rebollo (“Woman Without Piano”), a Sideral production; “The Fantastic Golem Affairs,” from Spanish duo Burning Percebes, which it is selling abroad; and “I Have Electric Dreams,” Valerie Maurel’s Locarno best director, actor and actress winner, which it will release in Spain.