‘El Cid’ Producer Jose Velasco Honored at Conecta Fiction & Entertainment
variety.comAnna Marie de la Fuente Ask Jose Velasco, 60, what he thinks about the Conecta Fiction Honorary award he’s receiving on Thursday June 23 and his first response is, “Why?”The self-effacing founder and president of powerhouse content producer iZen Group says he is grateful to those who decided to give it to him, “rightly or not.” “I guess it’s because I’ve been in this business for 35 years and have done everything from fiction to reality to game shows,” he muses, adding: “But if they think this will make me retire, they’re mistaken.”“I guess I am of the generation of people in Spain who were trying the shape the country’s television landscape,” he notes.
Indeed, Velasco founded and ran one of the pioneering entertainment giants of Spain, Globomedia. He later established Zeppelin TV as well as Diagonal TV and Linze Producciones, all of which formed part of Endemol, then owned by Telefonica Media.
He has produced some of Spain’s most successful series, both scripted and non-scripted, including the Spanish version of “Big Brother,” and most recently, the first reality show in streaming for Netflix, “Insiders,” hosted by “Money Heist” star, Najwa Nimri.In 2001 he founded Zebra Producciones, of which he is president, producing some 18 award-winning features and more than 1,000 hours of lauded TV content per year.iZen Group is run by him and his 38-year-old daughter Sara Fernández-Velasco, the group’s CEO, in tandem with majority partner Newen (an affiliate of TF1).
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