Alex De-La-Iglesia: Last News

Anna Marie de la Fuente Spanish indie production shingle Nadie es Perfecto, producer of Alex de la Iglesia’s hit comedy “Perfectos Desconocidos,” has tapped former Netflix exec Juan Mayne to join the company as it revs up its slate with a slew of new projects. These include two pics in pre-production: “La navidad en sus manos,” in co-production with Bowfinger and Esto También Pasará, directed by Joaquín Mazón, starring Ernesto Sevilla and with a special collaboration from actor-filmmaker Santiago Segura, who has worked with de la Iglesia and Guillermo del Toro; and “Locomía,” directed by Kike Maillo, starring Jaime Lorente (“Money Heist,” “Elite”) and Alberto Ammann (“Lope,” “El silencio del cazador”).

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Spain’s rich TV show lineup at the Berlin Film Festival also features a screening of Atresmedia’s “Red Flags,” charting the often pained sexual and emotional awakening of four Gen Z teens. Selected titles at Berlin: “Honor,” (Atresmedia TV, Portocabo) The Spanish remake of Israeli TV series “Kvodo,” with the often superb Dario Grandinetti (“Talk to Her”) in the Bryan Cranston role of famed Showtime re-do “Your Honor,” as a principled judge attempting to save his son after, in an accidental hit-and-run, he kills the son of a lethal drug kingpin.

Holly Jones Wide-eyed expectant mother Pilar (Lucía Guerrero, “Money”) takes up residence at an idyllic domed birthing retreat after a climate-fuelled crisis leads to a toxic atmosphere. She is introduced to Valle (Aura Garrido, “What the Future Holds”), the engineer tasked with looking after the women, and comes to senses the serene refuge holds a set of macabre secrets, nothing as it seems. “Sanctuary” (“Santuario”), the first co-production between Spain’s internationally ambitious Atresmedia TV (“Money Heist,” “Velvet”) and Carolina Bang and Alex de la Iglesia at Madrid’s Banijay-backed Pokeepsie Films (“30 Coins”), merges a not-so-implausible, ominous backdrop with strong female leads to showcase the breadth of feminine resolve in the face of clear and present danger, all with a gripping tension.

Marta Balaga Berlinale Series Market Selects has revealed its lineup. The European Film Market’s “boutique market for serial content from all over the world” will welcome Spanish shows in Berlinale Market Selects, its screening showcase, from “Internal Affairs,” focusing on one of the first female police officers in Spain, starting her first post, to “Honor” – yet another take on famous Israeli show which sees a judge covering his son’s crime. Produced by Alex de la Iglesia, AtresmediaTV and Alex de la Iglesia and Carolina Bang at their Banijay-backed Pookepsie Films, “Sanctuary” turns to post-climate disaster future where women spend their pregnancies in a dome protecting them from pollution.

Holly Jones Spain’s Basque Country, an ever-evolving film hub, continues to see a consolidation of talent driven by an animation boom alongside an increase in the production of ambitious genre cinema, marked by the colossal success of recent projects on streaming platforms and pick-ups by labs and festivals. As San Sebastian unspools, the sequel to “The Platform,” the second most watched non-English Netflix movie in the streamer’s history, is in production in the Basque Country, produced by Carlos Juárez at Basque Films.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The great Choi Min-sik was on hand to take early headlines at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BiFan). Described somewhat blandly as “a highly reliable performer” by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), Choi is not only the star of Korea’s top grossing film of all time “The Admiral: Roaring Currents,” he continues to be available for work of all different levels. He appears in no less than ten titles that played at the festival this week. The festival also does reliable — in its own way – as it plays up to its “stay strange” mantra, cooperates with other festivals of a similar fantasy leaning and sidesteps the political infighting that currently bedevil Korea’s best-known festivals.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian actor Caterina Murino, best known globally for playing Solange in James Bond movie “Casino Royale,” will be the master of ceremonies at the upcoming Venice Film Festival. Born in Cagliari, Sardegna, Murino made her big screen debut in 2002 in late Chilean writer/director Luis Sepulveda’s political drama “Nowhere” which played well in France. She returned to French film screens in 2004 in “L’Enquete Corse” opposite actors Christian Clavier and Jean Reno. In 2006 Murino gained global visibility as the new 007 Bond Girl alongside Daniel Craig with her role as the shady seductive Solange Dimitrios in “Casino Royale.” 

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.”

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent The latest series from Alex de la Iglesia and “Veneno” creators Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo feature at a first-look Next from Spain Showcase which marks a massive step-up in the country’s presence at the Berlinale Series Market. Running Feb. 20-22, the showcase also unveils “Rapa” Season 2, with its first season proving Movistar+’s biggest 2022 bow, and “This Is Not Sweden,” a pioneering Spanish co-production with Scandinavia and Germany.  The Showcase titles are joined by Isaki Lacuesta’s “The Chauffeur’s Son,” a Co-Pro Series project from “Elite’s” Zeta Studios, and “Selftape,” a Filmin Original from Filmax and a Series Market Screening.

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. 

Warner Bros Discovery left Spain out of its clampdown on European original programs for HBO Max, and has now doubled down on the country by ordering a soccer comedy there.

Naman Ramachandran HBO Max has revealed the first teaser for Max original “García!” (6 x 60′), which will have its world premiere at Austin’s Fantastic Fest in September and European premiere at Sitges.Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Santiago García and Luis Bustos, the series is set in a present-day Spain, which is divided and on the brink of political chaos. It follows an inquisitive millennial investigative reporter Antonia (Veki Velilla) who stumbles on a decades-old conspiracy: the existence of a cryogenically frozen super-agent, García (Francisco Ortiz), created in a laboratory in the 1950s by General Franco’s fascist secret services.

Emiliano De Pablos Spanish genre master Álex de la Iglesia and Telecinco Cinema, the production arm of broadcast network Mediaset España, are re-teaming for fantasy action-adventure film project “Mandrágora.”De la Iglesia and Carolina Bang’s Madrid-based outfit Pokeepsie Films will produce “Mandrágora” with powerhouse Telecinco Cinema, the feature marking the high-profile Spanish director’s fifth joint project with the broadcaster.Set in 17th Century Spain, “Mandrágora” follows Hernán, 15, who unearths a human-shaped root for which he begins to feel an inexplicable attraction. The gruesome death of his parents at the hands of Count of Torresnegras’ troops forces him and his new friend to flee to the nearby woods.

Paul Giamatti has joined the cast of 30 Coins, the Spanish mystery horror series that premiered on HBO Max in 2020 and was renewed for a second season in February. The eight-part Season 2 is now in production in Spain, Italy, the U.S., France and the UK, with a 2023 premiere date planned on HBO Max worldwide and on HBO in the U.S.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentIn late April, Banijay Iberia moved waves by taking an equity stake in Alex de la Iglesia and Carolina Bang’s Pokeespsie Films, with the aim of scaling up on its Spanish-language high-end original series and fiction production.Via Shine Iberia, Banijay is also producing biopic “Bosé,” one of VIS’ biggest Spanish-language plays for Paramount Plus, about singer-songwriter Miguel Bosé.Best known for its entertainment formats – though it does own Barcelona’s Diagonal TV, producer of hit Netflix historical sagas “Cathedral of the Sea” and “Heirs to the Land” and DLO Producciones, behind “Tell Me Who I Am” and “El Immortal,” – Banijay is now moving to strengthen its position in scripted in the Iberian market and, via it, across the globe. That is seen at Conecta Fiction, which runs June 21-24 in Toledo, Spain, where Banijay will have one of the biggest presences of any global company at the TV co-production forum, with Lars Blomgren, Banijay head of scripted, teaming with Maria Rua Aguete, Omdia senior research director, to deliver a first full day keynote on Wednesday on Global Fiction Trends, Consumer Choices & The Future of Fiction TV in a Streaming World.James Townley, Banijay’s global director of content development, who overseas new non-scripted IP, will also speak at Conecta Fiction;  Pilar Blasco, CEO of Banijay Iberia, will engage in a conversation with María José Rodríguez, head of Spanish originals at Amazon’s Prime Video.In the run up to Conecta Fiction, Variety talked with Blomgren about Banijay’s plans to ramp up its series and fiction output in the Spanish-speaking world.At Conecta Fiction, you’ll deliver a keynote on global TV fiction trends. Could you anticipate

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentAlex de la Iglesia’s latest production, feature “Four’s a Crowd,” is being brought onto the Cannes Film Market by Filmax, which has acquired international sales rights.Described by Filmax as a “wild romantic comedy,” “Four’s a Crowd” turns on Julian, a 50-year-old divorced man who starts to use an app to share his car with strangers and most especially Lorena, a young woman with whom Julian would like to share much more.He’s about to open up to Lorena when he’s lumbered unexpectedly with a fourth passenger, possibly the most annoying person on the planet, who sparks a radical change in the course of events.“Four’s a Crowd” is “a very personal reflection on human joy and misery, where nothing is as it seems,” Filmax said in a statement. Written with De La Iglesia’s career-long co-scribe Jorge Guerricaechevarría, “Four’s a Crowd” is produced by Pokeepsie Films, Alex De la Iglesia’s own label, and Spanish production powerhouse Telecinco Cinema (“Pan’s Labyrinth,” “The Impossible”), It will be released at the end of 2022.

WarnerMedia EMEA & Asia President Priya Dogra has talked up the U.S. media giant’s plan to “ramp up investment in local creative communities across Europe,” with 40 shows in the pipeline for 2023.

Jamie Lang Appropriately enough given the show’s enigmatic nature, the slow drip of information about a second season of Spanish genre legend Alex de la Iglesia’s occult horror series “30 Coins” has, for the most part, been cryptic at best. That tradition continued Friday, after HBO Max confirmed the second season, when “Money Heist’s” Najwa Nimri, one of Spain’s biggest film and TV stars, teased her participation in the upcoming season.Apart from the show’s three leads – Eduard Fernández as Father Vergara, Megan Montaner as veterinarian-turned-demon-hunter Elena and Miguel Ángel Silvestre as Mayor Paco – no other casting has yet been confirmed, but Nimri posted an Instagram story which included part of the Season 2 teaser and the phrase: “We start a new adventure,” while also tweeting #30Monedas – the show’s Spanish-language title.

Jamie Lang HBO Max has revealed that principal photography has begun on a second season of its cult Spanish horror series “30 Coins,” from genre maestro Alex de la Iglesia, following an eight-episode commission. Shooting for the globetrotting series will take place in Spain, Italy, the U.S., France and the U.K., with the second season scheduled to launch in 2023.HBO has also released a grim teaser to mark the occasion, which includes a brief look at Eduard Fernández’s Padre Vergara, looking worse for ware after the events of Season 1.A hit in its native Spain, the series also found success abroad as its became available on the WarnerMedia-owned streaming platform in more territories.

Jamie Lang Álex de la Iglesia’s spot on the Mount Rushmore of Spanish genre filmmakers was cemented long ago thanks to cult classics such as “The Day of the Beast” and “Common Wealth,” finding more recent success with local hits like “The Bar” and “Perfect Strangers.”The filmmaker has now turned his attentions to TV with his new high-end horror series “30 Coins,” already a hit in Spain where it is has been wowing local critics and trending on social media for the three weeks since its release. Produced by de la Iglesia’s Pokeepsie Films for HBO, the series will cross the Atlantic and debut with a two-episode double-feature on HBO’s linear network in the U.S.