French broadcaster Arte has joined Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s upcoming Movistar Plus+ series The New Years.
Arte and Spanish streamer Movistar Plus+ will co-produce the series, which is from Madrid-based Caballo Films — the production company Sorogoyen co-founded.
Production on the series began last year, and Arte has now snapped up French rights. Movistar Plus+ International will shop the title outside of Spain and France.
The series is set on New Year’s Eve every year for a decade, following a couple, played by Iria del Río (Riot Police) and Francesco Carril (Un Amor), who meet aged 30. Each episode follows updates their relationship and the trials they face to stay together, and the final shot is a single 40-minute take. “The narrative device allows you to consider change,” said Movistar Plus+ Director of Fiction and Entertainment Domingo Corral.
Announcing the Arte deal during a Movistar Plus+ session at Series Mania, Corral paid tribute to director Sorogoyen for the ambition of the final episode shot, noting he was present during its filming. “It was amazing to watch how it was shot,” he added. “You forgot you were on a set.”
The New Years marks Movistar Plus+’s third collaboration with Sorogoyen, coming after Riot Squad and Offworld. They are also teaming for feature films.
Corral said his streamer’s approach to working with creatives was being “in the business of attracting and retaining talent,” adding: “You have to give talent the resources to tell the story they want to tell. We’ve been lucky that Rodrigo has been working with us for so long.”
Movistar Plus+ makes around 10 originals each year, with Corral saying: “It is working for us, but I don’t necessarily recommend it to other players.”
As an example of Movistar Plus+’s high-end strategy, Corral pointed Movistar Plus+’s recent Sundance series La Mesias, a 2023 show about a man tormented by a childhood marked by religious fanaticism and a mother with messianic delusions, who is shocked when several of his sisters go viral with a Christian pop song. The series is from Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo — the production pair known as ‘The Javis.’
Corral also singled out to crime drama Marbella, which is from La Unidad‘s Dani de la Torre and Alberto Marini. The show is an intricate story of the organized crime factions at war in the Costa Del Sol. Buendía Estudios Canarias produces. Another key title on the slate is Lullaby director Alauda Ruíz de Azua’s first TV show, Querer, about a woman who one day walks about of a seemingly perfect 30-year marriage and accuses her husband of consistently raping her.
Former Warner Bros exec Corral noted that Movistar Plus+, which is owned by telco Telefónica, is wealthy enough to finance its own shows — somewhat against the grain of the co-production and collaboration-focused chatter that has dominated this week at Series Mania.
“If a show is too expensive we just don’t do it,” he said, while adding that collaborative deals such as the Arte co-pro agreement is “about having someone who believes in what you are doing.”
He acknowledged that co-producing with a Spanish company is “it’s not easy to find co-producers not producing in English.”
Questioned how to make local show a global hit, Corral responded that there was no special sauce, but suggested certain elements could increase a show’s chances.
“I don’t know how to do shows that are not local,” he said. “If you’re trying to do something authentic they have to be rooted in a given reality, whatever that is. To make them global, you have to have high production values and spend money, and global conflicts that anybody in the world can relate to. It also depends on networks, platforms, broadcasters believing in your show.
