Atresmedia (Spain) never stops surprising the market with high-end fiction for ATRESplayer Premium and Antena 3, which it also promotes in the global market. The strategy is to bring local versions of international hits like Alba (Turkey’s Fatmagul) and now Heridas (Japan’s Mother) to mainstream audiences.
Heridas leads the company’s offer at LA Virtual Screenings: it is the adaptation of the Mother series from Nippon TV in Japan, which already has eight international versions and this is the first in Spanish, premiered in mid-April on ATREPlayer Premium.
José Antonio Salso, head of sales and acquisitions, and Miguel García, director of Sales, described the strategic turn that the company has been applying: ‘We have already been broadcasting several hits from Turkey on our thematic channel Nova. And now we want to adapt those stories for the general public and take them as a first window to OTT and then to free TV’.
And they also exemplified with Alba, the Spanish series based on Turkey’s success Fatmagul, or Mentiras (Liar de all3media) which was Top 10 on Netflix for the first two weeks, consolidating itself as the third most watched non-English series in the world. Now he wants to follow the same path with Wounds, starring Adriana Ugarte and based on Nippon TV’s (Japan) Mother, which was one of the spearhead series at MIPTV, LA Screenings and now in LAVS.
‘The reception has been very good and we are already moving it internationally. It is a powerful story, very well adapted and faithful to the original books that will now reach the Spanish mass public, after a great success in Nova. The Spanish originals or adaptations of international series in ATRESplayer Premium are “limited” series with “specific” themes and with a focus on the youngest’, they concluded.
At LAVS, Atresmedia also presents the gameshow El Desafío (S1: 8x’120; S2 10x’120) produced along with 7 y Acción. Would you control your vertigo to overcome obstacles several meters high? Would you drive a car over 300 beer bottles? These are some of the questions to which the contestants of ‘The Challenge’ will have to submit, a group of eight celebrities will face difficult tests every week with the aim of being the best in the game.
On the drama catalogue, the company promoted Cardo, La Edad de la Ira, ‘two series with powerful, current and impressive stories that were successful in Spain’; the comedies Señor Dame Paciencia and Dos Años y Un Día; and the reboots and new seasons of Paco’s Men, Los Protegidos, Physics or Chemistry, and El Internado.
Atresmedia‘s international team continues to grow steadily. García Sánchez, confirmed at the beginning of the year from The Mediapro Studio, has been joined by Rebeca Fernández, formerly Off the Fence (ZDF Studios) who handles sales for Europe, and Laura Sampedro who, although she was part of the team, is charge of Latin America.