Nicely and SCJ are developing a minimum of six new TV projects including both dramas and YA series. The partnership will also work on two to three new movies per year with the next one to start production in Fall 2022.

Los Angeles based Nicely Entertainment and Australian production house The Steve Jaggi Company (SJc) are cementing their relationship with a slate of new high-concept television series’ and movies for the global market. Past projects from the two companies have already been enthusiastically received by audiences across the globe, including the Netflix Original young adult series Dive Club (Netflix TV top 10 in 25+ territories; Netflix Kids top 10 in 27 territories) and romantic feature This Little Love of Mine (Netflix’s top 10 in over 50 territories and the first Australian film into production during the global pandemic).

With Nicely’s distinctive approach to delivering quality content to global audiences, and SJc’s demonstrated experience developing and producing quality audience focused I.P., this successful partnership is well-placed to meet the ever-increasing global appetite for content.

A Royal in Paradise – the third movie collaboration between the two partners and the first under the new deal – commenced production this week in Australia’s beautiful South East Queensland. Actor Rhiannon Fish (The 100, Home and Away) steps into the lead role alongside Mitchell Bourke (The Family Law) as her royal love interest. A Royal in Paradise is directed by Adrian Powers (Forbidden Ground), and written by Adrian Powers (Dive Club) and Caera Bradshaw (Dive Club). A Royal in Paradise follows New York writer Olivia Perkins (Fish), a successful author on deadline for her next romantic adventure novel. On the other side of the world, Prince Alexander (Bourke) needing some distance, decides to attend a marine conservation fundraiser on Haven Isles. On arriving at the island, the Prince and Olivia meet and form a friendship, but Alexander keeps his identity a secret. Experiencing all the Island has to offer, Olivia and Alexander grow closer, until the Prince’s true identity is exposed by a royal spy.

Nicely Entertainment CEO Vanessa Shapiro comments, ‘It has been incredible to see Dive Club, This Little Love of Mine and Love in Bloom be so well-received by audiences around the world. SJc are wonderful creative collaborators, and I’m excited about the slate of strong projects in the pipeline’.

Steve Jaggi adds, ‘SJc has found its sweet spot working across both the young adult and romance genres, and it has been rewarding to see our projects reach Netflix’s top 10 in so many territories around the world. We are spoilt for choice here in Australia when it comes to talent and locations, and we’re looking forward to continuing our successful working relationship with the team at Nicely’.

Nicely Entertainment will also be handling global sales and distribution of the Giant Screen 8k HDR family friendly documentary Beyond the Reef, which showcases the stunning Great Barrier Reef and its amazing biodiversity in a fun and pacy presentation aimed at tween audiences. Hosted and narrated by actor and social media influencer Shuang Hu, Beyond the Reef will be released to the international market this fall. Beyond the Reef is produced by SJc with In Three Production.

Claro video and Sony Pictures Television (SPT) Latin America released the trailer for the first season of their coproduction Reputación Dudosa, a dark comedy series to be launched on June 30 in Claro Video platform.

Reputación Dudosa tells the story of Luis Arturo “Luisar” López Alcalá. Luisar dies of an apparent heart attack. In addition to being his last love, Julia is the detective in charge of handling the case. Luisar’s spirit still has things to resolve. Accompanied by Luisar’s spirit, Julia will start an investigation that will show a Luisar she never knew; that we all have secrets; that best friends can come from unexpected places and that you may be sleeping with your murderer.

Directed by Álvaro Curiel (Somos), based on an original idea by Luis Fernandez and executive produced by Ana Bond, Nestor Hernández, Luisa Perzabal, Annel Ramo and Alejandro García, Reputación Dudosa stars Marcus Ornellas (Falsa Identidad), Marcela Guirado (Como Sobrevivir Soltero), Sara Corrales (El Señor de los Cielos), Verónica Langer (La Casa de las Flores), Grettell Valdez (Medicos), Claudia Alvarez (Vencer el Desamor), Luz Ramos (Ringo) and Itahisa Machado (Cita a Ciegas).

With focus on the content needs of new players in APAC, Victoria de Kerdrel, APAC consultant at K7 Media, in conversation with Ryan Lee, Snior Content Development & Acquisition Exec at Sarawak Media Group (Malaysia), Krishi Dutt, director of VROTT (India), with Yesim Sezdirmez, Deputy General Manager at Kanal 7 (Turkey), who offered their impressions of the market.

Lee from Sarawak Media Group, a brand new TV station in Malaysia which are based at East Malaysia Park, the Borneo Island, where started back in 2018, expressed the company’s mission in the Asian market: ‘We want to establish ourselves as a media hub in the region and accelerate the growth of the creative media industry here. In 2020, we launched our terrestrial TV broadcast formulations to watch and we capture about eight million unique views and we do our own content production work’. The executive explained that they sell airtime slots billboards and commission local production houses to pitch their ideas to create original content on TV platforms: ‘So i would target audience varies depending on the platform we use for terrestrial TV. There are people of age 20 and above, basically youngs’. The signal seeks to capture international views, and has deployed a whole media strategy that includes Social Networks and YouTube.

Kanal 7’s Sezdirmez commented on the channel’s position in Turkey: ‘We are one of the leading commercial channels and we are based in Istanbul. We are an entertainment TV channel, and we position ourselves as the family channel of Turkey appeal to the general audience’. The company makes various genres available, such as local series, non scripted, travel shows, and in the future, films and turkish dramas programs. ‘The content market is very dynamic: you have to be very relevant and innovative in order to stand out. Our main pillar of content is to present high quality long running daily series on prime time. In this aspect, we have content with a strong female presence and with relevance to family values. The other pillar is our daytime content block, which is very important in Turkey, because there are many reality shows in this block competing with weekly drama series, and to make a difference from other channels, we are acquiring drama series’. The executive said that they are looking for content from different markets, from innovative proposals and have decided to include content from regional countries, especially India.

As for VROTT, Dutt expressed ‘we are an India-based company based out of Mumbai and we are more than 20 years old in the market’. The company operates with three business verticals, explained the director, the first is dedicated to acquiring and distributing international films from major studios in Hollywood and films from the Far East and from the UK: ‘usually we acquire all the rights and exploit such content on theatrical, on tv, or VOD and other digital platforms.

As a second business vertical they have dubbing and localization services: ‘We have a dubbing studio in India, where we are dedicated to subtitling and localizing in Indian languages, like Hindi, and other international languages. While the third vertical follows is our newly launched OTT platform VROTT, whose catalog is made up of global content subtitled and dubbed for the Indian market.’

Felisa García Grande, Executive Director of ICEX-Invest in Spain

2022 is a pivotal year for the Spanish audiovisual industry: in addition to the maturation achieved by the sector at a national and international levels, there is a reinforcement of local/regional incentives and the launch of the ‘Spain, Audiovisual Hub of Europe’ plan with more than € 1,600 million public investment until 2025. The objective is to increase audiovisual activity by 30%, and make the Iberian country the leader of the global sector in the digital age.

Prensario interviewed Felisa García Grande, executive director of ICEX-Invest in Spain, to better understand how these funds will be applied and how they will be executed in the coming years. ‘For the Spanish Government, the audiovisual sector has become a strategic sector due to its great potential and its ability to favor the economic and cultural development of our country,’ she began.

And she exemplified: ‘On the one hand, we are attending the main international trade events, among which is Conecta FICTION & ENTERTEINMENT this month, which brings together the main international television actors. There, we report on the competitive advantages of shooting in Spain. On the same dates, we participated in Cannes LIONS where we have organized a day to attract filming and services in Spain in collaboration with the Association of Advertising Producers of Spain (APCP) and the Audiovisual Industry Alliance (ALIA) in front of advertisers, agencies, production companies and service companies in the sector’.

To carry out the task of offering the most accurate information at a global level, ICEX has its network of economic and commercial offices of the Secretary of State for Foreign Trade that provide local support, organizing activities adapted to each market to take advantage of the opportunities of business that may arise.

García Grande continued: ‘We have approved a media plan to promote Spain as a filming destination and our new tool, “Spain Audiovisual Bureau”: it is a centralized point of support and advice with information related to the internationalization of the audiovisual industry, both for the attraction of investments and filming to Spain, as well as to help Spanish companies and productions to develop their projects abroad. We collaborate with entities such as the Secretaries of State for Telecommunications, Migration, ICAA or the Spain Film Commission, among others.

Spain has a wide and rich cultural, historical and artistic heritage and a very favorable geographical and climatic situation with 10 types of climates, which have made it the scene of foreign blockbusters over the years. In addition, it is among the first European positions in terms of deployment of broadband and 5G networks, with a great preparation of Spanish audiovisual companies to incorporate digital technological improvements to production, production and post-production.

“Numerous series, video games and other productions chose this destination due to the ecosystem of talents, professionals and companies of different sizes of great quality and competitiveness. On the other hand, the Spanish language is a great asset to lead in one of the most important and growing markets worldwide. Spanish-language content has the potential to access the Latin American continent, a market with more than 400 million inhabitants’, García Grande summarized.

The cost of production is another key element, since it is lower compared to other countries, which makes it a reference country for international agents. ‘One of the greatest advances is the simplification of visa procedures for foreign workers (cast, crew, family members) from the audiovisual industry who come to Spain. Thus, artists and professionals are enabled to stay with their direct relatives, and minors are allowed to carry out their activity accompanied by their parents. These fewer administrative difficulties promote the sector as a whole,’ he added.

Lastly, the deployment of a “favorable” fiscal framework that generates employment with high added value for the country. ‘We offer tax incentives for international movies and TV series of 30% at the national level and more advantageous in other regions of the country, such as Navarra (35%) or the Canary Islands (50%)’, added García Grande.

Among the latest global productions developed are DC/Warner Bros. Discovery‘s Wonder Woman 1984 in Almería, Fuerteventura and Tenerife (Isla Baja, Anaga); The Crown S3-S5 from Left Bank Pictures, Sony and Netflix in Sevilla, Almería, Málaga, Cádiz and Mallorca; The Eternals from Marvel Studios in Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, Las Palmas, La Coruña; Killing Eve S3-S4 from Endeavor and BBC America in Barcelona, ​​Cádiz, Granada. And others like Westworld S3, The Witcher S1-S2, The Midnight Sky, Uncharted, Hustle and House Of The Dragon S1, among many others.

Among the top priority markets of Invest in Spain are clearly Latin America ‘due to the asset that the common language represents’, but also South Korea, India, and Turkey, in addition to the UK and the USA due to the volume and quality of their industry: ‘The first training mission for foreign producers in Spain that we have organized was with executives from key US companies, in coordination with the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures and the Spain Film Commission, thanks to which we showed the strengths of the Spanish audiovisual sector to close to forty professionals belonging to member companies of the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and other platforms and top-level American audiovisual companies’.

The program combined technical sessions, institutional meetings, visits to locations and meetings with the Spanish sector, as well as visits to locations in Seville and Gran Canaria and Tenerife. And it had key presences such as the First Vice President of the Government and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calviño; the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, and the Minister of Culture and Sports, Miquel Iceta. And, also, her Majesty Letizia her queen wanted to accompany them and know their interests.

The Spain AVS Hub plan is the main focus for the coming years. ‘The objective is to increase the audiovisual production carried out in Spain by 30% at the end of the period. To this end, the Spanish Administration is already collaborating actively with the private sector through associations such as the Association of Spanish International Audiovisual Producers (PROFILM), the Audiovisual Industrial Alliance (ALIA), the Association of Advertising Producers of Spain (APCP), the Spanish Federation of Associations of Animation Producers (DIBOOS) and the Association of Post-Production Companies (AEPP)’, concluded García Grande.