Movistar+ Evolves Its Theatrical Feature Division

No company has a more powerful spread of productions at this year’s San Sebastian Festival than Telefónica’s domestic platform and super-producer Movistar Plus+. The group brings a festival competition movie, “I’m Nevenka,” a premium drama series, “Querer,” a broad audience thriller series, “Celeste” and “Mugaritz,” a documentary feature about Spain’s most cerebral restaurant.

The diverse projects underscore Movistar Plus+’s muscular new content initiatives as the company drives ever more into nonfiction, emerging as Spain’s leader, and launching its first movie slate in January. Spain’s biggest national investor isn’t pulling out of content; in fact, it’s diving into deeper.

For nearly a decade, Movistar Plus+ has both increased the amount of content it produces and diversified the kinds of productions it backs. During the early days of streaming, Movistar Plus+ was a pioneer of local production by investing larger-than- ever budgets in its TV productions. Early shows such as “The Plague” and “Giants” looked like series made in Hollywood but maintained a truly Spanish spirit and setting that resonated with local audiences.

Now, the company is doing the same with its theatrical feature pipeline.

“The success that we found with our premium series gave us the confidence we needed to be bold,” says Movistar Plus+ director of fiction and entertainment content Domingo Corral. “We’d dabbled in the world of cinema before with titles like ‘While at War’ and ‘Prison 77,’ but now we want to make film production a consistent part of our annual strategy, working on five or six films each year.”

According to Corral, “The final step of this phase is creating event cinema. Something like ‘I’m Nevenka’ demonstrates our commitment to going further than before.” “Nevenka” director Icíar Bollaín says that commitment created one of the best working environments she’s ever experienced. “Movistar was very supportive of the film, allowing us to engage in a very difficult shoot. We filmed all over — in Bilbao, Zamora and England. The film was also set in 2000, so every detail had to be attended to, from the cars to the buildings to makeup, hairdressing and costumes. All of that made it more expensive. But they were very supportive of anything we needed,” Bollaín says.

Another advantage that Movistar Plus+ has working for its titles is a well-oiled marketing machine.

“They’ve got a powerful promotion mechanism at Movistar Plus+ that other Spanish groups just can’t match. For a theatrical film, it’s a huge boost to get marketing on Spanish TV,” Bollaín adds.

While box office success for “I’m Nevenka” or high viewership for one of its series is something that Movistar Plus+ hopes for, it’s not something the company is necessarily striving towards. Corral says that for him, success is defined differently than it probably is at the more commercially driven global platforms.

“I want Movistar to be a place where the audience can be surprised. Where they can find well-told stories that excite them and that feature strong characters,” says the executive.

Movistar Plus+ will surely surprise subscribers with the upcoming documentary “Mugaritz,” about the country’s most famous restaurant. Rather than recruiting a filmmaker with a long nonfiction resume, the company enlisted horror auteur and “REC” director Paco Plaza to helm the project.

“What we’re doing now is diversifying,” says Corral. “I loved the idea of bringing in such an accomplished horror feature filmmaker like Paco and having him tell the story of a restaurant and examine the philosophy behind the world-famous Mugaritz.”

In practical terms, Movistar Plus+’s diversification has created the largest local original slate of any platform, domestic or global. According to a survey by Spanish research company GECA, with 28 new Spanish title premieres between September 2023 and June 2024, Movistar Plus+ topped a list that included Prime Video (24), fellow Spanish platforms Atresplayer (20) and RTVE Play (19) and global streamers such as Netflix (12), Max (8) and Disney+ (7).