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The battle for success on the new drama series scene is the battle for talent, led by screenwriters. Following, portraits of Spanish TV scribes or creators, sometimes writing teams, who’ve made an impact, or look set to do so:

Fran Araujo

2022 was Araujo’s year. He co-wrote Berlin Competition’s “One Night, One Day” and “Rapa,” Movistar+’s biggest 2022 bow. “Offworld,” a collective series he coordinated, was a Variety’s International TV Show of the Year. An iconoclast – “if I do the same thing, I get bored,” he says – who tears up the rule book.

Aina Clotet

Best known for acting, winning at Malaga for “The Wild Ones,” but a driving force as co-creator, director and star behind “This Is Not Sweden” a €1.5 million grant recipient and groundbreaking Spain-Scandinavia-Germany co-pro, turning on a couple who think they’ve found a model lifestyle. But “there are no guarantees,” says Clotet.

Eliza Rycembel, star of Oscar-nominated “Corpus Christi,” and Panos Mouzourakis, whose credits include “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,” have joined the cast of “Nasdrovia,” Season 2, which bows Feb. 25 on Movistar Plus, produced with The Mediapro Studio’s Globomedia – a powerful partnership of two of Spain’s biggest content creators.

Variety has had exclusive access to a behind-the-scenes trailer where Rycembel and Mouzourakis talk about their characters, both contract killers: George, played by a tongue-in-cheek Rycembel and Mouzourakis’s Ringo, a charmingly ridiculous ‘70s throwback who, as he comments in the video, wants to take George under his wing, but still show her “who’s the man in the house.”

Season 2 continues the downward spiral of Edurne (Leonor Watling) and Julian (Hugo Silva). In Season 1, they suffer a midlife crisis, abandoning careers as lawyers to the rich and corrupt to run a Russian restaurant, only for the establishment to become...

"Nobody wants to see these politicians disappear..." Netflix has revealed the official trailer for a Spanish mystery thriller called The Silence of the Marsh, which is already available to watch on the streaming service this week. The film was developed by Rtve & TV3 in Spain, with Zeta Cinema and Netflix. While researching corruption for his new book, a successful crime novelist blurs the line between fiction & reality, uncovering the corrupt ties between politicians and the local mafia in Valencia, Spain. This stars Pedro Alonso, Nacho Fresneda, Carmina Barrios, José Ángel Egido, Àlex Monner, Raúl Prieto, and Maite Sandoval. The trailer is dubbed in English, though it should be available to watch with subtitles. Looks like an intriguing all-the-way-to-the-top mystery, with some intense Spanish politics thrown in, too. Here's the official trailer (+ poster) for Marc Vigil's The Silence of the Marsh, direct from YouTube: A successful, cold-blooded crime novelist...

Madrid — Movistar Plus and The Mediapro Studio have greenlit development on Season 2 of “Nasdrovia,” an upcoming comedy-drama tracking an ex-couple’s excruciating decent into hell, as they fall into the maws of the Russian mob.

Season 2 is being written by the show’s creators, Sergio Sarra, Miguel Esteban and Luismi Perez, and its showrunnner, Marc Vigil.

“One of the things which we can certainly do in these extraordinary circumstances is develop new shows,” Domingo Corral, Movistar Plus dictator of original fiction, said at an online presentation by Movistar Plus and The Mediapro Studio on Wednesday.

The Mediapro Studio Distribution handles international sales, with “Nasdrovia” being brought onto the international market via selection for MipTV’s online Drama Buyers Summit, held from late March, and now April 22’s presentation by Corral, showrunner Marc Vigil, and The Mediapro Studio Distribution head Marta Ezpeleta.

Sharply written with a clipped, rhythmic delivery of dialog...

Spanish media conglom The Mediapro Studio has added to its stable of high-end content producers with the hiring of seasoned Colombian producer-showrunner Juliana Barrera as its head of content in Colombia.

Barrera’s credits include hit reality show “La Voz Colombia,” “Always a Witch,” the first original Netflix series in Colombia; “The Secret Law,” the true story of an all-female special police unit; “The White Slave,” a mega-series about slavery in Colombia that sold to some 150 countries; “Perfect Lies,” the Colombian version of U.S. series “Nip/Tuck,” and “Lynch,” penned by her.

With Barrera on board, Mediapro taps an insider’s depth of experience and knowledge of the inner workings of Colombian TV production, sharpened by two decades in the biz. Since 2011, she held various positions as a producer, head of content and creative director at Colombia’s top broadcaster, Caracol TV.

“The Mediapro Studio has become a benchmark in...

Pamplona, Spain — RTVE, The Mediapro Studio and “The Department of Time’s” Javier Olivares are joining forces to fast track “Malaka,” a crime thriller which shows Rtve, Spain’s national public broadcaster, moving into ever more ambitious material as it seeks to attract a nationwide audience now accustomed to the cable edge of streaming platforms.

Set to finalize its shoot in mid-July, “Malaka” forms part of push into larger scale series or ever more surprising genre mashes, such as “Estoy Vivo,” produced by The Mediapro Studio’s Globomedia for Rtve, a supernatural/sci-fi fantasy, cop crime thriller, dramedy, romance and family drama, as a reincarnated cop faces off with his serial killer.

This ambition has already paid off. Rtve’s Dlo/Magnolia produced “Monteperdido,” a darker Pyrenean noir in which much of a village come under suspicion of having abducted two young girls, was shot entirely on location in a...

Spain’s big shoot business is rocking, galvanized by more regional options and incentives that are highly competitive — at least in rates.

With a long tradition of hosting international productions, Spain earned larger global visibility after “Game of Thrones” filmed there from 2014 to 2018.

Production services has become one of the healthiest audiovisual sectors in Spain, driven by a golden age of local and international TV drama, as well as greater legal stability of its incentives. Spain’s mainland offers 20% tax rebates for international productions, capped at €3 million ($3.4 million); in the Canary Islands, the rate is 40%, with a €5.4 million ($6.1 million) ceiling.

“Tax advantages are attracting all kind of international productions,” says Nostromo’s Adrián Guerra, president of producers’ association Profilm.

“There are so many productions going on all over Spain that it’s becoming difficult to crew up on new productions,” he adds.

Challenges remain. The tax system is predominantly luring low-to-mid-range foreign projects.

Madrid — Mediapro, one of Europe’s biggest independent film-tv groups, has tapped Spanish writer-showrunner Diego San José, co-scribe of the smash-hit “Spanish Affair” movie franchise, to develop exclusive new TV fiction contents.

San José has previously been involved in two Mediapro projects, as co-writer and co-creator of political comedy “Vota Juan,” a co-production with Turner España aired on TNT, and co-writer of Borja Cobeaga’s “Fe de Etarras,” Netflix’s second original Spanish film, released in 2017.

He joins an already large list of content creatives tapped by Mediapro in recent years with the aim of strengthening its growing role as a key TV fiction powerhouse in Spain and the international market. That team takes in Emmy-winning Ran Tellem (“Homeland”), Iván Escobar (“Vis a vis”), Javier Olivares (“The Department of Time”), Marc Vigil (“Red Eagle”), Fernando González Molina (“The Boat”) and Daniel Burman (“Edha”), among dozens of other screenwriters and directors.

Globomedia, one of Spain’s leading TV fiction houses, part of media giant Mediapro, has tapped director Marc Vigil (“The Department of Time”) as a company series director and executive producer.

One of Vigil’s first tasks at Globomedia, where he already worked previously, will be to direct TV series “Malaka,” which Globomedia is preparing for Spanish pubcaster Rtve.

Vigil will then embark on two new projects, Globomedia announced Wednesday in a statement.

Vigil recently directed episodes of Rtve’s cult Spanish TV fiction “The Department of Time,” and, in Mexico, TV series “Diablo Guardián,” for Amazon Prime Video, and “Niño Santo,” for Canal Once. He’s also debuting as a feature film director on Zeta Cinema thriller “El silencio del pantano.”

His last time round at Globomedia, Vigil helmed episodes of hit Spanish primetime TV series such as “Vis a Vis,” “Aguila Roja,” “Aida” and “7 vidas.”

Vigil’s...