Telefonica’s Movistar+ & Beta Film Ink Multi-Year Production & Distribution Deal — Mip TV

Munich-based Beta Film is deepening its cooperation with Spanish telco Telefonica’s Movistar+.

Going into this year’s MIPTV, the two firms have closed a multi-year pact on “a substantial, annual number of productions” which Beta will co-produce and distribute, often coming aboard at an earlier stage.

Beta has recently closed a string of sales for Movistar+ original series, among them Alex Pina’s (Money Heist) well-sold romance-thriller The Pier and post-apocalypse thriller La Zona. On the former, Beta has closed new deals with RAI/Italy, ORF/Austria, HBO for the Baltics, SBS/Australia, MBC/Middle East and U-Next/Japan.

La Zona bows to German Free TV audiences this June on pubcaster and co-producer ZDFneo after hefty global sales in the last two years. The drama was most recently picked up by Amazon Italy, Canal Plus France, VRT Benelux and throughout Eastern Europe by Canal Plus Poland, Yandex Russia/CIS, RTP Portugal and Latin America by Movistar+. It was also sold to Starz in the U.S., as previously announced.

Christian Gockel, EVP International Operations of Beta Film, said of the Movistar+ deal “Given that Beta was involved in bringing Spanish productions to global recognition, it makes us extremely proud that a media giant of Telefonica’s dimension would now want to entrust us with their projects on much more than a project-by-project basis. We are very optimistic because, from the early days of our cooperation, we have come to value Movistar+ approach to filmmaking as unique in its perfect blend of creativity and marketability.“

Ismael Calleja, Head of Production & Business Affairs for Movistar+, added, “Coming from a very promising first stage of Movistar+ Originals international distribution we plan to evolve our initial strategy looking for a stronger and wider alliance. Undoubtedly Beta is a best-in-class European co-production & distribution player, so we feel very confident that they will help us to enlarge our Originals’ international partners network. Their commitment to our content, their excellence in performance and an extremely fluent relationship all along this time guarantee for that.”

Beta’s MipTV slate includes Movistar+ originals Perfect Life, which plays in competition at the Canneseries Festival, romantic spy drama What the Future Holds, period dramedy Arde Madrid on Ava Gardener’s wild days in late sixty’s Madrid and the farcical comedy series Spanish Shame.