Marking its first corporate step in international expansion outside Spain, Madrid-based Zeta Studios, producer of “Elite” and “García!” has named Marcelo Tamburri, one of Latin America’s preeminent TV execs, to the newly-created position of director of international content.
Spun off from the sale of publishing house Grupo Zeta to Prensa Ibérica in 2019, and rebranded from Zeta Audiovisual, when it comes to individual titles., Zeta Studios boasts one of the biggest international reaches of any production house in Spain.
The appointment comes as Netflix preps the bow of “Elite” Season 7 on Oct. 20, making “Elite” one of the longest-running of streamer series and one of the most successful from outside the U.S., its Seasons 3 and 4 ranking in Netflix’s Top 10 of most-viewed non-English series ever on the OTT service with 334.8 million and 302.2 million hours viewed.
“Love at First Kiss,” a romcom movie, ranked as No. 1 on Netflix global charts in the non-English film category in March.
Tamburri’s appointment marks a strategic move which takes Zeta’s expansion to another level, however. Well-known and much liked, Tamburri will continue to be based in Mexico City, where he served from Oct. 2020 through April this year as VP, scripted content development at WarnerMedia Latin America and finally Warner Bros. Discovery Latin America.
“We’d like to establish a foothold in Mexico and the rest of Latin America but thinking internationally, and doing it in the most organic way possible,” Zeta Studios president Antonio Asensio Mosbah toldPvNew.
“Marcelo has all the experience in the world, he knows the market and this is an important added asset, and he knows how to make series which are liked in Mexico and in the whole Latin America region,” he added.
“I am moved to be able to support Antonio Asensio and collaborate with the team of Zeta Studios, to drive more its international expansion and, above all, do so with quality and originality, caring for series and features which we will produce outside Spain,” Tamburri added.
Why Mexico….
Spain and Mexico are the two biggest TV production powerhouses in the Spanish-speaking world. They also share the same language and, on many of their biggest hits – think “Money Heist,” “Elite,” “Who Killed Sara?” – success in recasting melodrama in a genre-bending mix with a modern edge and high production values.
A large part of Asensio’s family is in Mexico – he is half-Mexican, married to a Mexican, has some business interests in the country, and has introduced successfully Mexican performers into major titles, such as Danna Paola in “Elite” and Erick Elias in “Días mejores,” he commented toPvNew.
That said, “Marcelo knows how to make TV which can find an easier place in Mexico, he has experience with melodrama and knows how to handle it well,” he added.
Zeta Studios’ Slate: Breadth and Platform Play
Since 2019, in Spain Zeta Studios has focused on building its slate across a broad gamut of titles, from the mass audience appeal of “Elite” to titles such as the soon-to-bow “Te estoy amando locamente,” a LGBTQ period feature from Alejandro Marín which have more of an indie appeal.
Series, such as the upcoming “Picadero” and “The Chauffeur’s Son” have been selected for the cream of Europe’s project competitions – “Picadero” for the 2021 Series Mania Forum Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, “The Chauffeur’s Son” for this year’s Berlinale Co-Pro Series showcase.
They also balance a genre gristle with distinctive elements.
“Picadero” weighs in as a Barcelona high society crime investigation drama with an LGBT and libertine sexual edge; based on true events, “The Chauffeur’s Son” is billed as a “journalism, blackmail and corruption thriller,” charting how the most modern part of Spina emerging from Franco’s dictatorship was governed at times by a mixture of horse trading, coercion and illicit gains.
The common denominator of Zeta Studios titles is that they have been mostly made for or with streaming services: For Netflix, Prime Video (action comedy “Sin huellas”), Prime Video and Paramount+ in Latin America (the grief therapy group-set drama “Días mejores”), HBO Max (the big-scale action-adventure “¡García!”), Movistar Plus+ (late-night radio dramedy “Reyes de la Noche”) and Atresplayer (the upcoming teen drama “Red Flags”).
What Zeta Studios and Tamburri Bring to the Table
“Mexico has a highly competitive TV market which knows how to do its work very well,” said Asensio. “Though there are exceptions, the lion’s share of series are for free-to-air audiences. As a foreign company, we’ll try to bring titles which have distinctive elements.”
Zeta Studios will also be open to co-production in many cases. “Mexico has a larger tradition of co-production than Spain,” Asensio said.
Tamburri can bring to the table his involvement at a high executive level of main paradigm shifts in the vertiginous recent evolution of Latin America’s higher-end TV scene.
Working for Turner for 16 years based out of Argentina, where the company built as essentially a top U.S. cable TV company in Latin America, distributing U.S. content, Tamburri went on to help power up a first wave of premium original series in Argentina, two of which, “The Cockfighter” and “La Fragilidad de los Cuerpos,” both made in co-production, provided Conecta Fiction the two galas of its first edition in Santiago de Compostela in 2017.
Tamburri was head-hunted by Tomás Yankelevich in 2018 to move to Mexico and head up Turner Latin America development in all Latin America, as TLA aimed to ramp up production of original series to about 12-15 in two years time for TNT and Space.
Now that Latin America’s broadcast sector looks to have shifted gears to another tenor, Tamburri can bring to Zeta Studios his insider-knowledge of platform needs in Mexico, far-ranging creative talent relationships and enthusiasm for production partnerships.
“I hope to contribute to Antonio and the Zeta team, my experience in the generation of projects, taking into consideration the vision, necessity and parameters of the platforms. The business and industry has turned to a deeper analysis of the effectiveness of business,” Tamburri toldPvNew.
“The great challenge is to offer something different and a large objective is collaboration, such as in co-production which mean sharing risk, and not only working with our own productions but seeing the possibility of developing other productions and collaborations with other production houses,” he added.
