SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, Spain – Imagina Intenational Sales, the distribution arm of TV giant Mediapro, has sold Spanish TV drama “Pulsaciones” (Lifeline) to Mexican broadcaster Azteca TV.
Produced by Mediapro’s Globomedia, “Lifeline” was co-created by Spanish multi-hyphenate Emilio Aragón, and released in Spain from January 2017 on Atresmedia’s main channel Antena 3.
The series boasts an already a large international sales run, including prrior deals with Channel 4 in the U.K. and Netflix in Latin America, and has marked a milestone as the first Spanish series to be aired by Arabic network MBC.
The 10-episode closed-end drama turns on a renowned surgeon who suffers from a heart attack, receives a heart transplant and starts to have strange nightmares related to the murder of his donor.
The Lifeline deal was unveiled at the 2nd edition of Conecta Fiction, the TV series co-production and networking meeting who is taking place over June 18-21 in Galicia’s Santiago de Compostela.
Executives, talent and contents from Mediapro’s family of companies are having a high profile presence at Conecta Fiction 2.
Imagina International Sales is handling Daniel Calparsoro-directed series “Todo por el juego,” a co-production with DirecTV written by Argentina’s Eduardo Sacheri.
Further recent co-productions by Mediapro include “The Paradise,” with Finnish broadcaster YLE, and HBO’s Paolo Sorrentino-directed “The Young Pope.”
Globomedia’s Javier Olivares, showrunner of emblematic Spanish series such as “Isabel” and “The Department of Time,” assured Tuesday during a masterclass at Conecta that TV fiction plays today the same cultural role that painting and cinema played in the past.
“From 2000, the art that shows how we really live in society are TV series,” said Olivares, who’s preparing a TV series adaptation of Alfred Hichcock’s classic film “To Catch a Thief” for Viacom, among other projects.
The media conglom’s Conecta Fiction delegation also takes in Laura Fernández Espeso, Mediapro’s director of international contents, Imagina International Sales director Beatriz Setuain and Javier Pons, general manager at Globomedia.
In a further instance of Mediapro’s strengthening of its content division, the TV giant has tapped seasoned TV executive Alejandro Flórez as general director of production subsid outfit 100 Balas.
A former Discovery Networks executive, Flórez replaces Enrique Pérez ‘Flipy,’ who’s leading a new division for creative innovation at the group’s content arm. ‘Flipy’ created and is supervising the production of gaming series “N00Bees” for Viacom’s Nickelodeon in Latin America.
