The founders of the Mexican production house Hippo Entertainment Group, Toño, and Antonio Mauri, talked about the company’s goal of generating positive content for different platforms, being the series Mariachis, in alliance with MGM and Warner Bros. Discovery for HBO Max, an example.
“We want to make different content, taking great care of the family line, values, and information, sometimes sacrificing the commercial side of which there is currently a lot on the screens, such as action, drug trafficking, and sex, but we look to offer positive messages to society, because we believe that it is necessary and that is our standard and with the Mariachis series that premiered on HBO Max and recently in Spain, we had the opportunity to cross borders,” commented Toño Mauri, who is also actor and producer.
The Mariachis series is content that allowed them to address diseases such as Alzheimer’s, so they will seek to make more productions that appeal to these and other themes such as organ donation, after Toño’s personal experience, “because we believe that there is a lot to talk about on this topic.”
Antonio Mauri said that together with his father they will seek to show family values and love giving the audience a message to think about: “We’re taking that path, with a lot of faith and love, that strikes a chord of those who see our content and above all, that those values that many of us still cherish are not lost.”
Regarding the generational gap with his son, Toño highlighted that they have managed to unite their ideas. “We have the vision of young people through my son and me, the way of seeing the ideas before and adapting them to what nowadays life. We see how TV has taken a turn and how this new way of making TV, series, content, and stories, has expanded and we have the option to choose, which is why we want to be an option. We want to make TV as it was done in the past that unites the family because there is a lot to do and we are interested in interacting with people and listening to them.”
For Antonio, even when the way of making and consuming content has changed, the values and connections remain the same. “That relationship between father and son in a series like Mariachis could have happened before or today, it transcends time through love and that is the goal, to rescue those values and share them with others.”
Both highlighted that, among their following projects, is the possibility of a new installment of the Mariachis series, which will depend on HBO Max, considering it a story that gives more and which they already have visualized how it would be: ” On the other hand, we have a project on Cuba, about something that really happened, but this involves a lot of work because we have been working on it for many years. We have gotten into the subject of organ donation because around it there are many things to talk about such as equity, circumstances, health, and interesting true stories. We are thinking of developing content of this type about real people who have gone through a difficult situation.” To conclude they said they already have a couple of projects around this to develop.
View the interview with Toño and Antonio Mauri, Hippo Entertainment Group