SOMOS Distribution at PRODU Showcase: The market has gone through a windows adjustment

Francisco Villanueva, VP, and COO of SOMOS Distribution, said they is a world of great opportunities in the midst of great uncertainty, during a NATPE Showcase with Ríchard Izarra, where he presented a preview of two of their new productions –Novovision and Sasmos- and announced others they have on the agenda.

“The market is growing and as expected, there has been an adjustment of windows and a rearrangement of all the participants, but for all the distributors it is an opportunity. We must accommodate each one of our products to those different windows that are opening,” he said.

Novovision
For this show, “we took the catalog from a very important French company -Novovision- that has 30-minute programs with humorous sketches, where there is a hidden camera, bloopers and people tripping over, and it is a very extensive catalog used in the different channels and windows. We have more than 3,000 hours of programming and it offers moments of joy,’ he mentioned.

Sasmos
Which are a couple of Greek series “with a high production bill that we believe will have an interesting impact.” he explained. “In our constant model of looking for content from other latitudes that works in Latin America, which has been our hallmark for a long time, as you remember we started with the Turkish part, we have taken two Greek series we believe will have an interesting impact. We are in the process of dubbing the episodes. The first is Sasmos, which is the war between two families in which a couple meets by mistake and falls in love, it’s a bit like Romeo and Juliet. It has 60 episodes and has had a very good performance in Greece. We are very confident that it will be very successful in Latin America.”

Series for children/teenagers
The three series for children and teenagers are Cici and Cori, Amanda And The Fashion Girls (12×35′), and Ella Es El 7 (15×45′). “These are our new projects which we already have several platforms on board. One includes some k-pop, which is trending at the moment. Another has regional Mexican music with ballads, which is extraordinary. And the third is music with fashion.

La Muerte del Rey
“Our fiction series is La Muerte del Rey, based on the death of the president of Peru who committed suicide due to the case regarding a construction company. It is a fiction where we are going to recreate many of the situations. We are going to tell a story that is of interest for all of Latin America because the case involved many countries in the region and is about corruption that, unfortunately, is something that prevails in all Latin American countries.”

RI: At what stage is La Muerte del Rey?
FV: We already have the first episode, have the cast designed, the producers. We have a very good relationship with the Peruvian company called Imagia Films and directed by our friend Eduardo Guillot, who is going to be the showrunner of the series.

Sueños y Gloria
“And, finally, we have a baseball series —Sueños y Gloria (8×50′)— in which we selected the most important baseball players, in this case from the Dominican Republic, for the first season. We have ten great stars who are going to tell their story in a scheme where we are going to be able to walk through great moments of baseball and of the life of each one of them, their miseries, their fight against racism, among others. I think it’s something successful that we’re going to launch in other countries later,” he explained.

RI: In what phase of the process is Sueños y Gloria?
FV: We made a list of 33 of the greatest players and we’re interested in 10. Of them, we are going to choose eight. Each story will emphasize a moment in time. We are talking about a period of 15 years for each one of them and in those 15 years, we are going to tell many anecdotes that will captivate those who love baseball. And for those who are not so baseball fans, it will be extraordinary to see the vicissitudes that each one went through. We joined forces with two women from the Dominican Republic who made a very good book called Sueños y Gloria, two ‘Claudia’, mother, and daughter (Claudia Prida and Claudia Sofia Torres Prida), and we are going to use that book to develop each of these stories. We are very happy with the potential that the story has and the breadth that it will give us because later we are going to do something similar with other countries.

View the complete showcase here