Orange Spain now plans to make further announcements of new productions from September, said Josep Maria Rabes, director of Orange TV in Spain.
Teaming with OCS, on the eve of last year’s Series Mania, Orange unveiled the France-England ferry-set “Cheyenne & Lola,” from “Spiral’s” Virginie Brac, to be delivered in September or October; the ballet-themed drama “The Opera,” written by Cécile Ducrocq , whose shoot is due to start in August. In Spain, as in France, Orange has pursued a distribution strategy of offering subscribers all third-party content available, clinching ad hoc carriage agreements with Netflix, Amazon, AMC, Fox, AXN, Rakuten, Starz and FlixOle, and allowing clients to download Android TV apps via its Android TV service, which gives them access to such services as Disney Plus.
The drive into Spanish series production also comes as series are an increasing market phenomenon, in and outside Spain. In 2019, Netflix produced more hours of original productions in Spain than any other country outside the U.S., apart from South Korea , but on a par with the U.K. , according to Omdia.
Created and written by The Mediapro Studio development executive José Antonio Pérez Ledo the eight-part short format series also marks a high-concept attempt to leverage its characters’ – and Orange’s young adult viewers’ – mobile phone fixation, said Rabes.