Grup Mediapro’s New Chief Laura Fernandez Espeso On U.S. Ambitions

When Laura Fernández Espeso sits down in Grup Mediapro‘s General Director seat for the first time on January 1, it will mark the latest notable step in a career that began in indie film working with award-winning directors Francis Ford Coppola, Danis Tanović and Ken Loach. In her first interview as Mediapro’s new leader (or last as CEO of The Mediapro Studio, depending on which way you look at it), the Spanish exec tells Deadline, “It’s an amazing opportunity, a dream come true.”

Fernández Espeso is certainly qualified. Having led the Spanish firm’s production wing to make films and shows for the likes of Prime Video, Netflix, Max, Disney+, ViX, Movistar Plus+, Atresmedia and RTVE, she has become one of the most powerful execs in Europe and Spanish-language media, even while Mediapro’s wider business faced tough challenges such as falling revenues during the global pandemic. She is a board member for the International Emmys and advocates for equal opportunities at exec, writing and acting levels.

Fernández Espeso joined Spanish-language production giant Globomedia in 2009 as Director of International Development and Director of the Cinema Division, before moving to oversee its international TV and film unit and becoming a key player in the emerging co-production biz. When Mediapro bought Globomedia in 2015, her role expanded again, and in 2020 she was named CEO of the new production division The Mediapro Studio, which has fast established itself as among the leading Spanish-language producers and is now seeking success in the English-speaking game. Having lived and worked in LA, London and Brussels (“I was always rowing back and forth to Spain,” she says), she’s now set for the next step.

Among the major goals is permanently establishing the new L.A. production office, which is working with Hollywood stars on a high-profile slate that could propel Mediapro into a different stratosphere. “It’s something that will change the profile of the studio, for sure,” says Fernández Espeso.

Day One Inbox

When she sits down at her computer next Wedensday as the new GM, Fernández Espeso’s inbox will be packed full of emails that need addressing, but she has already been working on a plan, shadowing the outgoing Juan Ruiz de Gauna throughout 2024 following the announcement of the change nearly 12 months ago. She knows what’s facing her. “I have been learning, listening and reading, so I can take care of everything,” says Fernández Espeso. “I will need time. The company is in very good shape, so it’s a big responsibility, and there are things we can achieve and other things we can make better. I feel big respect for the heritage being put in my hands.”

Fernández Espeso rise at the Iberian powerhouse came as part of a restructure that ties in with its 30th birthday, with new leaders installed across the business. This followed a period of change that saw high-profile co-founder Jaume Roures step back at the request of Hong Kong-based majority shareholder Southwind and minority shareholder WPP, according to a statement issued in October 2023. Tatxo Benet, the other co-founder, remains CEO and Chairman and oversees Mediapro’s relationship with Southwind. Fernández Espeso now leads the day-to-day business at the company, known for its money-spinning sports rights and broadcast media services operations (including a lucrative long-term production agreement with La Liga). As GM, she will guide its future trajectory.

Following a tricky financial few years when a contract with France’s Ligue 1 collapsed and the Covid-19 pandemic bit into earnings, Mediapro has diversified its focus and now has a growing TV and film production arm that counts the likes of Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, the BBC and ZDF’s Famous Five series, Ran Telem’s multi-language psychological thriller The Head and Daniel Burman’s Latin American drama Yosi, the Regretful Spy on its slate. An expanding channels and platforms division operates the likes of Fox Argentina and works with the likes of ESPN and Movistar, while new unit Mediapro Experiences is creating real-world experiences based on its IP.

Though Mediapro remains below its pre-pandemic financial standing financially, analysts and market watchers consider the company is on an upwards trajectory and investment has been flying into The Mediapro Studio, whose International Director Marta Ezpeleta will succeed Fernández Espeso at its helm.

A sports rights fund worth €1.1B ($1.1B) has also been established to acquire intellect property around the world to diversify beyond Mediapro’s traditional soccer business and production needs to ramp up, but broadly Fernández Espeso sees her challenge, like many legacy content companies, as preparing Mediapro for a digital future. “In general, we have a goal of innovation and the transformation of the company,” she says. “The world is changing, and we need to approach the challenge of innovation with an open mind. This is not just about AI, which of course is important and something we are working on, but it is bigger than that.”

Fernández Espeso will encourage an increasingly international approach to Mediapro, and especially The Mediapro Studio, which makes around 100 productions each year, with about 70% being unscripted, 20% scripted series and up to 10% films. “The way I began my career and the fact I had been living in different countries very early in my career helped me to shape the way I saw the industry,” she says. As such, the U.S. office led by J.C. Acosta will seek to develop alongside the established businesses in Spain and Latin America, while partnerships with the likes of Turkish giant Medyapim will attempt to tap into local markets. This strategy came via the Mediapro Studio blueprint from when Espeso took over that entity and pushed into Latin American Production.

“At that moment, I hadn’t experienced Argentina, Colombia, Chile or Mexico, and Mediapro had big operations there already,” she recalls. The likes of Erika Kennair and Pam Healy have been signed up to oversee North American scripted and non-scripted development slates and talent deals are forming the blueprint’s spine.

In an onstage interview with Deadline’s Stewart Clarke at MIPCOM, Fernández Espeso said the American plan had been gestating for “10 years” as she, Acosta and several stars unveiled a slate including projects with John Turturro (Is There No Place on Earth for Me?), Melissa Leo (Mother Wolf), Evan Katz (Witness 36) and Juan José Campanella, the latter a long-time Espeso collaborator who is making an English-language series based on his critically acclaimed Argentine film Son of the Bride, which was Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Feature.

Is There No Place on Earth For Me? — a feature Turturro writes, directs and stars in — looks into the mind of Sylvia Frumkin, a woman trapped in the grips of schizophrenia, as her family struggles to navigate the maze of the mental health system during a blackout in New York. Mother Wolf stars Leo as a retired grandmother who unexpectedly becomes the caretaker of her grandchildren, while drama series Witness 36 is based on a Natacha Caravia short story, developed for the screen by Katz and Yosi creator Burman as a cat-and-mouse thriller in which a woman who creates new identities for an international witness protection program becomes embroiled in a twisted chase across the world with one of her creations. 

Also on the slate is Julia McDaniel’s latest series, Screaming Ball of Chaos, and a new Canadian comedy series from Tellem, I Love the Prime Minster, about a single PM who balances the pressures of leadership with the challenges of modern dating. On the unscripted front is true crime series Hollywood Homicide: Robert Blake and game show Catch Me If You Can, which has run to more than 10,000 episodes on Spanish regional television. The U.S. version is being created in collaboration with The Floor showrunner Anthony Carbone.

The slate was one of the highlights of this year’s MIPCOM and firmly signposted The Mediapro Studio as a player in the American game, especially as a major production facility is being built on the other side of the U.S. in Yonkers.

Fernández Espeso points out that Mediapro has actually been in the English-language game for years, having co-produced the likes of Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Midnight In Paris, but that Acosta’s team represents a “doubling down.” The company “chose L.A. as the base because we consider it be to the epicenter of major stories and productions worldwide,” she adds. “Establishing a headquarters there is a natural extension of the company and consolidating is a very important step. We already have the right team and infrastructure, and we feel we’re different not just because of the resources, but also the flexibility and the production models we have.”

In essence, the LA base will be able to tap into Mediapro’s global experience (its broadcast services unit is in 110 countries and owns more than 400,000 sq ft in facilities globally) and various financial models to get shows into production. “We need to be bold and dynamic, and need to create franchises, which we have been successful at doing elsewhere,” says Espeso. “They need to have compelling characters and have the potential for spin-offs. We have a lot of formats with the potential to cross boundaries.” Audiences can also expect diverse storytelling, which she says is “in the DNA” of the company.

Talent deals, both in front of and behind the camera, will be crucial. “We need very solid talent like we have in Spain and Latin America, and we are very good at making deals with very key groups of talent,” says Fernández Espeso. “Sometimes we invest because we have an existing relationship, but sometimes it’s because we think a company is doing amazing things. Cimarron [the Uruguayan production company Mediapro bought in October 2023] is doing amazingly and working a lot with Hollywood. The moment we met their team, we decided to make the acquisition because they were mentally aligned with Mediapro. It was the same with Fresco Films [the Spain-based production services company that has worked on House of the Dragon, Game of Thrones, Westworld and many other American productions it acquired in July].”

Penélope Cruz’s Moonlyon

Perhaps the most notable talent deal was the formation of Moonlyon with Penélope Cruz. Announced back in April 2022, the production house formalized Mediapro’s relationship with the Spanish star following movies such as Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn’s Official Competition, with Cruz saying it would allow her to bring through diverse new voices. Things have been quiet since then but Fernández Espeso is able to provide an update, revealing Cruz has been deep in development and will soon unveil the results, which include films, TV dramas, book adaptations, unscripted projects and a doc.

“Content needs time to develop and Penélope has to combine her work with her professional career acting, but she is 100% committed to production,” says Fernández Espeso. “Her office is just in front of mine. She’s in the Mediapro building, taking meetings with actors and directors, giving notes and being involved in every aspect of production design. We’re about to announce several things.”

Cruz could be considered the archetypal Mediapro partner — acclaimed in Spain, the U.S. and Latin America, which is the other big production space for the company, and provides a starry face for its production biz. “I hope we’ll be able to specify her titles soon,” says Espeso.

In Latin America, productions continue to drop with regularity, with Prime Video drama Cometierra and Netflix’s Las Maldiciones both coming from the prolific Oficina Burman. Two other Amazon titles, Barrabrava and Primate, have been renewed, as were ViX original Consuelo and Max Latin America’s soccer drama Las Bravas. Disney+ film Mesa de Regalos releases in theaters in Mexico in January, while TelevisaUnivision has Cash, a Hispanic version of Mediapro format Crush.

But for all of Mediapro’s activity in the Americas, Spain remains at the core of the biz. Currently on the slate are the likes of Movistar Plus+ drama Celeste, ViX and SkyShowtime’s Las Pelotaris 1926 and the upcoming Quiet, which launched on Catalonia’s 3Cat before going out on Disney+ all on the currently slate. Features include the Marcel Barrena’s Goya-nominated The 47 and Carlos Polo Menarguez’s El Talento, which premieres in theaters next year. The Head‘s third season launched this month, while numerous docs and entertainment shows are produced for local networks and streamers.

Indeed, Spain is having what some might call ‘a moment.’ That means both local and international business for Fernández Espeso, particularly considering European production appears to be recovering after a brutal two years in which some streamers stopped ordering local shows and local channels saw budgets collapse under the weight of a struggling TV advertising market. Spain has, however, been something of an outlier, with Netflix pushing hard, Prime Video well established as a commissioner and even Warner Bros Discovery remaining in the originals game when it pulled out elsewhere in Europe in 2022.

“In Spain, we have been very successful because we’ve never had American budgets for shows, but we have been competing with them in primetime for many years, and have always been the leaders doing bigger numbers and shares,” she says. “We haven’t had that much resource, so we have developed an industry of writers who are very good with characters.

“We have been selling our shows around the world, so when the streamers arrived, the Spanish industry was more than ready to be very successful globally. The writers were more than ready. We have a lot of talent, and I am trying to export the Spanish writers to other countries. We’re doing crossovers all the time, and we will keep going internationally without doubt.”

Fernández Espeso points to the success Fresco had attracting major HBO productions such as House of the Dragon to shoot in the country, which is known for strong crews and technical staff, and notes how the country’s various national and regional tax breaks have helped to underpin the business, with shows such as The Head taking advantage. “It’s good for everyone,” she says. “We’re making bigger shows and the clients are investing more money in this country, and that is why the tax credit incentives are super important for us.

“We produced The Head Season 1 in the Canary Islands. It was set in the Antarctic, but we were shooting most of the interior scenes in the Canaries, which was an interesting contrast. Without the incentives, it wouldn’t have been possible. We took all the risk by investing and then sold the show [to likes of HBO Asia, Hulu Japan, Prime Video in Italy, Canal+ in France and Viaplay in the Nordics]. It was much easier to take that risk with tax incentives.”

As for Espeso herself, 2025 will be a pivotal year, and one that will rely on production growth. While the broadcast services and sports divisions provide a lion’s share of revenues, The Mediapro Studio has the space to grow. She points to its diversity in staff and storytelling, and its co-production-focused approach, which could pay off handsomely in a world where even the major U.S. players are sending execs to international markets to sniff out genuinely collaborative production opportunities.

Fernández Espeso and her Mediapro colleagues had understood the opportunity back when The Mediapro Studio had first launched in 2019, thanks to decades of production and rights ownership experience. “We had the resources, infrastructure and distribution arm, and were already investing to own IP,” she says. “We had started very early with co-productions, and when a company has this international focus from the very beginning, you become very flexible. You have to put lots of pieces of the puzzle together, and it’s good that everyone now understands the future is in co-productions. I love to say we are the fabric — we make things happen. We’re not the makers of paper. We are out there doing deals and connecting people.”

Seems quite likely that sentiment will be on the first email she sends out on Wednesday.