Netflix, which has been increasingly building its lineup of titles from Spain, has been successful in winning the global rights for Pieles (Skins), a social drama addition supervised by Spanish director-producer Alex De La Iglesia. The movie will include many popular stars from Spain’s biggest TV comedy series Aida, such as Carmen Machi, Ana Polvorosa and Secun de la Rosa.
Skins close to an American indie tradition
Skins is a spin-off to Eat my S– from actor turned director Eduardo Casanova. The original film was about a girl who has a hyper-realistic anus for a mouth and was screened by South West Fest at 2016’s South.
“Skins’ is a punk, rebel and violent riposte to the social construct, all the pressure society is subjected to,” Casanova told Variety.
At last September’s San Sebastian Fest, De la lglesia told Variety that Skins is a vocal multi story drama about abnormal people looking for a place in the society. The show also features a girl without eyes.
When buying the rights to Spanish content, Hollywood studios frequently focus on titles that assist them in making money in the local market, but Netflix looks at the movie’s international potential.
According to De Ia Iglesia, Skins is very close to the American Indie tradition, and this may help in getting more viewership abroad.
“Far from being a future project, Netflix is a current and essential bet for Spanish production,” he said.
A good win for Netflix
Netflix has only just begun to increase its investments in local content via early acquisitions of movies and series or original production orders. According to Spanish media, securing this early deal for Skins will help Netflix with more adaptability in its financing and local releases simultaneously, opening the entryway for the motion picture to be screened in Spanish theaters, something which is required by law to access national subsidies.
Richard Broughton of Ampere Analysis notes that if one looks at the streaming giant by hours of content available, local [national] content in most major Western European markets typically represents between 2% and 5% of the catalog, while EU content represents a much larger proportion of it.
A few months ago, the European Union proposed 20% European content quotas in all EU territories, and according to an Ampere Analysis study, this 20% European content level is met by most European Netflix services. However, many believe that rising investment quotas could result in high costs and lower returns for the U.S. firm.
