{"id":692814,"date":"2025-09-30T11:35:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T08:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/banijays-steve-matthews-on-why-spanish-content-is-bold-naughty-and-just-getting-started\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T11:35:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T08:35:16","slug":"banijays-steve-matthews-on-why-spanish-content-is-bold-naughty-and-just-getting-started","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/banijays-steve-matthews-on-why-spanish-content-is-bold-naughty-and-just-getting-started\/","title":{"rendered":"Banijay\u2019s Steve Matthews on Why Spanish Content Is \u201cBold,\u201d \u201cNaughty\u201d and Just Getting Started"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tSteve Matthews is attending the fifth edition of Iberseries<\/a> & Platino Industria in Madrid this week to bring a taste of superindie Banijay Entertainment, the France-headquartered international content production and distribution giant behind such hits as Survivor<\/em>, Black Mirror<\/em>, Peaky Blinders<\/em>, MasterChef<\/em> and\u00a0Big Brother<\/em>, to the gathering for Spanish- and Portuguese-language content producers and other attendees.<\/p>\n

\n\tHired in early 2023 as content partnerships executive in the company\u2019s central script<\/a>ed department, the former executive of Octagon Films in Dublin and consulting producer on all three seasons of Showtime\u2019s\u00a0The Borgias<\/em> was promoted to the role of head of scripted, creative \u2014 partnered with Johannes Jensen as head of scripted, business \u2014 in January.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a Tuesday \u201cSpotlight: Banijay\u201d session, Matthews and Pilar Blasco, CEO of Banijay Iberia, will share insight into their content strategy and collaborations across markets.<\/p>\n

\n\tAhead of his Iberseries appearance, Matthews talked to THR<\/em> about the appeal of Spanish-language content, its \u201coperatic\u201d quality, Banijay\u2019s Spanish hits and what\u2019s next.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpanish-language content has, in recent years, shown such broad appeal around the world. How does it fit into Banijay\u2019s scripted strategy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tAt Banijay, we\u2019re doing 1,000 hours across 60 labels as the biggest scripted producer in Europe. I have this helicopter analogy, which still prevails. There are now more people in the helicopter, and we\u2019re a little bit tighter and a little bit more disciplined on what the helicopter is there to do. But the helicopter flies to a production banner, and we open the door and ask if they need anything. If they do, we try to help. If they don\u2019t, we go on to the next banner. <\/p>\n

\n\tSo, to stick with this metaphor, we go across the labels, we open the door, we look down, and we say: \u201cHi, guys. Do you need some help with a tax incentive? Do you need some help getting that agent in New York to call you back about that book? Do you need me to help you set up a writer\u2019s room? Do you need help to get that French format? <\/p>\n

\n\tBanijay has made a very big thing out of lots of little things. So the game<\/a> and strategy is all about maintaining the ability of the production companies to work in their markets, tell the stories that they\u2019re specialists in, maintain their creative identities, and not get in the way too much, but help and connect if we can. It\u2019s about [managing] the whole scale of it.<\/p>\n

\n\tEnglish-language content has certain advantages. The U.K. remains our biggest territory, but Spain and Italy are close behind.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tBanijay\u2019s content partnerships executive Steve Matthews<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Banijay<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThere are four primary scripted companies that we have in Spain. There\u2019s Pokeepsie Films, founded by [director, screenwriter and producer] \u00c1lex de la Iglesia, who I love, having already done 30 Coins<\/em> with him. He makes big, bold, theatrical stuff. We also have Diagonal TV, which has done great premium stuff, such as The Patients of Dr. Garc\u00eda<\/em>. There\u2019s Dlo [Producciones], which produces brilliant genre content, such as [Netflix series] The Gardener<\/em>. And there is the lovely Portcabo up in Galicia, which is doing unpretentious, excellent, well-crafted crime stuff. So, our Spanish production businesses are not a homogeneous thing. It\u2019s not just one thing, and I think that\u2019s how it\u2019s kind of endured. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhat do you see as the drivers behind the global success of Spanish content in recent years?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tFor the rise of Spain over the last 10 years, distribution comes in. A third of the world speaks Spanish. So there\u2019s an automatic advantage there for Spanish content. Also, in Spain, the regulatory environment is great, there is an excellent tax systems. All of these are conducive to encouraging the excellent storytelling in Spain.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a pretentious thing to say, but I think any movement in art usually has elements of finance or technology<\/a>. However, I think it\u2019s never just that. There\u2019s also been a burst of storytelling that\u2019s come out of Spain. When I first started in Spain in 2016, I was reading scripts and saying to a colleague, \u201cThese scripts, they don\u2019t have any subtext. And he said: \u201cYou don\u2019t understand, Steve, we don\u2019t have subtext.\u201d And I said, \u201cOh, I see, you write in a different way.\u201d There\u2019s no \u201dset it up really slowly and hold back the motivations.\u201d At the start of a Spanish story, you just go. You go to the front of the stage and sing.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s not like Tony Soprano where you wonder: \u201cIs he happy or is he sad?\u201d There\u2019s something operatic in Spanish storytelling. And I think that\u2019s something that has fit these times \u2014 of people wanting something a little bit less pretentious, a little bit brash. There\u2019s an operatic storytelling that just fits the time.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat may explain why I have noticed friends getting fully drawn in and really caring about characters in more and more Spanish dramas. One recently mentioned that years ago they used to watch a Spanish show only here and there for the sun and fun and, I hate to say it, the pretty people<\/strong>. I wonder if more opportunities to watch such content has allowed a fan base to go deeper and look beyond the surface?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYes, you can go beyond Spain to Mexico and Latin America and the telenovela. I have watched some of the shows from our colleagues in Brazil. With the telenovela, it\u2019s wrong to think of it as bright and colorful, just pretty people, and that\u2019s the only reason you watch. It does have all of those things, but it\u2019s also got a joyful operatic story. Otherwise, you wouldn\u2019t sit and watch 40 episodes of it.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, pretty people and sunshine are a superficial symptom of something much deeper. I love working with these guys. They are great and have this boldness as well. As things were already slowing down and a bubble was about to burst heading into the run-up to 2020, I was working with Alex, and these scripts were coming through. Reading them, I was like: \u201cWe can\u2019t do this, can we?\u201d And you know, you\u2019re in a good place when you\u2019re reading a script, thinking that, and they are letting us do this. There\u2019s a confidence there. And there\u2019s a naughtiness about them as well, which I think is good.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\u2018The Gardener\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tSince we just mentioned Latin America, and co-productions have been one key topic at Iberseries & Platino Industry, are there co-productions between Banijay production banners in Spain and Latin America in the works?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tOver the last two to three years, co-production is very much back on the table, and you find it\u2019s the Swedes, the Dutch, the Central Europeans. It\u2019s the smaller companies and markets that have a kind of memory for what it was like before the streaming boom, because they have to as there isn\u2019t enough money like in the bigger territories, which sometimes stay a little bit more within themselves.<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, that\u2019s one of the things that we\u2019re building. Are there a lot of developments between Spain and Europe and Latin America? No, not as many as I would like to see. But equally, it\u2019s a mistake to assume that they are the exact same countries just because they share a language. Because their Spanish is actually different, and Brazil is, of course, Portuguese, so it\u2019s a completely different language, a completely different thing. So you can make a kind of lazy assumption. But it\u2019s not quite as simple as that. And that\u2019s the game for us. It\u2019s really about how much to push in, how much to encourage? How much glue should there be between the whole thing to get the balance correct?<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat are some of the Spanish Banijay shows you can highlight?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThe big one really is the third in the Cul<\/em>pa<\/em> trilogy, which comes out [on Prime] soon from Pokeepsie. So that\u2019s been for us, a really good example of a new [hit] from a company known for horror and psychological thrillers. I think the success comes from how they have worked with the same kind of theatricality. That is why they have been so successful. So that\u2019s the big one coming up.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe\u2019re also very happy with an important show for us, even though it\u2019s relatively small compared to the scale of the stuff from Pokeepsie. Weiss & Morales<\/em> is made by Portocabo. It is a cop show that we\u2019re proud of because it\u2019s a pure, old-fashioned, two-territory co-production with ZDF in Germany and RTVE in Spain. It\u2019s a German cop and a Spanish cop investigating crimes. Again, it\u2019s unpretentious, and there\u2019s a lot of business entrepreneurialism there as well. <\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Weiss & Morales\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tAnd Dlo has [psychological thriller series] La Caza<\/em>, which has travel<\/a>ed to France and had remakes.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou know what I love about Spain? It\u2019s not stuck. They do their book adaptations, but also more. Diagonal did Dr. Garc\u00eda<\/em> and those literary and historical things, but then did The Gardener<\/em>, a cracking little contemporary psychological thriller with all this kind of Hitchcockian vibe to it, a big show on Netflix.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd there\u2019s more coming from all those guys. <\/p>\n

\n\tBeyond your on-stage appearance, any other big plans for Iberseries and Madrid?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThey have asked me to meet with some young writers. I always meet with young writers and really read their pitches, so I\u2019ll do some of those sessions. I take opportunities to be on the road, and I use those very much for face time with the labels. We\u2019re very spread out, so the more we get to know each other, the better. <\/p>\n

\n\tWe do lots of panels and talks and discussions and pitches and showcases, but we also all get together and say, \u201cHey, you\u2019ve got a thriller. Have you met the guys from the Nordics? These guys have got a great idea.\u201d There are two projects in development right now between territories, which came entirely out of that. So I take any opportunity to go and see them and ask: \u201cWhat do you need? What are you working on? Can I help you with that?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Matthews is attending the fifth edition of Iberseries & Platino Industria in Madrid this week to bring a taste of superindie Banijay Entertainment, the France-headquartered international content production and distribution giant behind such hits as Survivor, Black Mirror, Peaky Blinders, MasterChef and\u00a0Big Brother, to the gathering for Spanish- and Portuguese-language content producers and other…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":692815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/15015_xxl_8-2.jpg?w=1440&h=810&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[135293,158935,158936,124783],"class_list":["post-692814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-banijay","tag-iberseries","tag-iberseries-platino-industria","tag-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}