Mubi Acquires Worldwide Rights to 'La Mesías' and 'Riot Police'

Mubi has taken worldwide rights to two flagship Movistar Plus series: "La Mesías," from directors Los Javis, and "Riot Police," the first premium TV series from "The Beloved" director Rodrigo Sorogoyen.

The deals, announced during the first day of trading at Madrid's Iberseries & Platino Industria, form part of 33 new agreements unveiled by Movistar Plus International, the overseas distributor of Spain's biggest pay TV and SVOD operator. Key territories for the Mubi deal were first announced by Variety in July.

"La Mesías," created by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, marked the duo's first large-scale production with the budget they required. Each episode adopts a different genre influence — psychodrama, sci-fi, procedural and musical — with a pop sensibility and multiple timelines, an approach they have repeated in "La Bola Negra." The series explores legacy and repression through the psychological trauma inflicted by a messianic mother who turns her family into a cult.

"The series talks about religion, but as a form of education and this is what makes it interesting," Calvo and Ambrossi told Variety on set in 2023.

"Riot Police" world premiered at San Sebastián in 2020 and confirmed Sorogoyen's ability to bring big-screen punch to television. The six-part series, starring "The Beloved's" Victoria Luengo, examines the failures and fragility of the masculine psyche as a riot police squad becomes the subject of an internal enquiry led by Luengo's character after bungling an eviction. It closed early deals with HBO Latin America and Canal+ in France.

"The series I've seen rarely evolve in style," Sorogoyen told Variety in 2020. "Riot Police" does, moving from hand-held, anamorphic fisheye camerawork for the eviction to a 15-minute sequence shot in the final episode.

Movistar Plus International also reported continued expansion for "The Anatomy of a Moment," the four-part series from Alberto Rodríguez ("The Tigers") that earned an International Emmy nomination on Sept. 23. Co-produced with Arte France and starring "Money Heist's" Álvaro Morte, it dramatizes how three figures of what Rodríguez has called "Shakespearian stature" — Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez, Communist Party head Santiago Carrillo and armed forces chief Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado — wrestled democracy for Spain over 1976-77 and nearly lost it in the 1981 botched coup. New deals take in pubcasters RTP (Portugal), RTS (Switzerland), RTV (Slovenia) and Cinobo (Greece).

Alauda Ruiz de Azúa's "Querer," winner of the Best Series Grand Prix at Series Mania last year, has been licensed to Cinobo Poland, Italy's MyMoviesOne, Latvia's Mobilais and South Korea's LG Plus, adding to Arte's earlier acquisition. The marital rape drama, part family story and part courtroom thriller, continues its international rollout.

Sorogoyen's "The New Years," the on-off couple saga that played Venice in 2024 alongside Alfonso Cuarón's "Disclaimer" and Thomas Vinterberg's "Families Like Ours," has sold to Greece and Poland via Cinobo and to Latvia's Latvijas Mobilais.

France's Filmo, Media4Fun and LG Plus bought "The Nameless," the family horror series from Filmax ("[REC]"), Pau Freixas and Pol Cortecans.

On Tuesday, Movistar Plus International hosted a Madrid showcase featuring a screening of "El Castillo," the sex trade chronicle that stood out at San Sebastián; Victoria Martín's Millennial comedy "Many People Have to Die"; and a presentation of "Killing a Bear," the crime drama about the social conflict surrounding the 2020 death of brown bear Cachou in the Pyrenees. "The small, local story vividly illustrated the polarized world we live in," creators Jorge and Alberto Sánchez Cabezudo have told Variety.

Further deals include Flow, the Argentine streamer covering Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, buying "Many People Have to Die," "The Center," "La Caza. Irati" and doc "Bisbal"; MyMovieOne acquiring the power-outage anthology "OffWorld," with episodes by Sorogoyen, Rodríguez, Isaki Lacuesta, Isa Campo and Raúl Arévalo; and Poland's TVP taking "La Canción," Pepe Coira and Fran Araujo's series about Spain's 1968 Eurovision win.

With screenings and presentations of top titles bound for October's Mipcom, Movistar Plus has staked out a large market presence in Madrid — and Spanish series are trading accordingly.