MADRID — Streaming service Starzplay and Spanish production outfit Bambú Producciones have wrapped production on “Nacho,” the biographical series about veteran transatlantic adult performer Nacho Vidal.
The Lionsgate-owned Starzplay is Starz’s premium international streaming service. The series is helmed by three noted directors: David Pinillos (“Cable Girls”), Beatriz Sanchis (“The Gigantes,” “Rebolucion”) and Eduardo Casanova (“La Pietà”).
As Variety reported today in a lengthy feature/interview, “Nacho” is one of Starzplay’s highest-profile productions, intended to help the streamer build “its burgeoning international originals portfolio.”
Spanish-language SVOD service Pantaya will release “Nacho” in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, with Starzplay handling Spanish and Latin American distribution while Lionsgate oversees other global markets.
Mireia Acosta, Starzplay’s development and production executive in Spain, has explicitly stated that the streamer is looking for “an adult target. We don’t want products for the whole family.”
“Nacho” stars Martiño Rivas as Vidal and María de Nati as “the real life Sara Bernat, a sex worker who discovers Nacho’s extraordinary talents and takes him to perform in an onstage sex show at Barcelona’s Sala Bagdad,” Variety reported.
“We need series that are brand-defining: Bold, edgy and provocative,” Jeff Cooke, Starz senior VP for programming and international digital networks, told Variety. “A show’s got to resonate, make people even turn their heads to say: ‘What is this show? It’s on Starzplay, I need to find out more about that service.’
“The show really jumps through time, to different locations, career areas,” Cooke explained.
Bambú productions — masterminded by showrunner Fernándes-Valdés and co-founder Ramon Campos — is known for “a U.S. cable sense of pace, plot complexity and darker psychology” as well as for revolutionizing “women’s melodrama, offering series made with exquisite production values and modern gender values to audiences whose mothers consumed telenovelas,” Variety’s John Hopewell noted, pointing out that “though more of a dramedy, ‘Nacho’ is still very much in this line.”
The series was co-written by Fernández-Valdés, Gema R. Neira, María José Rustarazo and Flora G. Villanueva, and produced in association with Spanish production company La Claqueta.
Cooke noted that Starzplay “didn’t want this to be a show that really talks to the male gaze behind the camera; it was important for us to have some balance.”
“If this series had been written by men, it might not have seen the light of day,” Fernández-Valdés told Variety.
“What we discovered when we researched was that there were a lot of important women in Nacho’s life, and these are often strong, sexually active women who enjoy sex, but are capable of drawing lines in terms of consent,” Fernández-Valdés continued. “Young people want to know about sex. The easiest window of access is watching porn. But we have to tell them that it’s fiction, not reality. There’s a screenplay — it’s directed at men; women play a secondary role. Porn can’t be seen as a model for a first night of sex.”
Main Image: Martiño Rivas and María de Nati (Manuel Fernandez-Valdes/Starzplay)
