With ‘Official Competition’ at Venice and ‘The Good Boss’ at San Sebastian, Mediapro head Jaume Roures continues to lead one of the busiest independent production houses in Europe.
Profiles of Mediapro CEO and prolific producer Jaume Roures rarely fail to mention the firebrand Trotskyist politics of his younger years. It is perhaps no surprise then that Roures, now in his early 70s, is not someone who relishes the glitz and glamour of the film world. “The red carpet was not made for me,” he observes drily. Nonetheless, his films are continually chosen for major festivals.
Roures’ latest feature Official Competition (sold by Protagonist Pictures and directed by Mariano Cohn and Gaston Duprat) will give him yet another red carpet to navigate. This is the third collaboration between The Mediapro Studio – the global production division launched by the company in 2019 – and the hotshot Argentinian filmmakers after crime thriller 4x4 (2019) and My Masterpiece (2018). It is an insider comedy about a rich businessman who tries to make a movie with a famous filmmaker and two stars, with large egos and fractious relationships getting in the way.
In advance of its world premiere in Venice and screening at Toronto, Official Competition has pre-sold to distributors all around the globe. That is hardly a surprise given its name cast, led by Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas.
Pedro Almodovar briefly brought together the Spanish superstars in Pain & Glory, but this is one of the few films in which they have starred opposite each other. Roures makes it seem all very straightforward. “Mediapro has done films with both Penelope and Banderas in the past,” he says. The two stars, he adds, were intrigued by a project that gave such an “intimate” insight into the behind-the-scenes world of filmmaking.
Roures also insists it is simply coincidence that both Official Competition and his recent Woody Allen film Rifkin’s Festival, which premiered last year at San Sebastian, are set in the film world. The Spanish producer has been working with Allen since Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), and Rifkin’s Festival was Allen’s 49th feature. Mediapro had been talking to Allen about producing his 50th film, but the pandemic has put those plans on hold for now. Roures hopes to revive the project but acknowledges that financing Allen’s work has become harder since the US distribution of the embattled director’s films has dried up.
International slate
As ever, though, Roures has many other projects in the pipeline from all over the world. Mediapro’s productions are being seen widely. TV series The Head, which it co-produced with Hulu Japan and HBO Asia, sold to more than 60 territories, and alongside its many films, The Mediapro Studio currently has 68 ongoing TV productions, working with the likes of Netflix, Movistar+, Paramount+ and Sony Pictures Television.
Projects in development in the US and UK include Is There No Place On Earth For Me?, a limited series to be directed by John Turturro based on Susan Sheehan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book about a female schizophrenic; Cold Dead Hands, a survival thriller in co-production with Erik Barmack’s Wild Sheep Content and Mexico’s Kate del Castillo, who also stars in the feature; and 58 Seconds, an original UK series from writers Jeremy Brock (The Last King Of Scotland) and Paul Unwin (TV series Breathless), which is a co-production with Blackbox Media.
Meanwhile, from Latin America, projects include Argentinian spy thriller Iosi, El Espia Arrepentido, an eight-episode Amazon Original series with Daniel Burman as showrunner and director.
One recent feature film Roures speaks of with particular passion is Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s caustic comedy The Good Boss starring Javier Bardem, which mk2 Films is selling. He sees this as “the other side of the coin” to the director’s 2002 feature Mondays In The Sun, which won five Goya awards and also starred Bardem. The first film took the perspective of the workers, while the companion piece focuses on a boss. It will screen in San Sebastian before opening in Spanish cinemas in October.
Roures is not just a force in the world of film and TV. The Mediapro chief is a key power-broker in European football, with close links to Barcelona FC. He is proud of the 2014 Mediapro documentary feature Messi, directed by Alex de la Iglesia, which told the story of Barcelona’s greatest ever player, Lionel Messi.
Ask Roures how he felt when he saw the Argentinian wizard leave Barcelona for French team Paris Saint-Germain earlier this summer, and there is a mournful silence. “Disappointed,” he eventually pronounces. “Not angry, but disappointed.”
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