Spanish Producer Looking to Buy Ciudad de la Luz Studio

MADRID - Spanish producer Jose Luis Moreno said this week he wants to buy the Valencia blue-chip studio facility Ciudad de la Luz, which the debt-laden regional government recently announced it was looking to sell.

Moreno, who is creating a reality show called The Musical to be filmed in Valencia's main theater, called the state-of-the-art facilities that boast the 8,000 square mile natural horizon water tank where Juan Antonio Bayona's The Impossible was filmed, "a jewel."

"We're working on it," Moreno said when asked if he was putting together an offer for the studio.

Moreno also said he was looking to piece together a national, general television broadcaster "within the next two months with two worldwide communication groups," giving them their "own television channel in Spain." He refused to give more details, citing confidentiality agreements.

Moreno did not specifically say he wanted the studio facility for the channel, but it was understood the two are linked.

The Valencia-based producer said the channel would be an entertainment channel.

"There are programs that teach us how to live, but don't give lectures," Moreno told reporters.

The news came as a surprise to Jose Luis Garcia Berlanga and Ximo Perez, who have each made independent offers for Ciudad de la Luz, only to discover their bids might be invalid.

Both presented bids based on Ambers, the consulting firm hired by the regional Valencia government to set the guidelines for the sale, but prior to a May 2012 European Commission sentence ordering Ciudad de la Luz to pay €265 million ($344 million) for unfair competition with other studios given aid from the local government. Considering the new situation, the conditions required by the studio to accept an offer have changed.

"[The project I presented] was a project to fully develop the complex, with investment in new technologies ...," Berlanga told local newspaper Informacion. "Now it looks like it won't be enough and they aren't going to take into consideration the overall plan, just the economic bottom line."