Spain’s Telecinco Cinema Joins Amenabar and Bayona Projects

MADRID – Maintaining its stand as Spain’s most international player and go-to deep pockets, Telecinco Cinema will throw its weight behind two of Spain’s highest-profile, upcoming projects already scheduled for top drawer U.S. releases: Juan Antonio Bayona’s A Monster Calls and Alejandro Amenabar’s thriller Regression.

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“It’s an enormous satisfaction for Mediaset Espana to contribute once more with all the means at its disposal so that the talent of two truly great directors and friends such as Bayona and Amenabar yields results,” said Paolo Vasile, CEO of Mediaset Espana.

Telecinco co-produced both of Bayona’s features—The Orphanage and The Impossible—and will once again team up with Spain’s Apaches Entertainment, which is producing Monster. Focus Features will release the fantasy-action film, which River Road, Particpant Media and Lionsgate are helping finance and distribute. Lionsgate reportedly sold nearly all major international territories at Cannes. U.S. release is scheduled for Oct. 14, 2016.

Starring Liam Neeson and Felicity Jones, Monster tells of a 13-year-old boy who invents a monster from a massive tree in his garden to help him through the anguish of his mother’s terminal illness.

Regression, starring Ethan Hawke and Emma Watson, is produced by MOD Entertainment and Amenabar’s Himenoptero, along with Canada’s First Generation Films and Telefonica Studios. TWC-Dimension will release in the U.S. on August 28.

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Set in Minnesota in 1990, Amenabar weaves mystery and psychoanalysis as a detective (Hawke) investigates a young girl’s (Watson) allegation that her father (David Dencik) committed and unspeakable crime.

Telecinco Cinema’s considerable marketing muscle virtually guarantees the two films box office success in Spain, where the network has a knack of employing all its resources to transform projects into must-see films in Spain.

“Once again, we will wed the authentic cinematographic language of each of them [Bayona and Amenabar] with the also unique promotional strategy that Mediaset Spain undertakes with these kinds of projects, which no doubt contributes to their becoming big events within Spanish cinema,” said Telecinco Cinema CEO Ghislain Barrois.

Most recently, Telecinco turned Spanish Affair into the highest grossing Spanish title of all time, followed by Bayona’s The Impossible. Other international titles the film branch of Mediaset Spain has produced include Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, Cell 211 and Tad, the Lost Explorer.