Pokeepsie Films On Adapting Mercedes Ron’s ‘Enfrentados’ For Prime Video & Why The ‘Culpables’ Movies Were A Hard Sell…At First

EXCLUSIVE: Carolina Bang and Álex de la Iglesia’s Pokeepsie Films made the hit Guilty movies and is doubling down on YA with two feature adaptations of Mercedes Ron’s Faced (Confronted) novels for Prime Video. The label is also working with Guilty director Domingo González on a big-ticket romantasy project. Meanwhile, the versatile Banijay Iberia-backed Spanish prodco, which made HBO Max horror-drama 30 Coinsis working up various genre films and series. Bang unpacked the Pokeepsie story in a sit-down with Deadline.

“We are able to do not just horror and fantasy, but we are also doing comedies and young adult. We can touch a lot of different genres and feel comfortable in all of them.” That sounds like a smart blueprint, but Bang says it’s more instinct than business plan. “It’s not a strategy, actually. What we try to do every day are things that we love. Our mantra is: If we don’t love it, we don’t do it.”

Confronted: Ivory & Ebony

Prime Video’s production line of YA content will be bolstered by not one, but two Faced movies based on Ron’s two-book series, with Pokeepsie once more on production duty on Elephant (Ivory) and Ebony (Ebony) alongside Amazon MGM Studios. Ester Expósito (Elite) plays Marfil, daughter of a Spanish tycoon and whose NYC lifestyle is shaken after she is kidnapped and then released. Hugo Diego García (The Substance) is Sebastian, who is recruited as her bodyguard. Pokeepsie filmed both projects back-to-back, shooting in Spain and New York.

Having made YA pay, Prime Video is backing Pokeepsie to keep making the hits. Bang says Faced is “more ambitious than Culpa” but will appeal to fans of the earlier movies. “It has more action, it is a little bit more adult, so we can work with the fans who are not 18 anymore. This amazing thing with Culpa was the audience we reached; mothers and daughters could watch them together. With Faced we have the same thing.”

Pokeepsie Is Culpable

Deadline revealed in January that Your fault was Prime Video’s biggest ever international launch – and then in May that the Our fault trailer had racked up 163M views ahead of launch. The Guilty tales of romance, partying, and fast cars were not, however, an overnight success.

“When we began to develop the script, it was hard to sell, nobody wanted it,” Bang explains. “It took almost two years, because there was the pandemic in the meantime, and it was hard to sell. Suddenly, Amazon came in, they understood what they wanted and what we wanted to do, and so we did it together.”

Guilty director González has previously told us about his approach to making the films and Bang says he and Sofía Cuenca, who co-wrote the second and third instalments, are the trilogy’s special ingredients. “This was our secret weapon. Domingo has this sensibility, and he understood perfectly what we had in mind, and he believed in that. The problem with young adult

is people believe that these are ‘lesser’ movies and they don’t have credibility. But the audience is very important, and this audience is very clever, and very cultured, so you have to take them seriously. Domingo and Sofia understand this, and I think the way that we do young adult is different to other people.”

Pokeepsie is now working on bigger and more ambitious YA projects and possibly some in the English-language. One project in development is with González and Bang teases some details. “Domingo is part of our house and our family, and we have this ambitious project that we hope to shoot next year, it’s a perfect mix of young adult, romance and a fantasy world.”

Spain Reigns

Outside of YA, de la Iglesia helmed and co-wrote Netflix mystery thriller The Caregiver (The Caregiver), which was shot on 35mm and drops next year. The company is also working on a thriller project with Jaume Balagueró, the director it previously collaborated with on H.P. Lovecraft-inspired horror pic Venus. That was part of Pokeepsie’s collection of horror projects dubbed ‘The Fear Collection’.

Last year, de la Iglesia’s thriller 1992 dropped on Netflix. Rodrigo Ruiz-Gallardón and Zoe Berriatúa-directed sci-fi-flavored series Sanctuary (Sanctuary), meanwhile, was for local platform atresplayer.

In terms of producing in Europe, Spain is hot right now. A combination of government support in the shape of tax and other incentives, new studios and facilities coming on stream, and below-the-line talent make producing in Spain an enticing prospect for many shows.

“All the platforms feel settled here in Spain, a lot of foreign products are coming to shoot here, and we are lucky to have very professional crews,” Bang says of the production landscape. “And of course, here in Spain you have [locations]you have stages, you have whatever you need to shoot like in America. In addition, you have tax rebates and incentives…I think we are in the best moment ever.”