Miguel Bosé TV Series to Be Produced by Shine Iberia, Elefantec, Legacy Rock (EXCLUSIVE)
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MADRID — In news that will move waves in the Spanish-speaking world, international actor, Latin Grammy and Billboard winning recording artist Miguel Bosé looks set to become the subject of a bioseries from Shine Iberia, Elefantec Global and Legacy Rock Entertainment.
The three companies have acquired his exclusive life-story rights and, together with Movistar Plus in Spain, are developing the drama series with the close collaboration of Bosé himself.
Shine Iberia CEO Macarena Rey, whose credits include the smash-hit re-version of “MasterChef” and docu-reality “21 Days,” will oversee development and production of the Bosé TV series.
Elefantec Global, the media-entertainment company just announced out of NATPE by José “Pepe” Bastón, and Legacy Rock Entertainment will co-produce the series and handle international sales, marketing and distribution for Mexico and Latin America, the companies announce Thursday.
Bosé told Variety he is collaborating with the series screenwriters at the same time as he is writing his autobiography, which he called “complementary” to the series.
That collaboration look like a necessity. For close on five decades, Bosé has figured as one of the most famous figures on the Spanish music scene, with also 30 acting credits, including a lead role in Pedro Almodóvar’s “High Heels,” 40 million record sales, over 70 hits that have reached No.1 on the European and Americas’ radio charts, the producers said, and the honor of being selected as Person of the Year in 2013 by the Latin Recording Academy (LARAS).
For anybody who grew up in the Spanish-speaking world from the 1970s, Miguel Bosé seems always to have been around, a chameleon figure blessed by a dazzling youth and an international career whose evolution embodied the modernization of Spain – and helped drive a revolution on Spain’s pop music as it found its own voice.
Seeing the series, many viewers will feel they are not just witnessing Bosé life but also their own.
Yet, as Bosé told Variety, he has always “kept his personal life completely private.”
The series looks set to redress that. “Miguel Bosé has never given interviews, save to promote his latest records. The fact that he’s decided to tell everything, or that others tell it for him, because it’s time to do so, is what makes this life story very special,” said producer Rey.
The Miguel Bosé TV series will also frame another paradox, which powers the narrative.
Bosé was famous at birth, the son of lionized Spanish bull-fighter Luis Miguel Dominguín and Lucía Bosé, a Miss Italy who went on to become a movie star. His in many ways was a glittering childhood lived in the lap of luxury, surrounded by many of the artistic greats of the day: Picasso, Visconti, Dalí, Warhol, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Cocteau, Hemingway, Audrey Hepburn, Sofía Loren and others, “all of whom have had a provocative influence on his life,” the producers said in a statement.
Yet privilege is no guarantee of happiness.
“The series will turn on my life from childhood to the current day,” Bosé told Variety. “My character can be understood from my infancy, which raises the question of how – given what the child, adolescent and young man has gone through – he managed to do the things that he achieved. My childhood was highly tormented, very lonely, hermetic.”
The Miguel Bosé TV series is conceived as three seasons of eight episodes each, said Rey. The first is of Bosé as a child, his parents, family, the people close to him, through to Miguel transformed into Miguel Bosé at his first performance at Florida Park.
Said Bosé: “It was a family of strong characters, a bull fighter on one side and on my mother’s, all [the weight] of Italian neorealism. Apart from the hunts, parties, friends, affairs, some of these things rebounded on me as a child, which I had to absorb. Nobody bet that a child of such larger-than-life figures – Lucía Bosé, the most beautiful woman in the world, and Luis Miguel Dominguín, the most successful and desired of men – would be able to survive all that.”
Season 2 takes in Bosé’s artistic and personal growth, in London, his apprenticeship in New York, and life in France, Italy, Spain and Mexico, “a personal life that nobody knows because it’s never been told,” Bosé said.
One through-line in the series looks to be Bosé’s escape from and reconciliation with the past, including the figure of his father, as well as his search for happiness.
Season 3 features Bosé’s “absolute boom as an artist,” said Rey, and his finally fulfilling his personal dreams.
The series promises, moreover, to throw new light on some of the greatest figures of modern times.
“When my mother was asked: ‘What’s Miguelito’s relationship between with Pablo,” she answered: ‘Only they know that.’ Our relationship over the years was very secret, private, we developed a world where for the first time another Picasso emerged, completely different from that portrayed to this day: My relationship with him was marvelous, creative, luminous, tender and childlike. This will be an tremendously beautiful part of the series.”
“This project represents an amazing challenge for Shine Iberia. Miguel Bosé is an icon for Spanish-speaking audiences worldwide,” said Rey, “To talk about Bosé is to walk through the history of Spanish music over the last decades. He is a fascinating character with a unique and intense life story. We are certain that this TV series will be a big event for all Spanish-speaking music lovers.”
“We see the growing demand for premium content for Spanish-speaking viewers around the world and across many different platforms, and this series has everything: Drama, love, struggle, growth, forgiveness that will appeal to viewers around the world,” said Pepe Bastón.
He added: “We are very excited to work alongside our associates at Legacy Rock Entertainment and have been invited by Miguel Bosé and Macarena Rey to participate in this project for Movistar+ and we look forward to bringing this as well as other high-quality productions to the world.”
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