Mipcom: Spain’s Mediapro, Phileas Productions Team on Gameshow ‘Crush’
MADRID Confirming its ambitions to become a key player in the international market for not only original scripted but also non-scripted content, Spain’s Mediapro Group, co-producer of Jude Law-starrer “Young Pope,” has teamed with Madrid’s Phileas Productions to create and produce gameshow format “Crush.”
The new TV contest will be launched at next week’s Mipcom trade fair, co-handled by Imagina Intl. Sales, Mediapro’s international distribution arm.
“Crush” marks the first entertainment format from Mediapro since the appointment in May as head of international content development of Ran Telem, a Primetime Emmy Award-winning producer on “Homeland” and longtime V.P. of programming and content at Israel’s Keshet Broadcasting.
The format presents a team of four people – who are friends, family, neighbors or work colleagues – competing together for a big money prize. The gameshow sees them answering seven questions. Wrong answers mean they are crushed to all appearances by heavy safe-like boxes.
The new show is based on an original idea by Sergio Sancho, founder of Phileas Productions, the creators of international TV programs such as “Don’t Say It, Bring it!,” “The ATM,” “Road Diaries,” “The 20 Little Piggy Banks” and “Involution.”
At Keshet, Ran Telem was involved in the creation of hit gameshow formats “Boom!” and “Rising Star.”
Operating 30 offices in 20 countries, Mediapro, Spain’s biggest rights broker, is best-known as the co-producer of Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” and “Midnight in Paris.” It is teaming with the Qatar-based beIN Media Group on sports-rights brokering operations across the world.
Under head of content Javier Mendez, Mediapro’s major strategic drive for the next five years will be to power up its content business, especially in TV.
Paolo Sorrentino’s TV series “The Young Pope,” a co-production with Sky, HBO and France’s Canal Plus, marks Mediapro earliest move to position itself as a high-end international TV producer, in line with other independent European heavyweight congloms such as France’s Lagardère.
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