StoryLab Teams With Jacque Productora, Prisma Cine on New TV Series ‘Public Relations’ (EXCLUSIVE)

BUENOS AIRES — Nacho Viale and Diego Palacio’s StoryLab, producers of the Netflix-acquired TV series “Estocolmo” and co-producers of Intl. Emmy nominated “La Casa del Mar,” is teaming with Paola Suarez’s Jacque Productora and Antonio Pita’s Prisma Cine to produce TV series ”Relaciones Publicas,” a run-for-your-life thriller TV which also acts as an expose of media manipulation in Argentina.

Underscoring the increasing international bent of Argentine small-screen fiction, also co-produced by Bonaparte Cine, based out of Cordoba like Jacque and Prisma, “Public Relations” is set up as an Argentina-Brazil co-production and tapped coin last year from Argentina’s go-ahead INCAA Film Institute for international TV co-productions. Plural Filmes co-produces out of Brazil. Canal Brasil has broadcast rights in Brasil.

Yoking elements of crime, drama, romance and reality TV, “Public Relations” is moving forward as Argentina’s Cordoba is firing up new film-TV legislation aimed at consolidate the country’s second city as an industry and international TV hub. “Public Relations” already looks like one of the biggest fiction formats coming out of Cordoba in 2017. It also looks set to embody a mixed funding model – regional coin, federal moneys, Argentine broadcast finance and international investment – which Cordoba is pursuing on it higher-scale projects to balance smaller works which are totally funded out of Cordoba.

Claudio Rosa and Paula Blusa wrote a first-draft screenplay of “Public Relations,” with aid from Fernando Crisi, and plan to direct. StoryLab’s Lucas Molten, Diego Vago and Diego Palacio are currently polishing the scripts.

“StoryLab has more TV experience, shows on national TV, and the necessary contacts, both international, and national, to allow the series to grow, to tap into a certain level of cast we need for the series,” said Jaque Productora’s Paola Suarez.

Drama’s lead role is that of a turned-30 public relations, who’s rolling in debt, witnesses a drug trade murder, runs for his life, ends up at a Big Brother reality TV house, decides to stay to win the show so as to wipe off his debts while seeking safe haven from the bent cops who killed his friend, a small-time drug-runner in Argentina but the son of a big-time billionaire in Brazil.

The first season of “Relaciones Publicas” looks set to roll April-May 2017, said Suarez.

“‘Public Relations’ has an element of social critique, detailing police corruption, the journey of its protagonist towards social commitment and an expose of TV,” said Pita. He added that, originally more satire, “Public Relations” is now building in thriller heft.

“Public Relations” moves forward as Cordoba has approved itsLaw for the Development and Promotion of the Audiovisual Industry. Followed through by Cordoba government official Jorge Alvarez, a former INCAA president, after an industry proposal, the legislation cuts two ways, allowing tax benefits and local employment subsidies for the audiovisual sector, recognised as an industry, and grants of up to $750,000 in cash grants per production from an audiovisual fund whose total funding runs at $3 million-$4 million a year. 51% of crew must be from Cordoba. The fund is in the final stages of implementation and will be fully implemented by March 2017.
“Having one’s own development and promotion fund and the emphasis now being placed on the importance of this from an industrial viewpoint is a change of paradigm,” said Suarez who worked on the legislation as a member of the Cordoba Association of Audiovisual Producers (APAC).

She added: “We will see the the initiative’s impact on the sector in a very short time. Firstly, production volume will increase. Secondly, we will also raise artistic standards, as well as economic levels in co-productions.”

Cordoba’s new legislation will be presented at Ventana Sur by Alvarez on Thursday.

Get more from Variety and Variety411: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter