Yahoo Finance ‘Riot Police’ Showrunner Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Movistar Plus Set Spanish Civil War Series
Spanish director and screenwriter Rodrigo Sorogoyen, fresh off large acclaim, prizes and recording-breaking viewership on Movistar Plus for “Riot Police,” is preparing a follow-up series for the Telefonica Spanish pay TV/SVOD service in Spain, which will deliver Sorogoyen’s personal take on the Spanish Civil War.
The untitled series will be co-written by Isabel Peña and Eduardo Villanueva, Sorogoyen’s regular co-scribes. It will go into production in 2022.
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The move is a natural one. In his breakout movie, “May God Save Us,” a grueling, grimy melancholic serial killer thriller about men who cannot control their actions, as well as “Riot Police” – the chronicle of a Police Intervention Unit bungling an eviction in a Senagalese community in Madrid, its results and cause – Sorogoyen has shown a fascination with toxic authoritarianism and violence.
There have been few more violent conflicts or chamber of military horrors than the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War, a dry-run for WWII, where Hitler’s Luftwaffe first essayed blitzkrieg, and a setting for horrifying torture and cold-blooded mass executions.
Marking what may well be Movistar Plus biggest series to date, the series will “create a fiction that can move the spectator, but above all try to understand our characters and our society in the past and present, and so our contemporary age,” said Sorogoyen.
“With the series, we’re continuing our close relationship with Rodrigo Sorogoyen, which we began with ‘Riot Police’ and will go on with other future projects,” added Domingo Corral, Movistar Plus director of original production.
The storyline will turn on “a deep-dive into characters immersed in conflict…an audiovisual fresco which will portray and follow its protagonists through their experiences,” Movistar Plus announced Thursday.
In a banner year for Spanish drama series – think HBO Europe’s “Patria” and Atresplayer Premium’s “Veneno” – “Riot Police” recently won best series and actor at the Premios Forqué and best drama series, actor and supporting actor at the Premios Feroz.
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