Yahoo Movies ‘The Time in Between’ Star Adriana Ugarte to Head Atresmedia TV Drama ‘Madre’ (EXCLUSIVE)
Adriana Ugarte, star of hit Spanish TV drama “The Time in Between” and Pedro Almodóvar’s “Julieta,” will play the lead role in Atresmedia original series “Madre.”
A remake of successful Turkish TV drama “Anne,” in turn an adaptation of Japanese series “Mother,” “Madre” continues Spanish media conglomerate Atresmedia’s bet on re-versioning recent standout Turkish scripted series. This strategy kicked-off with “Alba,” the Elena Rivera-starring redo of female empowerment skein “Fatmagul,” a modern Turkish classic.
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A 13-hour series, “Madre” is produced by Atresmedia TV in collaboration with Buendía Estudios, the joint-venture launched last year by Atresmedia and Telefonica-owned pay TV operator Movistar Plus.
Scheduled to premiere this year on Atresmedia’s SVOD service Atresplayer Premium and then launch on the group’s core channel Antena 3 in Spanish TV primetime, “Madre” will follow the same release windowing as “Alba,” which bowed in March on Atresplayer and now awaits a free-to-air TV debut.
In “Madre,” Ugarte plays Manuela, a young biologist who has moved away from her adoptive family to live alone on some marshes, where she dedicates her days to studying birds. Traumatized by the wound ofabandon, she has declared that she’ll never be a mother.
The day that Manuela meets Alba, a young girl, she begins a journey that will force her to face the demons of her past and question the emotional bases on which she has built her life.
Atresmedia’s Montse García, Buendía’s Sonia Martínez and Eduardo Galdo serve as “Madre” executive producers. Galdo also wrote the script alongside Lele Portas, Marco T. Socorro, Joana Ortueta, Humberto Ortega and Natalia García-Prieto.
Helmers Tito López Amado (“La cocinera de Castamar,” “Hernán”) and Juanma Pachón (“Allí abajo,” “Los misterios de Laura”) are attached to direct.
With “Madre,” Atresmedia aims to repeat with a Spanish production the great ratings performances of original Turkish TV dramas in Spain, which have made strong showings on both free-to-air and dedicated women-targeting channels.
The Turkish version of “Mother,” a MedYapim and MF Yapim production sold by Global Agency, launched, for instance, in March 2019 on Atresmedia’s Nova, averaging 555,000 viewers and a 4% audience share, peaking at 700,000 viewers at one same time, a standout result for a niche TV service.
“Fatmagul,” the series that inaugurated the Turkish TV fiction phenomenon in Spain in 2018, averaged a powerful 774,000 viewers on Nova.
Ugarte broke through in 2008 with “La Señora,” a Diagonal TV-produced period TV drama aired by TVE. In 2013, she headed Atresmedia-Boomerang period epic “The Time in Between,” a strong TV audience and sales hit, before co-starring with Emma Suárez in “Julieta.” She also stars in police thriller “Parot,” a ViacomCBS International Studios-TVE-Onza co-production which Amazon Prime Video debuts in Spain on May 28.
A prolific TV fiction factory, so far this year Atresmedia has released four new original series (“Deudas,” “La cocinera de Castamar”, “Los hombres de Paco” and “Alba”). It is preparing at least six more. Upcoming titles encompass “Cardo,” partnering with Los Javis’ Suma Latina; “La novia gitana,” with ViacomCBS and Diagonal TV; “La ruta,” with Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s Caballo Films; and “La edad de la ira,” with The Mediapro Studio’s Big Bang Media.
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