Brazil’s Boutique Filmes, producer of “3%,” the first Netflix non English-language series to break out abroad, is linking to Portugal’s SPi (“Glória”) to produce “Seven Women,” a reimagining of Brazilian Letícia Wierzchowski’s novel which yielded one of the biggest hits in Brazilian TV history: Globo’s “A Casa das Sete Mulheres,” sold to over 80 countries.
Globo’s telenovela had 51 episodes; Boutique and SPi’s rolls off this huge IP but weighs in as an eight-part historical drama.
Boutique Filmes produced Netflix’s first Brazilian series, “3%,” which ran to four seasons, and notably 2020’s “Omniscient” and Netflix’s first Brazilian true crime “Elize Matsunaga: Once Upon a Crime.”
Launched in 2017 by SPTV to create international co-productions and titles for streaming services, SPi produced Portugal’s first Netflix original series “Glória,” plus “Codex 632,” with Globoplay and RTP, and “Vanda,” with La Panda and Legendary.
Boutique Filmes is co-producing a second title with SPi, comedy of manners “How To Burn Down Your House” (“Como Queimar Sua Casa”).
“There is a new moment of co-production in Brazil,” Boutique Filmes’ partner-producer Tiago Mello told Variety. Streaming services are producing less in the world, including Brazil, he noted. More crucially, he argued, “Our main goal is to retain IP. Our future is being IP holders.”
Also, this year or next, the Brazilian government may well approve a quota obliging SVOD streaming services to invest in Brazilian independent production. That will be “amazing forTV series,” said Mello.
Co-producing with Portugal, Boutique can “exchange expertises,” such as Portugal’s long tradition period costume dramas, Mello observed.
“For Portugal, the two main territories for co-production are Spain, of course, because of the border, and Brazil, because we speak the same language,” said Pedro Lopes, SPi content director and executive producer. “Producing with the Brazilian market is a challenge and an opportunity: Together we can make more relevant fiction, which travels worldwide. We share the same culture and same history. Audience are more open to foreign languages. This could be a great moment for the fiction in Portuguese.”
Not that Boutique Filmes is likely to give up working with global streamers. Spiral and Boutique licensed “Negotiator” to Amazon’s Prime Video in Brazil. Boutique has a third show it may tap up at Conecta Fiction, “Angra” from “3%” creator Pedro Aguilera, a compelling AI-themed sci-fi tale set in contempo Brazil, which may provoke large platform interest.
Based on true events, “Seven Women” is set like Globo’s megahit during the so-called 1835-45 Ragamuffin Revolution war of secession, when Brazil’s south rebelled against a federal government ruled by a Portuguese Emperor.
But rather than focusing on men at war, Boutique’s “Seven Women” will return to the original novel and center on the women relatives of the Ragamuffin general of Rio Grande do Sul, who, dispatched to a country house for their safety, discovering love, sex, empowerment and the beauty of being themselves, said Mello.
The series’ lead character will be Manoela, the 18-year-old daughter, who falls in love with an adventurer from Italy, Giuseppe Garibaldi.
“A totally new vision of the book,” “Seven Women” will be a “sexy series” with modern music, he added.
“‘Seven Women’ can resonate with the world, because of its gender dynamics and vision of women embracing roles outside the traditional,” said Lopes.
Angela Chaves, creator of upcoming Netflix series “Desperate Lies,” has written a bible and pilot script. Production partners Boutique Filmes and SP-i are negotiating with anchor broadcasters in Brazil and Portugal respectively.
In ““How To Burn Down Your House,” Lara, a young Portuguese fashion designer, believes she’s living a fairy tale by marrying Jonas, the heir to the Brazilian fashion industry. In love and about to have a baby, they decide to return to Brazil so she can finally meet her husband’s family. The trip is a disaster.
The feature film is headed by Andréa Beltrão (“Hebe”), and Carolina Carvalho (“The General”), big stars in Brazil and Portugal, as well as Maurício Farias (“Slaps & Kisses”) and Thiago Gadelha (“Boil”). H20 handles the film’s release in Brazil.
The film is “about what Portugal and Brazil have in common, but also their differences,” says Lopes. “Everyone in the world will understand this because this is about family.”
“How To…” forms part of Boutique’s drive into feature film production.“ “We can finance a feature between Brazil and Portugal. They are not so expensive, and a theatrical release may turn a profit,” said Mello.
Created by Aguilera and Denis Nielsen, lead writer on “3%,” “Angra,” a sci-fi relationship suspense thriller is set in an idyllic part of Rio de Janeiro which is home three nuclear reactors.
In the series, one of which develops a leak. When it is about to explode, a young woman, married to the head of security, receives a phone call from a man who instructs her how to solve the problem, which she does, successfully. She begins to fall in love with the caller whom she discovers is AI, and finds out what it really wants.
Source Agencies
