Brazil, Portugal in novela alliance

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LATIN PROGRAMMING: Two of the biggest television networks in Brazil and Portugal are capitalising on their common language by signing a two-year coproduction partnership for telenovelas.

Portugal’s SIC and TV Globo of Brazil today announced their alliance, under which they will jointly produce two telenovelas, the first of which is already in pre-production.

For the first, titled Caminho da Felicidade, Globo has hired drama scribe Aguinaldo Silva (Her Own Destiny, Cinquentinha), who will oversee the script writing. Pedro Lopez is wielding the pen.

Guilherme Bokel, Globo’s head of international production, is associate executive producer for the show. The deal “represents a new and important development at SIC fiction,” said Luis Marques, SIC CEO.

Globo is already coproducing a Spanish-language version of its 2002 telenovela The Clone with NBC Universal-owned Telemundo for the Hispanic US market. Another copro is underway with TV Azteca for Loco Amor (aka Mad Love, written by Gilberto Braga). The first is already on air in the US and Mexico while the latter will debut later this year in Mexico.

“Globo is still a new player in the unscripted format industry but our coproduction business grew from zero to over 10% of our revenue last year,” said Globo’s international sales director Raphael Corrêa Netto.

“As well as creating bespoke scripted content for countries outside Brazil, these deals open the door to the local production of our non-scripted formats that we have been selling internationally since last year.”