The arrival of Warner Bros Discovery streamer Max in Latin America marks a new originals strategy for the company. Mônica Albuquerque, WBD’s scripted head in Lat Am, reveals the kinds of projects she wants for the platform.

Mônica Albuquerque
On April 11, after months of rumours, Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) launched Max, the new streaming platform that will replace HBO Max worldwide, starting in the US this week.
It was also confirmed during the event that Latin America would be the first international territory to get the new platform, with a launch expected in the final quarter of 2023.
The arrival of Max coincided with the appointment in April of Mônica Albuquerque as head of talent management and scripted content development at WBD in Latin America, after the departure of Marcelo Tamburri, who previously led fiction in the region.
Although unrelated, both events mark the beginning of a new era in Latin America for WBD’s scripted originals strategy, which, by dispensing with the ‘HBO’ from the name of its subscription platform, seeks to “unleash the potential” from the combined Warner Bros and Discovery catalogue.
Albuquerque explains: “The launch of Max implies that we are going to be much more powerful. The platform will have a more varied content offer that will allow us to expand our content portfolio.
“We are the largest content company in the world and we are going to have products for all ages, in all genres and in all formats from our entire family of brands.”
What does not change, she clarifies, is the “commitment” to continue investing in originals. But what sort of content is Max looking for?
According to Albuquerque, the new strategy is based on five pillars: producing original content of “great artistic quality,” developed in Latin America; promoting “relevant” productions that generate conversation; attracting the best talent in front of and behind the camera; finding new voices; and enhancing the international reach of WBD productions.
“The idea is to promote a creative leap for our fiction,” she adds.

Argentinian true crime drama María Marta, Country Club Crime
In scripted, Max will focus on eight genres. “There are four that are in greater demand and we know we are going to do more, and another four that we are going to work on in parallel to meet the changes in the consumption needs of the audience,” Albuquerque says.
The main four are drama, true crime, police thrillers and biopics. When it comes to drama, Albuquerque says: “We want family dramas, very human, with complex characters. We see the success of Succession on our platform as a reference. It seems to us that dramas like this, with the touch of Latin America that we need, are going to work for us. It is the content with the highest demand.”
As for true crime, she notes: “We are already doing true crime from the unscripted side and we want to do more scripted. We want to focus on events that have already happened and in which we can [see and hear from the people involved and understand their motives].” Albuquerque cites US series The Staircase and Argentina’s María Marta: El crimen del country (María Marta, Country Club Crime) as examples.
Turning to police thrillers, she continues: “In this genre we look for research. How are crimes solved? What happened? We look for that suspenseful atmosphere typical of the genre, and characters that are not all good and not all bad.
Finally, discussing biopics, Albuquerque says: “We want characters who are well known to the audience and show their personal lives as well as public. We look for relevant names who can attract viewers who are curious about what happens in their daily lives. [We want] inspiring stories of people who have gone through great personal transformations or who have motivated great transformations in their environments. We think this is a very powerful genre.”

The White Lotus
In addition to these four priority genres, the other four scripted areas of interest for Max are dramedies, young-adult (YA) shows, dystopian dramas and series targeting adult women. Albuquerque outlines each below.
Dramedy: “We are not looking for light comedies. We are focused on dramedies [along the lines of] The White Lotus or Hacks, which use laughter to reflect on social issues. We believe this genre, with this twist, would work very well for us.”
YA series: “We have developed a lot for teens and now we think we should develop for viewers at the end of this age group, between 20 and 25 years old. It is interesting what happens at this age – many existential crises and worries about the future. It’s [this group] that have had the most difficulty with the pandemic and we want to talk to them and be a vehicle for conversation. We are going to look for multi-protagonist stories about groups of friends or families.”
Shows for adult women: “Content with a tone of eroticism and sensuality that speaks very directly with these women between 30 and 40 who no longer believe in Prince Charming, who need to think about how they face their difficulties, their relationships. This is an audience that is still underserved.”
Dystopian drama: “We have invested a lot in more teen genre fantasies, [with content about] vampires and werewolves, and now we want to go to more adult dystopias… with social commentary set in another ecosystem so that it’s easier to make people think about our reality.”

Camila Pitanga stars in forthcoming series Beleza Fatal
Albuquerque notes that Max welcomes adaptations of literary works or even films across all these genres.
Elsewhere, Max is also looking for more soaps and telenovelas, with the first such title coming later this year. Beleza Fatal, created by Raphael Montes and starring Camila Pitanga and Murilo Rosa, is being shot in the Brazilian cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
At least five other soap projects, from countries including Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina, are now at an advanced stage.
“Soap operas have always been one of the most successful formats in Latin America, and in recent years the same thing has been seen with streamers,” Albuquerque says. “[Soaps] are one of the main drivers of free TV, pay TV and now streaming. They are always at the top [in terms of audience numbers].”
While shorter series have frequently used telenovela tools in thriller packaging – such as Who killed Sara? or Pálpito, to name two Latin American examples – Max plans to do the opposite, incorporating drama series elements into its soaps. “We want to use the base of the melodrama as the main narrative of a telenovela and bring the rhythm of a series. We call them teleseries,” Albuquerque explains.

The second season of Argentinian series Días de gallos is due to premiere soon
As such, Max’s telenovelas will comprise fewer episodes per season, running to between 40 and 50 episodes rather than 100 to 120 episodes.
“The consumption of the telenovela in streaming is very different from the consumption on a linear channel. On linear channels, the audience does not see it every day, so you need a lot of repetition so that viewers can [keep up with the story],” says Albuquerque, who spent 21 years at Brazilian broadcaster Globo, a major player in the genre.
“In streaming, we don’t need to repeat the plot. so we can make them much shorter. This opens up the possibility for us to generate this series rhythm, where things happen faster.”
The result, she hopes, will be more engagement. “We believe it will bring us high levels of loyalty and fidelity, because in general the telenovela audience tends to follow the plot to the end, something that does not always happen with series. We think this hybrid is going to work.”
In addition to Beleza Fatal, Max announced during the recent edition of Rio2C that it was remaking Brazilian telenovela Dona Beija and also working on its telenovela for Mexico, Colisión.
In both series and soap operas, Albuquerque’s current mission is to build a two-year pipeline of content that complements the upcoming releases on the platform, such as Brazilian series Além do Guarda-Roupa, B.A: O Futuro Está Morto and O astronauta; Mexican titles I Love You & It Hurts and Las Bravas (S2); and Argentinian projects Días de Gallos (S2) and Felices los 6.