Consumption has become fragmented and production has slowed, but Latin America already has all the tools it needs to succeed, argues noted Argentine producer Manuel Martí.
Manuel Martí
With a local OTT market valued at US$11.5bn, Latin America’s potential and its audiovisual reality is a paradox, observes Argentine producer Manuel Martí. “Latin America has a growing market and an abundance of creative talent, but most projects never get off the ground,” he tells C21’s Spanish-language sister publication Cveintiuno.
Martí is an executive producer at the Argentine company Cohn & Duprat, with credits including 2022 drama El Encargado for Disney+, and his career includes five years as head of scripted development at Fremantle for Latin America, five years at the Argentine production company Polka, and a stint at Turner Latam.
Last month, he opened the 2026 season of the C21-backed Platino Talks with his session titled Architecture of a Latin American Project: From Local Voice to Global Impact. According to Martí, the title explains this paradox: the region suffers from a structural problem in the development of its projects and a failure to adapt to industry changes.
“The value chain in the region was very large and productive, because we had major groups like Globo, Azteca, Televisa, Chilevisión, Mega and Telefe producing hundreds of hours of fiction for broadcast TV every year,” he recalls. “But all those hours disappeared due to a shift in the consumption and business model, driven by the decline in advertising on broadcast TV. Viewing habits became completely fragmented.”
This, he argues, created a harmful environment for production companies, which in some cases went from producing hundreds of hours of television a year to just 10, six or none at all. “It’s very difficult to achieve sustainability with such short production runs and the lengthy development cycles that streaming platforms demand of us,” he argues.
Cohn & Duprat’s El Encargado was produced for Disney+
And that situation has been exacerbated by the consolidation process the industry is undergoing and the reduction in investment following the end of “the streaming wars.”
But while the present is challenging, the executive notes that a series of tools have emerged from this situation which, together with Latin America’s comparative advantages, must be capitalised on. In this regard, Martí highlights the proliferation of national incentives in countries like Colombia, Uruguay or, more recently, Mexico, which are revitalising their local industries and allowing producers to coproduce with streaming platforms.
The Mexican adaptation of US drama The Good Wife (La Ley de Alicia) from TIS Studios and En el Barro, the spin-off of the prison series El Marginal from Underground Producciones are two good examples of projects produced in coproduction with Netflix.
“If the local production company can secure a 40% rebate, it ultimately becomes a 40% partner in the content. And that means that originals, which were almost the only source of content in the region, are now just one option among many, and that coproductions can be viable for Latin American producers and creatives,” Martí notes.
Added to this is the emergence of brands as investors in content production, a growing trend that is particularly visible in the recent Argentine film Homo Argentum by Cohn & Duprat, where brand integration accounted for nearly a quarter of the budget.
“Fiction is a very welcoming space for brands because of the quality of the productions, how organic the relationship can be, and because in fiction, brand integration cannot be skipped,” he notes. “Today, brands can be just another partner.”
In addition to these tools, the executive highlights a number of advantages the region offers, such as Brazil’s significance in the global streaming landscape (it is the second-largest market after the US for both Netflix and Amazon), the more than 500 million Spanish speakers, and the growing “cross-pollination” between Spain and Latin America.
Who Killed Sara? was a hit on Netflix
The producer cites the example of El Encargado, which was a hit in Spain and Brazil, and the recent deal that Cohn & Duprat itself struck with Gaumont in the US to develop a series in Spain based on an Argentine book.
“We’re starting to see these situations, and they’re more common than before. But with 500 million Spanish speakers, we’re still an underdeveloped market,” he says. The opportunity is best represented by the US Hispanic market, especially for countries like Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela.
According to Martí, Latin America also has another advantage it should know how to exploit: an audiovisual tradition based on character development, an expertise increasingly sought after by streaming platforms looking for “completion rates.”
“Our strength has always been character-driven series, because our content consisted of 100- or 120-hour runs where you couldn’t keep viewers hooked just with plot twists,” he explains.
“English-language series, on the other hand, are more plot-driven. But with 18 months between one season and the next, the only way you’ll want to return to a story is if the characters were strong enough. And that has always been a strength of Latin American storytelling. The character drives engagement, and the thriller drives the completion rate. That mix puts us in a special place,” he adds, citing Who Killed Sara? (Netflix) as an example.
And this, he notes, also applies to the industry’s latest major trend: microdramas, where Latin America’s melodramatic expertise positions it as a region with the potential to capitalise on the genre, provided the right monetisation model is found. “All the tools and ingredients are there for Latin America. The platforms need to realise this and make a bigger bet on the region, because every time they do, the content goes global,” he concludes.
