Miguel Martín, MD of Spanish prodco Zeppelin, takes C21 behind the scenes of new futuristic competition format Time Zone and talks about the label’s scripted and animation ambitions.

Miguel Martín

A DeLorean sports car speeds towards an abandoned army base somewhere in a remote, sun-baked desert region of Spain. Overhead, drones hover around a giant Jumbotron TV set, through which the Master of Time barks orders at 10 players aiming to complete a real-life video game.

Welcome to Time City, the top-secret home of HBO Max’s new extreme competition format, Time Zone. The 20,000 square metre former military compound houses a set that is half dystopian science fiction film and half Xbox/PlayStation role-playing game.

This is the ambitious ‘next-level’ concept first envisaged by Banijay Iberia-owned prodco Zeppelin and Endemol Shine Nederland when the project was in its embryonic stages.

The format recently received a preview screening at the Conecta Fiction & Entertainment market in Toledo, around a 45-minute drive from Zeppelin’s Madrid headquarters. The series launched on HBO Max in Spain last week.

Both producers and platform hope Time Zone can become a hit travelling format in the same way that Survivor and, more recently, Traitors have.

“The possibilities of the Time Zone concept are huge,” says Zeppelin MD Miguel Martín. “HBO Max will carry the show initially in Spain, but if we are lucky it can travel to other territories. There could be spin-offs. Maybe it will be the first format to inspire a video game, rather than the other way round. That’s completely possible.”

Martín began his tenure at Banijay Iberia in 2019 at Banijay Birds, the territory’s creative hub for original streamer IP development, and has also served as executive producer on local titles including LOL: Last One Laughing for Amazon Prime Video.

He has directed and produced shows across multiple genres, from documentaries (Hijos del corazón) and reality shows (Anonimous, Planeta Finito) to scripted titles (Herederos).

Martín also has extensive experience in the US, having served as executive producer on formats for NBC-Telemundo and Fox, and as a development/production consultant in entertainment and scripted for Powwow 360 and Cinemat USA.

Founded in 1992, Zeppelin is often said to be responsible for introducing the reality genre to Spanish audiences, producing local versions of major formats such as Big Brother as well as original shows like El Puente (The Bridge).

Four years ago, Martín and colleagues from Endemol Shine Nederland began batting around an idea for a survival show where the gameplay revolved around contestants trying to win time. That quickly snowballed into a format inspired by films such as Ready Player One and Tron: Legacy, plus award-winning video game Cyberpunk 2077.

ESports presenter Cristinini fronts Time Zone

“We took some elements of the original idea to another dimension by putting it together with the look and feel of video games,” says Martín. “So it’s divided into levels and the players must complete different missions.

“The survival format idea became more of an extreme competition show but we wanted it to be set within a totally different environment, so we created Time City.”

When Zeppelin started pitching the show to broadcasters and platforms, US-based streamer HBO Max was immediately intrigued – if a little concerned by the sheer scale and, presumably, eventual expense of the ambitious project.

“HBO Max said Time Zone was just what it was looking for,” Martín says. “From that point forward we continued to pitch it to many people from many different departments in many different countries at HBO.

“Because it’s so different, Time Zone was considered a risky idea. Executives would say things like, ‘OK, it looks incredible on paper, but can you actually make this show? Are you sure it’s possible?’”

By his own admission, the pre-production and shooting process of Time Zone has been a “very long and challenging” path once HBO Max officially gave the green light, with Miguel Salvat and Annelies Sitvast acting as executive producers.

First, Zeppelin scoured locations in several countries before finally finding a facility large enough to accommodate filming.

Then a set designer who had previously worked on AMC’s zombie franchise The Walking Dead was brought onboard to make Time City look suitably high-tech.

Time Zone’s central premise of players competing in a real-life video game necessitated the use of extensive sequences relying on visual effects (VFX), virtual reality techniques and computer-generated imagery.

“There are between 300 and 400 shots per episode with VFX, so that’s a ton of work,” says Martín. “We did almost everything in-house at Zeppelin; the only element we outsourced was the final sound mix.

“We struggled a lot to make Time Zone because no one had experience of making a show of this scale. It was a first for everyone and a real test.

“Time Zone looks like a movie, so it wasn’t cheap to make, but it couldn’t be too expensive because we want this format to travel. Here in Spain, we produce content in a creative and effective way, so that helped us keep the budget to a competitive level.”

With cameras finally ready to roll, eSports presenter and Twitch streamer Cristina López Pérez, better known simply as Cristinini, was cast as the Master of Time. She monitors the players’ progress as they tackle a series of challenges to win time. They progress through eight progressively harder levels – but if a contestant runs out of time, they are vaporised.

The players include former female world boxing champion Joana Pastrana, rapper El Chojin, transgender model Angela Ponce and Tenerife-based politician Alberto Rodriguez.

Despite their celebrity profiles, none are spared the traditional emotional and physical torment that has become a hallmark of the extreme competition genre.

“They completely lose their minds!” says Martín. “There are high emotions, people cry and one player was so absorbed in the game she forget that it was her own birthday.

“I’ve worked on many big formats and reality shows over the years and that experience has taught me that casting is vitally important. You need a leader, a chatty person, a baddie and so on. For Time Zone the defining character trait they all needed was to be very competitive.”

Last month, KykNET in South Africa announced that it is adapting Zeppelin’s The Bridge, bringing the number of international versions of the show to 11.

Perhaps surprisingly, however, Zeppelin is now eyeing a return to creating scripted and animated content to complement its already successful pipeline of formats and reality programming.

In 2018, the label produced a Spanish version of hit Norwegian teen drama Skam (Skam Espana) for Movistar+, which ran for four seasons. It also made two seasons of animated series Virtual Hero, also for Movistar+.

“Zeppelin is strong in the unscripted space,” says Martín. “I think it’s a great moment for reality and extreme competition formats, as the public seem to find these genres very appealing. Hopefully we’ll see more reality shows on streaming platforms.

“Previously, Zeppelin had a strong trajectory in scripted fiction, but in the last four or five years we haven’t produced as much, so we’re working on that side of things. In the past we’ve also created animation and we’d like to go back to that too. It’s exciting to see how things like artificial intelligence will change our industry.”