MarVista, TelevisaUnivision strike 10-film deal for upcoming SVoD service ViX+

Fox Entertainment’s MarVista Entertainment and Spanish-language media giant TelevisaUnivision have agreed a development and production deal that will see MarVista produce 10 original movies for TelevisaUnivision’s upcoming streamer, ViX.

Wade Davis

Spanning the family, comedy, romance and holiday genres, the films will launch on the SVoD tier of ViX, known as ViX+, which is set to launch in the second half of the year.

Under the agreement, Mexico City-headquartered TelevisaUnivision will hold worldwide streaming distribution rights to all 10 film, while MarVista will oversee global distribution outside of streaming and second windows for all platforms.

While TelevisaUnivision has previously announced several original series for ViX, the deal with MarVista represents the first major content deal revealed since it unveiled ViX two weeks ago.

For California-based MarVista, the deal marks its continued expansion in the Latin American market. The company, which was acquired by Fox in December in a deal reportedly exceeding US$100m, has recently produced films in Spanish including Operacion Feliz Navidad for HBO Max in Latin America and El Robo del Siglo, which is currently streaming on HBO Max in the US.

TelevisaUnivision announced this month that the AVoD version of ViX would launch on March 31 with around 40,000 hours of content spanning telenovelas, movies from studios including Lionsgate and MGM, news and sports-related programming.

The SVoD tier will launch in the second half of the year, with TelevisaUnivision saying it will debut around two new originals each week on the service.

Its roster for ViX+ includes true crime doc Mi Vecino El Cartel, executive produced by Selena Gomez; La Hora Marcada, a rebooted version of anthology series La Hora Marcada, which helped launch the careers of Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro; and drama Las Pelotaris, produced through a multi-title deal with Spanish prodco The Mediapro Studio.

The merger between Univision and Televisa was revealed in April 2021, with Univision acquiring the content and media assets of Televisa in a US$4.8bn deal to create TelevisaUnivision.

“It is an incredible honor to be a founding creative production partner of TelevisaUnivision on the launch of ViX+,” said MarVista CEO and founding partner Fernando Szew.

“MarVista and Fox Entertainment take great pride in being leaders in delivering diverse stories and premium content across multiple genres for all viewers. We’re looking forward to introducing these initial 10 films to what undoubtedly will be a fast-growing and leading streamer within the Spanish-speaking market.”