Netflix adapts Spanish classic novel La Regenta with Elastica Films

L-R: María Zamora, Ester Expósito and Mar Coll

Netflix has started production on La Regenta, a film adaptation of the classic 1884 Spanish novel of the same name by Leopoldo Alas, who wrote under the pen name Clarín.

The contemporary version of the story reinterprets the classic from a female perspective, with Mar Coll directing and María Zamora producing for Elastica Films, marking the latter’s first collaboration with Netflix.

Set in the fictional cathedral city of Vetusta, it follows a deeply unfulfilled woman who is married to the much older retired regent of the local court.

Coll has co-written the screenplay alongside Anna R Costa and Diego Vega. The cast includes Ester Expósito, Oriol Pla, Vito Sanz, Borja Luna, Clara Ingold, Carlos González, Ana Torrent, Itsaso Arana and Gonzalo de Castro.

Coll said: “I have tried to approach the material, humbly, from a radically personal perspective, as I always do. I have made my own what has moved me most in the novel, and what explores the loneliness and heartbreak of this regent’s wife, who tirelessly longs for to give meaning to her life. a more real life. A luminous character inhabiting a universe poised to prey on her. A woman whose sensitivity and stubborn search constitute, in themselves, a form of resistance.”