Ever-growing ‘Elite’ producer Zeta Studios has reached an agreement with author-filmmaker Paco Plaza to co-develop and produce projects. The agreement is non-exclusive to Plaza’s directing work.
According to Zeta, the first project co-developed with Plaza will go into production in 2025.
A native of Valencia who studied at ECAM in Madrid, Plaza’s debut feature, “El Segundo nombre” (2002), won the European Grand Prix for a Fantasy Film at the prestigious Sitges Film Festival. He is best known for co-creating the “[REC]’ franchise, co-directed by Jaume Balagueró. The first film in the trilogy is a modern Spanish classic that achieved outstanding international success and was later remade in English as ‘Quarantine’.
Other notable titles from the filmmaker’s resume include the Spanish Academy Goya-nominated “Veronica” (2017), a major hit on Netflix, Luis Tosar-starrer “An Eye for an Eye” (2019), San Sebastian- player “La Abuela” (2022). and Netflix’s ‘Hermana Muerte’ (2023).
With his latest feature film ‘Mugaritz. No Bread, No Dessert,” Plaza worked against type, trading the terror of his previous works for shooting a behind-the-scenes documentary about fine dining at one of the world’s highest-rated restaurants. The film opened the Culinary Zinema section at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival.
In a release, Plaza explained: “After a career spanning 21 years, it is a pleasure and a great opportunity for me to collaborate with Zeta Studios as a creative producer, putting my experience at the service of other directors, hoping to can help them develop and implement their projects. We want to focus mainly, but not exclusively, on promoting fantasy and horror genre projects, although we are actually looking for stimulating projects.”
Zeta Studios is one of Spain’s leading indie production companies and has received enormous acclaim for its films and series, including Netflix’s hugely popular YA series ‘Élite’, the Spanish blockbuster ‘Superlópez’ and award-winning films such as ‘La enfermedad del domingo” and “El Hombre de las mil caras” by Alberto Rodríguez. Zeta’s new series with Movistar Plus+ “La vida breve” was recently selected to open the South International Series Festival 2024 in Cadiz, Spain’s most important TV festival.
Zeta CEO Antonio Asensio said of the company’s agreement with Plaza: “This alliance is a great opportunity to collaborate and benefit from Paco’s incredible creativity and talent to develop and produce quality content. With the resources and structure of a studio like ours, serving tremendous talent like Paco Plaza, we will be able to realize and strengthen greater production quotas together.”