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WarnerMedia: Our challenge is to expand HBO brand and complementing it with local US stories

October 6, 2021

Maribel Ramos-Weiner

Tamburri Izarra Salvat Iberseries

Marcelo Tamburri, Head of Scripted Content Development at WarnerMedia Latin America, together with Miguel Salvat, VP and Commissioning Editor of Original Programming at HBO Spain and HBO Europe, have the challenge of expanding the brand and complementing local US stories.

“We have a great responsibility managing a prestigious brand like HBO. Not only because of the number of stories but to the quality that HBO always had. In this direction we are developing stories,” pointed out Tamburri, who with Salvat participated in a talk at Iberseries, moderated by Ríchard Izarra, founder and CEO of PRODU.

Salvat highlighted the myriad projects they receive in different stages of development. “Everyone has ideas, but not everyone has projects. Not all developments are going to see the light and you never know where the ideas that are going to stick come from. Our model is to finance 100% production, that’s why we retain the IP to be able to adapt it to different markets.” He added that most of the series that are produced do not work, “but we only talk about the series that work. It is about reducing the number of errors. That should be our goal.”

According to Tamburri, the dynamics of production and the industry changed. “The platforms demand a lot of content and the industry has to respond to that demand. It is a challenge for everyone to rearrange the system and make it work efficiently. A TV series that takes two years to make is consumed in a weekend. Content has become an undisputed king and is a great topic of social conversation,” he noted.

He made several recommendations regarding the projects that are most likely to be developed. “If an IP is supported by a literary work it is much better. Bringing in a renowned writer behind the project is important,” he said and advised those presenting projects to consolidate the proposal into a page or two with the story and main characters. “Thereby we can make a decision more quickly. If you have the pilot, great, but the two pages are to see if it fits into the strategy. Sometimes there is a specific need to have a certain type of content for the platform.”