Lorenzo Wills of W Studios: “Working On Two Projects For Two Platforms, Developing An Investment Fund, And Driving The Sports Division”

Lorenzo Wills, son of Patricio Wills, joined W Studios as Chief Operating Officer (COO). But as he said himself on #PRODUprimetime with Ríchard Izarra, “I’d call it more of a firefighter role—putting out fires—which is really what the job is.” Wills, who joined W Studios in this new phase—informally called “W Studios 3.0”—started from scratch together with his father Patricio and Martha Godoy, launching two new projects for two platforms, focused on Mexico, the U.S. Hispanic market, and Colombia. He announced the creation of an investment fund, called “Vehículo Financiero” (Financial Vehicle), to develop both original and third-party projects. He also revealed that they will strongly boost the sports division.

“When I arrived, basically W Studios 3.0, as we call it, was at zero—we didn’t even have one project. Patricio, Martha, and I sat down and built a pipeline of all the projects we had in mind. After a lot of hard work—pitching constantly, traveling for many days, leaving my family at home—we managed to land these two projects. There was nothing when I arrived, and the combined work of Patricio, Marta, and myself is what has us today with two developments at two platforms,” he explained.

He mentioned they operate like a startup—working from home much of the time and sometimes from WeWork. “Patricio has a great saying: the overhead of a company should be able to fit in a taxi or in an elevator. The mantra is that we don’t want excess costs—we want to be profitable, we want to work together, and our focus right now is clearly Mexico. As you know, when you succeed in Mexico, the U.S. Hispanic market follows, and the third focus is Colombia. Why Colombia? Because it has tremendous tax incentives everyone is aware of, a lot of production talent, and allows you to make, for example, Mexican series in Colombia that still look Mexican. So we operate in the three countries—without offices—and that’s what W Studios is today,” he noted.

FINANCIAL VEHICLE

As part of Lorenzo Wills’ work, W Studios has developed a new investment model called “Vehículo Financiero” (Financial Vehicle).

“This project was born from several premises. The first is that we’ve been operating under the traditional model: a production fee, sell, and move on to the next. We realized that right now, platforms are opening the door to co-productions. We saw that the return on investment in these types of models is much higher when you own the property and distribution rights. So what did we do? We partnered with some of the highest-quality people in the industry—who complement what we do very well—and created a fund, the Financial Vehicle, to invest. So we come in with a series, a film, or other intellectual property—it could be sports-related—we invest a portion, produce it, and then that portion we own gets distributed across different windows and other business models, including theatrical releases and all the tax rebates we can find. The idea is for this Financial Vehicle to invest in productions and properties, and then generate that return on investment,” he said.

He added that for now, he can’t reveal the partners in the fund or its size. “It’s not a small fund, I must say. We’re currently closing the first investor out of three, and the idea is that by December or January we’ll be ready to start making investments in all production projects. That’s basically the soul of the fund,” he explained.

He revealed that in its first phase, the fund would finance both their own projects and others. “A good project can be anywhere—it doesn’t have to be ours. If we believe that it brings tremendous market value to W and our partners in this venture, we’re in. We bring experience that almost nobody has. We bring financing, impeccable production know-how—Patricio hasn’t gone over budget in 50 years. When you mix all that in the same pot, you say, ‘Hey, this is starting to taste good,’” he said.

SPORTS ARE THE NEXT FRONTIER

Lorenzo Wills is also leading and pushing W Studios’ sports division.

“This area is not just about producing traditional sports formats—whether a documentary or perhaps a fiction project—but about finding how these sports properties and strategies can reach a larger audience. For example, we’re finalizing a global partnership with TikTok to work on certain projects in Mexico’s soccer market. When you bring together TikTok, soccer, and the Mexican market, we start finding synergies that didn’t exist before, and W can make them happen. Sports are the next frontier, as we can see on all platforms—they’re a way to innovate, whether by buying league rights or creating our own events. In sports, there aren’t viewers or audiences—there are fans, there’s passion—and you can’t buy that. And that’s worth much more. It’s a world we’re entering in a very big way,” he said.

Finally, Wills emphasized that W Studios is newer and more driven than ever. “We’re making alliances with people we’ll announce soon that are going to shake up the market. We’re creating an investment vehicle clearly led by Patricio—but I’m there too, without pretension, humbly learning and eager to take on the world, which is what I do every day. There’s no better way than operations to quickly learn any business, because operations is where everything happens—from serving the coffee to signing the contract with a platform. We’re a strong and creative company, and that’s very important because it’s our focus. Content is what drives us. We’re a company ready to take on the world again.”