Diego Luna, Gael Garcia Bernal Blim Deal: Actors To Produce For Netflix Rival In Mexico

Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal are a pair of successful actors. Both of them got their start in Mexican telenovelas and as they have evolved, crossed over to Hollywood without forgetting their roots. In conjunction, they both head Canana Films which focuses on creating content with Mexican talent. This week it was revealed that they had signed a contract to produce two series for Blim. The latter is a streaming service that Televisa launched to compete directly with Netflix. Social media has been critical of the platform due to its light content library.

With the production of these two series, Televisa wants to bring exclusivity to its subscribers and find content that they will not be able to find anywhere else. It was reported that the Mexicana conglomerate will give total creative control to Canana, which means they will decide what to produce, who to cast and what general direction they want the series to take. This is huge as the series will offer a different view of what we are used to from Televisa’s telenovelas.

This is not the first time that Canana ventures into television making. In 2010, they teamed up with public broadcaster Once TV to produce an adaptation of the Argentine series “Soy Tu Fan.” The show starred Ana Claudia Talancón about a young woman who is aimless in life. “Soy Tu Fan” lasted for two seasons and was aired stateside on the mun2 cable network.

Televisa has been very aggressive with Blim in hopes to take away market share from Netflix that dominates Mexico and Latin America. The media giant already announced that they will not renew their licensing deal with the U.S. streaming service when it expires and all of their telenovelas, series and movies will be available exclusively on Blim. One of the only titles that was new to Mexican audiences was “El Hotel De Los Secretos,” that premiere in the U.S. back in January on Univision. Users were able to view the first episodes of the series, but now Televisa is going to air that same show on their commercial network El Canal de las Estrellas. With not much more original content, the deal with Canana will benefit the platform.