NATPE 2018: New Spanish Cinema Channel Launches

Miami, Fla. – Atresmedia Internacional and Video Mercury Films said they will launch a new HD movie channel combining new and older movies from Spain, aimed at U.S. Hispanic and Latin American viewers.

READ MORE: B&C's Coverage of NATPE 2018

Atrescine, the new channel, launches in March, officials said. It combines a library of 7,000 titles (remastered) from Video Mercury Films and newer movies from Atresmedia Cine, which produced nine features in Spain last year.

Atrescine will replace the channel MIS Peliculas (MIS meaning Made In Spain) and become the fourth channel in the Atresmedia Internacional portfolio. Condista distributes the Atresmedia Internacional channels Antena 3, Atreseries and ¡HOLA! TV.

Related: NATPE 2018: Vinciquerra Wants More Scale for Sony

Atresmedia Internacional CEO Javier Nuche said at a press event at NATPE that while there are many movie channels on offer to distributors “there’s no cinema channel devoted to Spanish cinema.” Older titles will do well with viewers of the linear channel, he said, “and we will have of course a very wide VOD offer to give value to the operators and the subscribers.”

The new channel will launch on March 1, Nuche said.

Kent Gibbons

Kent has been a journalist, writer and editor at Multichannel News since 1994 and with Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He is a good point of contact for anything editorial at the publications and for Nexttv.com. Before joining Multichannel News he had been a newspaper reporter with publications including The Washington Times, The Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal and North County News.