High-flying Madrid-based Caballo Films, behind Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s “The Beasts” and “Riot Police” and Borja Soler’s “The Route,” has put into development a fiction series adaptation of Mabel Lozano’s prized same-titled non-fiction work.
Shaping up as a deep drill-down into the growth of prostitution in Spain into large-scale organized crime, “El Proxeneta” packs a powerful talent package of creator-writers Isabel Peña, co-writer of Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s “As Bestas” and “Riot Police,” and Eduardo Villanueva, a co-scribe on “Riot Police” and producer on “Stockholm.”
Pilar Palomero, a Spanish Academy Goya best picture winner for “Schoolgirls,” will direct the series, her first TV work beyond one episode of “Venga Juan.”
“Pilar was always on our minds for this project, given her talent, and we wanted a female gaze behind all the key points of creative responsibility,” said Villanueva.
“El Proxeneta” is co-produced by Lozano’s label Mafalda Entertainment.
“My commitment and activism against sexual slavery is above my work as a filmmaker and writer,” Lozano told Variety.
“I didn’t want to sell the rights to my book and for an adaptation to whitewash procurers, converting delinquents into idols. So it was vital to be in all the process, both creation and production. Caballo offered me that and are, undoubtedly, the best travel companions I could have.”
Published in 2018 by Editorial Alrevés in Spain, “El Proxeneta” won the prestigious Rodolfo Walsh Award for best non-fiction book, and has gone through eight editions.
Also published in Mexico and Colombia by Editorial Planeta, it turns on the first-person testimony of an ex-prostitution kingpin, nicknamed El Músico. An illiterate pimp, he grew his business into a network of 12 macro-brothels and 1,700 prostitutes, mostly brought to Spain from abroad, transforming prostitution into organized crime and helping to revolutionize the business in Spain and the rest of the world,
His insider’s guide to prostitution details fraud, abduction. extortion, sexual slavery, murder and money laundering. Lozano’s book is backed up by documentation from the Spanish Police’s UCRIF, which investigates human trafficking in Spain.
In a key creative decision, the series will be narrated from the POV of not only El Músico, but also Claudia, a Colombian sex slave, and a police detective who dedicated his whole career to bring El Músico to justice.
“Isabel and I, who have worked together for years, wanted to tackle this universe in a deeper and more realistic manner, finding an original and distinctive way in,” said Villanueva.
“I feel comfortable writing ‘El Proxeneta’ but at the same time believe that this project is a very new and challenging project for Eduardo and me as screenwriters, for example, in the responsibility which it brings of talking about such a brutal and relevant issue such as the trafficking of women,” Peña said.
She added: “Precisely related to this, it’s also a challenge to transform such a tough story, so close to reality, into a powerful tale which fascinates and moves as much as we were fascinated and moved by Mabel Lozano’s book.”
The series will take place at the end of the ‘90s and 2000s, 12 years during which prostitution’s business model changed from a pimp and three or four sex-worker “girlfriends” to that of mafia boss and hundreds or thousands of women procured from poorer countries, and forced in Spain to work as prostitutes in order to work off huge debts, Villanueva added.
“Trafficking is a transnational crime. Spanish traffickers have operated from the last century in countries of extraction of ‘prime material’ as well as in Spain, Europe’s leading country as a country of passage and destination of women victims of sexual trafficking,” Lozano said.
She added: “In our country, no more than a score of delinquents were the ‘creators’ of this so perverse way of exploiting the most vulnerable. El Músico was one of them.”
Villanueva and Peña are finishing writing a pilot and the narrative lines of the whole season, said Villanueva.
“El Proxeneta” builds on an extraordinary year for Caballo Films, founded in 2011 by writer-director Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Villanueva, producer and writer; Nacho Lavilla, producer; writer-director Borja Soler, and Alberto del Campo, editor.
Bowing at Cannes in Premiere, “The Beasts,” directed by Sorogoyen, went on to score 327,125 admissions in France (around $2.3 million box office gross) and €6.8 million ($7.4 million) in Spain, sweeping this year’s Spanish Academy Goya Awards and winning a French Academy Cesar for best foreign-language film.
Soler’s “The Route,” (“La Ruta”), a cult series set on Spain’s Ruta del Bakalao, has been renewed for a second season by Atresplayer, “La Ruta Part 2. Ibiza.”
At Iberseries, Caballo Films unveiled continued development on Sorogoyen’s “La Guerra,” one of the most ambitious series in the works from Spain.
One of the most powerful talent packages from Spain brought onto Berlin’s European Film Market, Caballo’s “The Wailing” stars “Elite’s” Ester Expósito and is directed by Pedro Martín-Calero (“Secrets”) and co-written by Peña who on “El Proxeneta” will also produce with Villanueva for Caballo Films as Lozano produces for Mafalda Entertainment.
“I had the opportunity of collaborating with my colleagues in the executive production of ‘Riot Police,’ where I learnt so much about being more present in all stages of production. So I’m happy to return to doing this on ‘El Proxeneta,’ after that learning experience,” Peña commented.
