Domingo Corral hails HBO Max TV deal: ‘I’ve found a home’
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Domingo Corral, ex-Movistar Plus+, celebrates his first-look deal with HBO Max: “I’ve found a home”. First series: El Nani, by Alberto Rodríguez and Rafael Cobos.
Spanish producer Domingo Corral, who ran original content at Movistar Plus+ until Telefónica let him go in 2025, celebrated on Wednesday (21) the first-look deal he holds with HBO Max — now under the Paramount Skydance group after the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery — and told The Hollywood Reporter, at Rome’s MIA Market, that he has finally “found a home” at the platform. With a résumé that helped redefine Spanish audiovisual storytelling, he promises quality TV series built around the country’s best creative talent — and the first series born from the deal already has a name: “El Nani”, set during Spain’s 1980s democratic transition, written and directed by Alberto Rodríguez and Rafael Cobos, the duo behind “The Anatomy of a Moment”.
A new home after a rocky exit
The weight of his name is no accident. Corral joined Telefónica’s TV division in 2014 and, as director of original content at Movistar Plus+, spent about a decade at the helm of the platform’s most ambitious bets: under his watch came acclaimed series such as “La peste”, “Antidisturbios”, “Querer” and “The Anatomy of a Moment”, plus a film slate that reached the highest ranks of Cannes.
Unsurprisingly, the Telefónica board’s decision to let him go in April 2025 — with producers Jorge Pezzi and Hugo Tomás splitting the role he held — drew an immediate industry backlash: 144 professionals signed an open letter in support of his legacy, including Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz and Pedro Almodóvar, warning that his exit could seriously damage the local production ecosystem. The return to action, however, came fast: in March this year, HBO Max announced the deal that put him back at the center of the stage.
His current mood is one of relief and renewed drive:
“I found a home. It’s like a new home, because I feel fortunate to have found a place where they want to do the same things that I want to do, and that’s amazing.”
What the deal is and why it matters
According to the official press release published by HBO Max in March 2026, the pact establishes a first-look arrangement with exclusive television fiction production for Spain — and the announcement was made by Sarah Aubrey, Head of Original Content at HBO Max, during the Séries Mania festival in Lille. At the time, she noted that Corral “has long been a champion of bold, distinctive voices” and that “it is an honor to support this next chapter of his globally renowned career”.
For the producer, the jump is about scale: for the first time he is making television for a global service. “I have an amazing opportunity to work for a streamer that is global and that a show I’m making for Spain can be seen all over the world,” he told THR. The deal also fits the platform’s European expansion, which recently sealed the acquisition of “Tip Toe”, Russell T Davies’s queer miniseries, for the European HBO Max across 14 countries.
“El Nani”: the first series of the deal
Deal signed, project underway. According to the official synopsis, the series will be set in the early 1980s, at the height of the transition to democracy, when Spain was going through a wave of crime and one of the highest bank-robbery rates in the world. To fight the population’s fear, a police unit with sweeping powers was created, staffed with Francoist agents and able to act with near-total impunity.
At the center of the drama is a robbery that ends in murder — and the wrongful arrest of the petty thief known as Nani, who soon disappears and becomes the first missing person of Spain’s new democracy. As the release put it, the show aims to bring to the screens the long fight of ordinary people to bring democracy and justice to the country — a saga written and directed by Alberto Rodríguez in tandem with Rafael Cobos, following the success of “The Anatomy of a Moment”.
“We are in the writing and development phase: doing the research, understanding the era and the characters, deciding the point of view from which to tell the story — it is a thrilling and beautiful phase, but also a very complex one, and it will take us a few months. It will shoot in the depths of winter if HBO Max puts it into production.”
Corral also mapped out the project’s new professional anchors: close work with Sarah Aubrey and her team in the United States and the arrival of Guillermo Farré at the local HBO Max team, a hire that thrills him — “it is very important to work with someone who shares your same vision,” he told Audiovisual451.
A résumé that speaks for itself
The living proof of Corral’s weight is “La Bola Negra”, by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, the “Los Javis”: after winning the directing prize in Cannes, the film was picked up by Netflix at the festival, has been playing in theaters since October 16 and lands on the streamer on December 2. As reported by Audiovisual451, the title has already topped 28 million euros at the box office and is the most-watched Spanish film among 2026’s releases.
| Work | Authors | Highlight |
|---|---|---|
| “Sirât” | Oliver Laxe | Oscar-nominated, praised run in Cannes |
| “La Bola Negra” | Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo | Directing prize in Cannes; Spain’s biggest 2026 Spanish box office; on Netflix December 2 |
| “The Beloved” | Rodrigo Sorogoyen, with Javier Bardem | Spain’s entry in the best international feature Oscar race |
| “Los domingos” | Alauda Ruiz de Azua | A standout in recent awards season |
| “The Anatomy of a Moment” | Alberto Rodríguez and Rafael Cobos | A landmark of original fiction; screened at Séries Mania |
For those following the current strength of Spanish drama abroad, revisit our piece on “The Child” (El Niño), Netflix’s drama with Belén Cuesta based on Fernando Aramburu’s novel. And to get the tone of “La Bola Negra”, watch the official teaser: Watch the official teaser of “La Bola Negra” on YouTube ↗
Few series, maximum rigor
The promise is one of curation, not volume: few works, with maximum intensity in each. “I am not a producer of making much, but of making little and working hard on that little,” he summed up to Audiovisual451 (our translation). In Rome, at the MIA panel titled “Can excellence survive the mainstream?”, Corral defended commissioners willing to take risks and slammed gatekeepers’ conservatism: “Formulaic, conservative proposals will always be there, but you cannot reject the other way,” he warned, as transcribed by Deadline. The anti-algorithm philosophy, inherited from the Movistar years, remains intact: “If they tell me something is a trend, I go the other way.”
On the film side, in that same spirit, there is the musical “Puedes contar conmigo”, a project in an early phase inspired by a hit song by La Oreja de Van Gogh and described by Corral as a great, ambitious romantic story “in the vein of La La Land”.
Casey Bloys, Paramount and the future of HBO
The producer’s optimism also rests on the institutional setup: Casey Bloys signed a new multiyear deal to oversee HBO Max and Paramount+ in the new Skydance arrangement, a move Corral considers decisive. “That’s really, really positive… It would have been bad news for HBO if that hadn’t happened. Fortunately it has happened. So I’m optimistic,” he told THR. For Spanish series to reach a global audience, HBO Max must remain, in essence, HBO.
Another front brings an unexpected synergy: Audiovisual451 reported, in the same week, a two-year agreement between Movistar Plus+ and Skydance for the simultaneous launch of local series under the joint originals label “Movistar Plus + HBO”. From Corral’s perspective, the tone is pragmatic: “HBO can do what it wants with the series I make for them; the deal seems great to me, but that is their business,” he said (our translation).
With “El Nani” in the writing phase — and possibly shooting in the European winter, if HBO Max gives the production the green light — the next few months should reveal the first concrete answer to the partnership between the producer who reshaped Spanish audiovisual making and the streamer that does not want to lose its award-winning streak. Follow the next steps in our Series section and on the Pop Culture channel.
Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, HBO Max press release, Audiovisual451 and Deadline.
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