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Callum McLennan
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Omar Chaparro on set of Vengeance Courtesy of El Estudio “Vengeance” (“Venganza”), pitched as the biggest-budgeted Mexican action movie ever produced and the first Mexican original from Amazon MGM Studios granted an exclusive theatrical window before streaming, has rolled off Prime Video as a bona fide global hit, taking the platform’s No. 1 spot in territories as far-flung as Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines and Italy.
For producer Pablo Cruz, the El Estudio chief who shepherded the film over six years, that vindicates an argument Mexican producers have been making for a decade: Locally-rooted genre, made at scale, travels.
It also, he tells Variety, exposes how little visibility producers have over their performance data on the platforms now bankrolling the much of high-end Latin American film.
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“Sadly there is no day-to-day intel that we can all use to better serve the audience, so we live in darkness,” says Cruz, who runs El Estudio after stepping back from operations at Canana, the indie banner he co-founded with Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal. “We still have to get the 21-day report. But it’s not open info. Living in darkness does not improve our industry — and for sure not the customer experience.”
Directed by commercials veteran Rodrigo Valdés in his feature debut, “Vengeance” stars Mexican comedian Omar Chaparro as Toro, a special-forces hero turned vigilante after his wife is murdered, with Alejandro Speitzer (“Dark Desire”) and Paola Núñez (“Bad Boys for Life”) co-starring. Daniel Krauze scripted; Diyan Hristov (“John Wick: Chapter 2”) choreographed the action with a Bulgarian stunt unit.
The pitch of a Mexican-language, Mexican-cast action tentpole built to compete head-on with U.S. studio fare was on paper a gamble. “It’s a film that does not register in the audience, especially local audiences. A Mexican action film with a comedian as its main character? Why?” Cruz said. “When we have a huge dependency on American-made movies, why would a country that has been fed so well by the studios’ regular films now want a Mexican version of it?”
The strategic bet was to ignore Hollywood entirely on the page. “In writing the film with Daniel Krauze and Rodrigo, we used European and Asian films as our guiding light. We stopped watching U.S. films to avoid any pollution, so it would never lose its Mexican soul — like the French and Korean films that feel very, very local.”
Cruz traveled repeatedly to South Korea during prep, drawn by an industry built on a domestic-first model with global throw. The aim was to make a big action film for Mexicans, “Working with Amazon to design the film with a larger scale but without going crazy, with very well thought set pieces and with characters that made sense in our world, not your typical American hero but your Mexican action hero without betraying our culture and way of life.” he outlined.
Cruz has argued that Mexican audience demand for action far outstrips local supply, with home-grown product still skewed heavily to rom-com and melodrama. “Vengeance” was conceived to test whether that gap could close at studio scale. “I have to give credit to Amazon for trusting and playing like a team,” he said. “It’s not always easy to defend a perspective that is perhaps too new or in this case, learning together that action films have to be conceived and produced different.”
Entrusting the project to Valdés, a first-time feature director, was a separate bet. Cruz has form: producing credits include early features from David Pablos, Natalia López Gallardo, Luna and Gerardo Naranjo. “Working with first or second-time directors is one of the main reasons I do this,” he explained. On Valdés: “We both wanted the same thing and he knew how to shoot action and had hours and hours of film experience that became very profitable when we had to push the boundaries and get the best out of the limited hours we could get in some critical locations. ”
Rodrigo Valdés and Pablo Cruz on set Whether Amazon initially saw international legs is another question. “I don’t think anyone thought about this title to be a global hit,” Cruz said. “Sometime during the editing, Amazon saw that this film had legs outside Mexico and sent it to the international team.” A multi-language dubbing rollout lined the film up for the kind of algorithmic push now defining Prime Video’s non-English originals strategy. The response took Cruz by surprise. “The film rapidly became No. 1 in Spanish-speaking countries, but then started going first in countries we would never expect. Action cinema should be free to fly and I’m sure localizing language wise the film makes it easier for a kid in Indonesia or in Egypt, to watch it and recommend it and so the films become a world wide phenomena.”
The model is El Estudio’s ongoing strategy. Up next is an erotic thriller built on the same template, theatrical first then platform: “The same idea of going to genre with a Mexican soul that should feel international.” Cruz frames the slate as counter-programming against Mexican cinema’s “saturation of melodramas and romantic comedies.” Genre, he argues, “works very well in Mexico, but it also travels very well, so we are here to stay”
Cruz hopes that “Vengeance,” alongside previous breakout action titles like “Contraataque,” can serve as a template for Latin American commercial cinema. What he wants is a fuller industrial chain: theatrical, then platform, then free and cable TV. “Like we used to exist as an industry. It’s hard, but let’s try.”
“Latam cinema can become a real option for world audiences, like in the days of the Mexican Cine de Oro,” he said. “We are a culture that is beyond universal in music. Film is next.”
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