The 49-year-old Mexican actress and telenovela star has signed with Buchwald.
del Castillo stars in Telemundo’s hit drama La Reina del Sur.
One of the highest rated Spanish-language series in the world, La Reina del Sur adapts the bestseller by Spanish novelist Arturo Perez-Reverte. In the crime drama, which recently wrapped filming for Season 3, del Castillo plays Teresa Mendonza, a woman from Mexico who becomes the most powerful drug trafficker in southern Spain.
Castillo recently completed a two-series deal with Telemundo. Her production company, Cholawood, has a first-look development deal with Boomdog, the Mexico City-based division of Endemol Shine North America.
The actress starred opposite Will Smith as the villain in Sony’s Bad Boys for Life, also recently featuring on NBC’s sitcomMr. Mayor, from creators Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, and the Netflix animated series Maya and the Three, created by Jorge R. Gutiérrez.
She rose to acclaim in America with her performance in Fox Searchlight’s Under the Same Moon, which is one of the highest-grossing Spanish-language theatrical releases in U.S. history, and has also featured in such films as Bordertown, No Good Deedand All About Nina.
del Castillo has also appeared in series including PBS’ Golden Globe and Emmy-nominated drama American Family, The CW’sJane the Virgin and Showtime’s Weeds, among others. Her one-woman Off-Broadway show, The Way She Spoke, made her the first Latina actress to earn Drama Desk, Drama League and Lucille Lortel Award nominations.
A philanthropist and outspoken global activist, del Castillo was appointed Ambassador for the Mexican Commission on Human Rights to combat human trafficking in 2009.
The 45-year-old Cuban-American writer and producer has signed with William Morris Endeavor (WME).
Garza, whose credits include co-executive producer roles on the CW’s Jane the Virgin and ABC’s The Baker and the Beauty, is currently under an overall deal at Universal Television.
She also wrote and executive produced the Jane spinoff pilot Jane the Novela; the project ended up not going forward. She also has developed for Lee Daniels Productions/20th as well as ABC Studios/ABC.
This most recent development season, Garza sold a Latinx family drama to NBC. It revolved around an explosive incident that brings a woman’s mentally ill mother crashing back into her life. She’s now forced to revisit her family’s painful past and blur carefully constructed boundaries between her mother and the family she’s chosen.
The project explores themes of race, mental health, housing instability, immigration and generational trauma.
Earlier in her career, Garza spent six seasons on Fox’s The Simpsonsrising to supervising producer, then served as supervising producer on Fox’s Bordertown.
The 50-year-old Afro-Guatemalan American Broadway and television/film actor has thrown his hat in the ring as a candidate for the 2020 Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ Board of Governors.
Domingo, who appeared on AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead, is among the candidates in the Actors category.
In the Writing branch, Gregory Nava is in the running. The 71-year-old Mexican/Spanish American writer and filmmaker’s former projects include El Norte, Selena and Bordertown.
The winner in each branch will be chosen directly from these entries rather than whittling it down to four finalists in each, as has been done in the past.
The winners for the 17 open slots on the 54-member board will be chosen by preferential balloting, just like Best Picture race at the Oscars. Voting is underway with ballots due back June 5.
The Actors branch is the largest in the Academy and has drawn the biggest field of contenders for the one spot available. Domingo is running against incumbent governor Whoopi Goldberg and past governor Ed Begley Jr.
Here’s the full list of nominees by branch (* = incumbent):
Actors Michael Lee Aday Ed Begley, Jr Robert Carradine Nicolas Coster Colman Domingo Richard Dreyfuss Spencer Garrett Bruce Glover Whoopi Goldberg* James Keach Stacy Keach Peter Kwong Jodi Long Tim Matheson Joe Pantoliano Lou Diamond Phillips Andrea Riseborough Andrew Stevens Rita Wilson
Cinematographers Kerry Barden Richard Hicks Margery Simkin Debra Zane Andrzej Bartkowiak Richard P Crudo Svetlana Cvetko Steven Fierberg Michael Goi Janusz Kaminski Newton Thomas Sigel Eric Steelberg Kees Van Oostrum Amelia Vincent Roy Wagner Mandy Walker*
Directors Niki Caro Scott Cooper Ava DuVernay Reginald Hudlin Kasi Lemmons Michael Mann Philippe Mora Kimberly Peirce* Brett Ratner Peyton Reed Jason Reitman Frances-Anne Solomon Lewis Teague
Documentary Kate Amend* Geralyn Dreyfous Karen Goodman Lauren Greenfield Tom Neff
Executives Pam Abdy Victoria Alonso Michael W Barker Thomas Bernard Mark C Canton Erica Huggins David Linde* Mike Medavoy James W Morris Gianni Nunnari Stephen Strick Patrick Wachsberger
Film Editors Mark Helfrich Michael Jablow Nancy Richardson Stephen Rivkin David Rosenbloom Paul Seydor Terilyn A Shropshire
Makeup Artists and Hairstylists Linda Flowers
Marketing and Public Relations Stephen D Bruno Kevin Goetz Barry Dale Johnson Michael Kaplan Christina Kounelias* Robert A Levine Michele Robertson
Music Charles Bernstein* Paul Chihara George S Clinton John C Debney Sharon Farber William Goldstein Jan A P Kaczmarek Emilio Kauderer Carole Bayer Sager
Producers Khadija Alami Jason Blum Lawrence David Foldes Jennifer Fox Lynette Howell Taylor Steven-Charles Jaffe Robert Lantos Lori McCreary Chris Moore Michael Peyser Michael S Phillips Peter Samuelson Michael Shamberg Jeffrey Sharp Richard W Stevenson Irwin Winkler
Production Design Marcia Hinds Geoffrey A Kirkland John A Kuri Carolyn A Loucks John Muto Rusty Smith Melissa Stewart Wynn P Thomas* Thomas A Walsh
Short Films and Feature Animation Jon Bloom Edwin Catmull Ron Diamond Chris Donahue Raul Garcia Matthew Gross Tom Sito* Erik Smitt Chris Tashima
Sound Bobbi Banks Teri E Dorman* Nicholas Eliopoulos Scott Gershin Mark Mangini F Hudson Miller Victoria Rose Sampson Mark P Stoeckinger Bruce Tanis Randy Thom
Visual Effects Robert Blalack Rob Bredow Brooke Breton Richard Edlund* Jonathan Erland Jeffrey M Kleiser Jeffrey A Okun Helena Packer Joshua Pines Theresa Ellis Rygiel Rick Sayre
Writers Carl A Gottlieb Larry Karaszewski* Gregory Nava John Ridley Howard A Rodmam
Eugenio Derbez is ready to crossover into English-language television.
The 54-year-old Mexican comedian, writer and director and his 3Pas producing partner Ben Odell have signed a first-look deal with Universal Television and sold their first two English-language comedies.
The UTV deal marks Derbez’s first season developing English-language television, though both he and Odell have experience in the Spanish-language market.
Early in his career, Odell created and wrote some of Colombia’s highest-rated series; Derbez wrote, produced, directed and starred in numerous Spanish-language comedies and dramas for Televisa.
Derbez’s series, which have aired on Univision, have helped him amass a major stateside following that includes nearly 18 million fans on Facebook and Twitter.
As part of their stateside push, ABC is developing single-camera comedy Don’t Judge Me, which is inspired by Derbez’s life and revolves around Ignacio Galves, who is raising three kids with three ex-wives in a story of a man caught between his parenting style, pleasing the mothers of the kids and making room for the new woman in his life. Derbez will exec produce the comedy, which will be written by Aseem Batra and Eduardo Cisneros. Cisneros, who will reunite with frequent collaborator Derbez on the comedy, will co-exec produce.
NBC, meanwhile, has picked up script The Great Brown Hope, a single-camera comedy created by Isaac Gonzalez (Bordertown). The comedy centers on Nick, who after he’s kicked out of UCLA following a legendary semester, moves back home with his smothering, working-class — and very disappointed — Mexican family in Logan Heights, San Diego.
Gonzalez will also be credited as a co-EP on the comedy, which is also exec produced by Derbez and Odell.
Both projects hail from Universal Television.
The comedies come as diversity continues to be a high priority for broadcast networks, who this development season have put a focus on family comedy. “We’re all trying to figure out the family dynamic that’s not currently on the air,” ABC Studios executive vice president Patrick Moran told THR, noting that his studio in particular was looking for diverse voices — particularly Latino.
For its part, ABC recently picked up a family comedy inspired by the life of comedian Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias (Cristela) as the network has found success with such diverse family fare as Black-ish,Fresh Off the Boat,Dr. Kenas well as veteran The Goldbergs.
In Derbez, the networks have a brand star with a built-in following attached, which — should either comedy move forward — would give either network a leg up with marketing and public awareness. (ABC, for its part, found success with Pryanka Chopra and Quantico, utilizing her massive social media fan base to help launch the series as one of the few breakouts of the 2015-16 broadcast season.)
Nicholas Gonzalez has booked a ticket to Bordertown…
Fox has announced that the 38-year-old Mexican American actor will voice the character of Ernesto Gonzalez on the network’s new animated series Bordertown.
From Family Guy’s Mark Hentemann and Seth MacFarlane, the series will explore family, politics and everything in between. It centers on two very different families living in a fictional Southwest desert town on the U.S. – Mexico border.
Gonzalez’s character is described as an ambitious immigrant and family man, who has been in the country less than 10 years, but is already doing better than his neighbor Bud Buckwald (voiced by Hank Azaria), which, it turns out, is a bit of an issue for the less-industrious native.
Azaria’s character is a married father of three and a Border Patrol agent who is just a tad behind the times and feels slightly threatened by the cultural changes transforming his neighborhood.
In addition to Gonzalez and Azaria, the voice cast members include Alex Borstein, Missi Pyle, Judah Friedlander and guest voice Efren Ramirez.
Seth MacFarlane is bringing Americans an animated view of life along the U.S.-Mexico border…
Fox has given a 13-episode order to the new animated comedy Bordertownfrom the Family Guycreator and Mark Hentemannto debut during the 2014-2015 TV season.
The show, created by Hentemann, takes place in a fictitious desert town in Texas near the border with Mexico. The show revolves around Bud Buckwald, a married father of three and a Border Patrol agent not adjusting well to the cultural changes around him, and his next-door neighbor Ernesto Gonzales, a Mexican immigrant and father of four.
Bordertown takes a satirical look at America’s cultural shifts through the evolving relationships between the two families.
Bordertown has been in development at Fox for several years. In 2009, it was considered to be on Fox’s “hot list” along with Bob’s Burgers, which eventually made it on the air.
Now Bordertown will be getting its turn in the spotlight. Fox has room on Sunday night for a new series as American Dad is set to move to TBS next year.
The network also recently scrapped plans to air Murder Police, which had been given a 13-episode order. That show is now being shopped to other networks.
Fox still has additional seasons of The Simpsons, Family Guy and Bob’s Burgers in the works, and is also developing a wide array of additional animated projects, including one from Flight of the Conchords‘Bret McKenzie.
Hentemann and MacFarlane will executive produce Bordertown for 20th Century Fox Television.