Former Moviestar Plus+ fiction and entertainment head Domingo Corral intends to continue being Domingo Corral after striking an overall first-look TV deal with HBO Max.
“I found a home,” Corral the former director of original content at Movistar Plus+ until he was fired in 2025 told The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday while attending the MIA Market in Rome. “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,” he added.
While at the Spanish pay-TV and streaming giant, Corral gave a green light to Cannes breakout films like Oliver Laxe’s Oscar-nominated drama Sirât, Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo’s La Bola Negra, a epic about gay men in war-torn Spain and the Spanish entry for best international feature film at the Oscars, the Javier Bardem drama The Beloved, from director Rodrigo Sorogoyen, and director Alauda Ruiz de Azua’s Sundays.
Corral’s sudden exit from Movistar Plus+ led 144 members of the Spanish creative community, including Bardem, Penélope Cruz and Pedro Almodóvar, to sign an open letter in support of the producer, warning of the damage his exit could have on the Spanish industry.
Now with his own indie production banner backed by the Warner Bros. Discovery streamer newly-acquired by Paramount Skydance, Corral said of his exclusive TV series collaboration: ‘I’m very happy I can work with HBO, because it’s very important to work with a commissioner that wants to make the same type of shows that I want to make, and that we share the same vision and the same passion for quality TV.”
The first TV series from that overall deal is the 1980s-set El Nani, about a petty criminal from the Spanish slums wrongly arrested amid Spain’s transition from fascism to democracy, and to be written and directed by Alberto Rodríguez and Rafael Cobos (The Anatomy of a Moment).
Expect few series from a “focused” producer, Corral insisted, and TV shows that bring on board the best Spanish creative talent he often worked with while at MovieStar Plus+. At the same time, now for the first time with a global streamer in HBO Max, Corral understands he will need to make series specific to Spain’s political and cultural reality that also potentially resonate worldwide.
“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 argued. Of course, for that vision to be realized, HBO Max under Paramount Skydance will need to continue being HBO.
Corral has no crystal ball, but the early omens are promising after Casey Bloys signed a new multiyear deal to oversee HBO Max and Paramount+ in a new role at Skydance. “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,” Corral told THR.
