Exclusive: Rubicon’s Chris Albrecht & Jorge Granier on bridging the gap between Lat Am & Hollywood

James Costos (left) reunited with former boss Chris Albrecht (middle) to help finance projects from Rubicon, his new venture with Jorge Granier (right)

Chris Albrecht and Jorge Granier teamed last year to launch Rubicon Global Media, a new venture focused on uniting Latin American & Spanish culture with Hollywood talent. Mark Layton talks strategy and financing with the TV veterans.

While the popular idiom says crossing the Rubicon refers to a point of no return, what Chris Albrecht and Jorge Granier, co-founders of the namesake Rubicon Global Media, aim to achieve is quite the opposite. They instead plan to build a bridge from the Americas, to Europe, and back.

The nascent production company aims to connect global talent with Latin American and Spanish culture, and conversely, Latin American talent to European and US projects, with a multi-lingual approach to their productions.

“We’re not necessarily Spanish-language, but we are looking into Latin America and Spain to find ideas and to find intellectual property that has been successful and might have been overlooked,” Granier tells TBI, who says that Rubicon aims to “elevate” such properties to a worldwide stage and “be a bridge between Hollywood A-list talent and these wonderful ideas from Latin America”.

Veteran Venezuelan exec Granier is the founder and former CEO of Hispanic-focused AVOD firm Pongalo and served as exec producer on The CW series Jane The Virgin, an example of the potential when Lat Am meets US. He says his current IP search covers everything from books to music catalogues, adding that “we have a few libraries of content that we’re looking at – that would be television and film, kind of like where Jane The Virgin came from.”

His American business partner, Albrecht, meanwhile, needs little introduction – he is considered one of the architects of the ‘golden age of television’, overseeing hits such as The Sopranos, The Wire, Sex And The City and Deadwood during his time as chairman & CEO at HBO.

He also served as chief of US firm Starz and, more recently, as president of Legendary Television, which he exited following allegations in last year’s book It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, And Future Of HBO, about his time at the cablenet, which he denies.

Eladio Carrión is working with the firm on a comedic show based on his own life (Source: Rubicon Global Media)

Finding talent & mining libraries

Launching in August 2023, Rubicon came straight out of the gate with a strategic partnership in place with Madrid-based Secuoya Studios. Part of Spanish producer and distributor Secuoya Content Group, the firm is led by former HBO exec James Costos, with the pact reuniting him with his one-time boss.

As part of the multi-project deal, Madrid-based Secuoya Studios will provide development funding and deficit financing for Rubicon series and films.

Later that same month, Rubicon teamed with BTF Media, the Mexican production company behind Maradona: Blessed Dream for Prime Video, Papas Por Encargo for Disney+ and La Muchacha Que Limpia for HBO Max. BTF Media, led by Mexican entrepreneurs and producers Francisco E Cordero and Ricardo Coeto. will also provide development funding for some of Rubicon’s upcoming projects.

Figures have not been disclosed for either partnership, but Spain and Mexico are, unsurprisingly, key markets for Albrecht and Granier, who tell TBI that they are now on the hunt for similar pacts across Latin America.

“We’re looking for places that are interesting and provide incentives for us to go there and build projects there, and hopefully bring world class talent to those destinations,” says Granier.

Rubicon has also partnered with Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson, who worked with Albrecht on the Power franchise at Starz, to develop and co-produce Prey Before You Eat (working title), a Spanish and English-language crime drama, and also struck a deal with singer Eladio Carrión to develop a new multilingual comedic series based on his own life.

“There are two aspects to our business model. One is to do new content; that’s the stuff that’s coming to us off the announcements that we’ve had our deals with Secouya and with BTF Media,” Albrecht tells TBI.

“The other is, we’re raising money to go out and acquire IP libraries, both in the music and the audio-visual space, because they provide not just cashflow for other operations, but an opportunity for us to be able to attract talent and to be able to mine those libraries for new programmes, either new versions or formats or something.”

Rubicon is developing a series with Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson, who worked with Chris Albrecht on Power

Path to production

Albrecht says Rubicon will be “thoughtful” in its project choices because “we want to make sure that we have a path to getting something made” rather than wasting time and money in development on productions that ultimately do not see the light of day.

The financing deals with Secuoya and BTF “offset the risk of development – something that a lot of production companies don’t have the opportunity to do,” says Albrecht.

He explains that “while going to one of the big streamers is certainly something we’re going to have to do above a certain budget,” Rubicon is looking to be creative in how it funds projects for the moment, such as through shrewd multinational and multilingual co-productions.

“[For example], Drops Of God, which we did for Apple when I was at Legendary; we sold it in France (to France Télévisions), because it was set in the world of wine in France, and in Japan (to Hulu Japan), because it was [based on] a Japanese manga.

“With tax credits and Legendary providing a deficit, we were able to make the show and then we sold it to the rest of the world (on Apple TV+). That’s a show that cost a fraction of what Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters, the other show we did for Apple, cost.”

“We think that the opportunity in television is not just to work with different talent, but also to find different ways of funding content. When we partner with companies like Secuoya and BTF, I think we have a better chance of securing a local sale – I always like to call them anchor tenants in the financing model.”

Reputation also comes with its benefits, adds Albrecht, who says: “We’re known to be good producers, known to be able to navigate the world of the tax incentives and have the relationships there.

“We’re trying to build a global media company, albeit a small independent, not a large conglomerate, and we want to be partner friendly. We think we learn a lot from working with companies that are based in different countries, with different cultures and experiences and access to different talent.

“We think that if we can develop a reputation for talent and that if we have a really high percentage of projects that we get involved with and projects that get made, then that’s going to be a really good attribute for our company,” says Albrecht.

Spanish language successes

Albrecht and Granier see growing opportunities for shows from the Latin American and Spanish worlds, pointing to major Spanish-language successes in recent years that range from hit drug drama Narcos and Money Heist (aka La Casa De Papel), which travelled globally on Netflix.

As Granier puts it, an “evolving audience” has become increasingly comfortable with shows from other parts of the world and “have opened their appetite to this type of content.” The veteran exec adds: “I think we can be very successful, not only in the US and Latin America, where we’re making and building these shows, but around the world.”

Granier also points to estimates that the global Spanish speaking audience is around 600 million, highlighting that if the US Hispanic audience was a standalone economy, “it would be the fifth largest economy in the world.”

“So obviously, that’s a big opportunity,” says Albrecht. “There’s an audience; there’s a huge pool of talent; there are certainly a lot of other people already working in this space, but we think we have a different approach.

“We both have a lot of experience, we think our skill sets complement each other and with our business model, that’s going to make us a unique and hopefully desirable place for a lot of people to come work.”