In the wake of Netflix’s push into Spanish-speaking television and Hulu adapting Isabel Allende‘s House of the Spirits, the Latin American arm of the Walt Disney Company is preparing a biopic about the life of Spanish singer and songwriter Julio Iglesias.
The 13-episode series, based off the memoir Confessable Secrets written by Iglesias’ long-time former manager, Alfredo Fraile will chart Iglesias’ life and career. The singer started out as a reserve goalkeeper for the soccer team Real Madrid before being injured in a serious car accident. The accident ruined his soccer career but put Iglesias on the path to becoming a world-renowned performer.
The series is a joint production between Disney Media Distribution Latin America and the Miami-based Cinemat. This isn’t the first bio-series DMDLA has done, starting in 2015 with the successful Telemundo series about singer Juan Gabriel. They’re also preparing a 13-episode series entitled El Rey, about the life of Mexico’s ranchera singer-songwriter, Jose Alfredo Jimenez and are also the ones behind the recently announced Diego Maradona series set to debut on Amazon Prime next year.
Iglesias is a singer who has universal appeal so there’s no doubt this won’t just be limited to Spanish-speaking audiences. The commitment to presenting unique Latinx stories is heartening and couldn’t have come at a better time considering the statistics are showing the growing power of Latino audiences.
There is no current release date for when the bio-series will debut.