By Variety | Created at 2026-09-15 11:51:36 | Updated at 2026-09-15 14:33:14
4 hours ago
Chile’s Francisca Alegría and Fernanda Urrejola, co-showrunners of Prime Video’s epic saga “The House of the Spirits” lead the slate of Alma Media Lab, a fledgling publishing-to-screen company based in Miami.
Inspired by such companies as Hello Sunshine or Alloy Entertainment, Alma Media Lab will focus on books and series conceived simultaneously in close collaboration with their authors on projects mainly aimed at the U.S. Hispanic and Latin American market.
“What makes Alma different is its method: a discipline of strategic storytelling, built on 25 years of television and a foundation in philosophy, that adds value to creators’ work at every stage. The story is refined on the page, published as a book and adapted for the screen with its own author — creators keep their voice and their rights protected, and buyers receive material that arrives developed, proven and ready,” said Coca Gómez, co-founder & chief content officer, Alma Media Lab, who will serve as head writer on the drama series that Alegría and Urrejola are developing.
“We’re extremely happy to be developing a show that celebrates one of the juiciest pillars of our modern Latin American identity alongside prolific writer/creator Coca Gómez, whose long career in television has shaped some of our country’s most memorable stories,” said Alegria, adding: “Fernanda and Coca have known each other for over 15 years and now we’ve found the story that finally brings them together as creative partners. After ‘The House of the Spirits,’ we’re chasing that same instinct: stories rooted in Latin America that don’t just travel, but redefine what audiences worldwide expect from our countries’ storytelling.”
“The publishing-to-screen model has already built some of television’s biggest franchises in English. In the U.S. Hispanic and Latin American market, its equivalent has yet to be built,” noted Gómez, a London-born Chilean, whose multiple credits include Chilean series “Cerro Alegre” and “Machos,” both of which she co-created.
Since its launch in January 2026, Alma Media Lab has signed a number of development deals with some of the most influential Hispanic creators working today.
Among them is Latin American bestselling author Carla Guelfenbein, with whom Alma Media Lab holds the exclusive rights to adapt two of her novels with her: the Alfaguara Prize-winning “In the Distance With You” (“Contigo en la distancia”) and “The Nature of Desire” (“La naturaleza del deseo”).
“Novelists spend so much of our lives writing alone. To step out of that solitude and encounter Coca’s agile, brilliant and extraordinarily generous mind has been an exhilarating creative experience,” said Guelfenbein.
“’The Nature of Desire’ is an emotionally charged portrait of passionate love, delving into its most intoxicating heights and devastating depths – a story of longing, risk and transformation. The novel captivated readers with extraordinary enthusiasm and the series promises to ignite that same fervor, drawing viewers into a world they will be eager to experience, discuss and share,” she added.
Alma Media Lab also holds the exclusive rights to Federico Arellano’s memoir, a prominent Colombian jurist, law professor, human rights expert and defense lawyer, who spent 37 years pursuing the truth about the bombing of Avianca Flight 203, long attributed to the infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
His book arrives at the end of this year as the first title from Alma Publishing, Alma Media Lab’s own imprint, with a premium series in parallel development, according to Gómez.
“I present my opera prima, the account of a legitimate fight, of the abrupt change of course in my life and of the sharps and flats that the score of my existence has set before me. It stands as an instrument of historical memory — of the violent course of our grieving nation. It is the complete story of a boy who dreamed of being an artist and became a warrior; a survivor more than a victim, and today a distinguished jurist, inspired by the love of God and by the legacy of his beloved father, still claimed to this day, living between the case files and the songs of his superhero,” Arellano said.
Another Alma Media project in the works is an audiobook trilogy reimagining “Machos,” the telenovela that marked a generation across Latin America and was sold to more than 40 countries.
The trilogy is a work-for-hire commission for Storytel and RDF Media — Canal 13’s audio arm, whose Emisor Podcasting studio produced ‘Caso 63,’ the leading scripted original podcast in Latin America, adapted in English by Spotify as ‘Case 63,’ starring Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac. Storytel and RDF Media hold the rights to the property.
Gómez noted: “The potential reach of these projects goes beyond the U.S. Hispanic and Latin American markets given the fact that 600 million people speak Spanish worldwide.”
