MGM’s new joint venture Gato Grande Productions — from Mexican entrepreneurs Miguel Aleman and Antonio Cué — has just acquired exclusive life rights to Mexican singer and internationally beloved recording artist Luis Miguel and will produce a TV series about him. Gato Grande is launching the venture with this project, with the aim to produce Spanish-language content for worldwide audiences.
Miguel, who was born Luis Miguel Gallego Basteri, is the top-grossing artist in Latin America, and has sold more than 100 million albums worldwide. He is so popular in Mexico that he is known as El Sol de México (the Sun of Mexico).
Overseeing the development of the Luis Miguel TV series will be Gato Grande’s head of development Carla González Vargas, who is also an independent filmmaker in Mexico and author of film history books including The Path Of Contemporary Mexican Cinema From 1990 To 2006. Vargas’ family owns the Mexican media conglomerate MVS Comunicaciones.
“It has taken me a long time to want to tell my story and I have been looking for the right team to tell it the way it should be told,” said Luis Miguel in a statement.
Miguel, whose manager-father got him going in music at an early age, actually had his first album come out when he was 11. Three years later, he would win his first Grammy at age 14 in a song he did with Sheena Easton. His mother was an actress and his father a musician-songwriter as well. Tragedy struck him early in life when suddenly, his mother disappeared. He would not know what happened to her until years later when he found that she was in a mental institution. He eventually broke from his overbearing father (they were fighting over financial issues) and struck out on his own. His father is now deceased. Miguel, who now has a family of his own, is also a devout Catholic.
The announcement was made this morning by Mark Burnett, MGM’s President of Television and Digital. “We spent many hours at my home with Luis Miguel discussing ideas for how best to tell his story and we are thrilled to be in business with him,” said Burnett in making the announcement. “We see the value of premium content for the Spanish-speaking market throughout the world, and we look forward to many additional projects across all platforms that we can now develop with Antonio, Miguel and Gato Grande. This is only the beginning.”
