Chile’s Screen Capital, three years after launching a $20 million venture capital funds to support film and television series, has launched Screen II. It will fund projects in the digital entertainment industry: Virtual Reality, Apps, OTT platforms, Extended Reality(XR), etc.
Screen Capital is co-founded by former Chile Film Commissioner Joyce Zylberberg and Tatiana Emden, who once headed Chile’s Development Fund, and has among its key partners, Edgar Spielmann, ex-VP and COO of Fox Networks Group Latin America.
The Screen II investment fund is supported by a mixture of private and public sector investors. This includes Alex Garcia, a Mexican producer who has invested in many film, TV and music projects over the years.
“It was a natural step for me given all that I have worked on in the past,” he told Variety. “The digital space is the today and tomorrow of content. The analogue world is on the wane and will eventually only serve as a marketing tool for the digital space,” he added.
Screen II will launch in March, with the goal of investing in an average 10 companies. Zylberberg said. According to Zylberberg, the fund will be strengthened by record growth in the digital entertainment sector.
The Interamerican Development Bank has found that Latin America and the Caribbean are home to 397 million videogamers. About 80% of them are concentrated in Mexico and Brazil.
“Our region ranks second with the highest increase in the industry, with an annual growth rate of 13.56 % comparable with the increase in data processing services in the United States,” it reads.
Price Waterhouse Coopers report ‘Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2018-2022’ forecasts an average annual growth of more than 40% in the virtual reality field and close to 10% for digital content distributed on streaming platforms.
Screen I has been backed by NonStop TV president Patricio Rabuffetti. Ralph Haiek, chairman, Screen One Investment Committee, has also identified companies with proven track record and viable TV series to back. “We’re restarting the fund which wasn’t easy as we were caught by the pandemic at a time when most production stopped,” Zylberberg told Variety.
Helping to drive Screen I’s pipeline are StoryA, an audiovisual content accelerator created by Screen I and Condeco Corp, founded by Angel Zambrano who participates on Jan. 25 in Content Americas panel ‘New Investment Funds in Latin America’ along with Spielmann and BTF Media Founder-CEO, Francisco Cordero.
StoryA’s mission is to seek out and select audiovisual projects, bridging the gap between independent producers and the main players in the industry.
Also feeding into the slate is Fabula Screen, a strategic alliance between Screen One and the Larrain brothers’ powerhouse Chilean production company, Fabula, for the production of movies and series. The first film to be released is “Maquillame Otra Vez,” directed by Chile’s Guillermo Calderón for the Mexican market, to be released by exhibition leader Cinepolis in more than 600 screens.
Screen One has also partnered with prominent Latin American producers Moises Chiver and Paula Manzanedo for the production of “Memory,” a feature film directed by producer-helmer Michel Franco (“New Order”) and starring Jessica Chastain.
“We have a fourth strategic line with producers from Argentina, among them NonStop where we will partner mainly on the creative side,” said Emden.
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