Vicente Canales’ Film Factory Entertainment has boarded international sales on Daniel Sánchez Arévalo’s “Caza mayor,” a Movistar Plus+ Original feature that has just begun shooting in Spain’s Extremadura region.
A theatrical release is set for 2027 through Warner Bros. Pictures Spain.
Led by Antonio de la Torre (“The Endless Trench,” “The Realm”) and co-starring Mariló Márquez Villa and Julián Villagrán (“Grupo 7,” “The Department of Time”), “Caza mayor” is positioned as a rural thriller with flashes of black comedy.
Penned by María Ballesteros and José Antonio de Pascual, the script kicks off with a jolt: In the middle of the night, José Luis, an Extremadura pig herder played by De la Torre, comes home covered in blood, insisting he has seen a tiger.
Is he telling the truth – or improvising an outlandish alibi to hide that he was stealing three Iberian pigs?
From there, the story builds on the uncertainty, rocking the somnolence of a small town in the province of Badajoz, and forcing a community to choose between disbelief and the need to prove what can’t be seen.
The film is produced by Spain’s leading paybox Movistar Plus+, tax vehicle La película del Tigre A.I.E., Félix Tusell’s Estela Films, Carmela Martínez Oliart’s Tenampa Films; Cut One, part of Mediawan’s Boomerang TV, a recently launched outfit headed by Rafa Taboada; Arturo Valls’ Pólvora Films and Sánchez Arévalo’s company Tinnitus, with the participation of Atresmedia and the collaboration of Atresmedia Cine.
Sánchez Arévalo has framed the film as a deliberate genre blend — thriller, drama, black comedy and Western — emphasizing that its resistance to easy labelling was central to the appeal.
Elsewhere, he signalled in a statement that the project’s resistance to pigeon-holing with regard to its tone is part of its design: “It’s difficult for me to find references. And I suppose that inability to categorize it is what attracted me most to the idea and what I pursue most,” he said.
Rooted in contemporary rural Spain, to protect that grounding, Sánchez Arévalo is surrounding de la Torre with non-professional actors drawn from the Extremadura town of Fregenal de la Sierra after an extensive local casting process.
The aim is a naturalistic feel and immersion in a distinctive Extremaduran accent, a register the filmmaker notes has been little exploited on screen.
The project adds a market-facing layer to Movistar Plus+’s film slate at a time when the platform continues to operate as a key driving force behind Spain’s film and TV production, using originals to scale local ambition and feed a production landscape that increasingly thinks in theatrical-plus-platform terms.
“From the moment we read the first versions of the script for ‘Caza mayor,’ we were hooked by the project’s strength — a very personal blend of thriller and dark comedy, with emotional beats and a carousel of memorable characters,” said Guillermo Farré, Movistar Plus+ head of original films and Spanish cinema.
“It’s a look at today’s rural world that we believe will really draw attention, and it fits perfectly with Movistar Plus+’s commitment to backing projects with a unique viewpoint — projects that surprise audiences and have the ambition to reach a wide public,” he added.
“Caza mayor” adapts the fiction podcast “El Tigre,” written by Ballesteros and De Pascual, that won the 2025 Ondas Award for best fiction podcast.
The film’s start of production coincides with Sánchez Arévalo seeing box office traction from his latest release: the Bambú and StudioCanal-produced “Rondallas,” opened by Beta Fiction, has scored by Feb. 1 €1.77 million ($2.11 million) after five weeks at the Spanish box office, a performance that underlines Sánchez Arévalo’s standing as one of Spain’s foremost crossover filmmakers.
“Caza mayor” is financed with support from Spain’s ICAA film institute and regional backing from the Junta de Extremadura and the Comunidad de Madrid.
