Eva Longoria
Eva Longoria, brought in as one of many executive producers on Lifetime’s Devious Maids, has managed to pull off something her former boss Marc Cherry couldn’t: she sold an American adaptation of a telenovela to ABC.
Maybe.
Cherry tried the same tactic with Devious Maids, to the point of getting the greenlight on a pilot–based on a Mexican telenovela called Ellas son la Alegría del Hogar. But ABC passed on the finished product, and Cherry soon sold it to Lifetime instead. (Longoria joined the project after its placement at Lifetime.)
This time, ABC has announced that it has “bought” a project called Trust from Longoria’s UnbeliEVAble Entertainment. Trust, they say, is adapted from Pura Sangre, a melodrama that aired for 126 episodes in 2007 and 2008, and has been adapted to other Spanish-speaking countries. The American version, written by Katie Lovejoy (NBC’s Dracula), revolves around a Miami attorney who finds himself in a love triangle between his ex-girlfriend, Rosella Lagos, and her fiancé. In the process, he gets drawn into the drama of Rosa’s dysfunctional family. The names and locations indicate there may be some prime roles of Latinos playing Latinos, but no casting decisions have been announced as yet. And “bought” is an elusive term in Hollywood; the indication is that they have purchased the script, but whether they are looking at rewrites or have authorized a pilot is unclear; there are plenty of steps that remain between this “purchase” and a slot of the ABC schedule.
Still, the response at the network shows a continuing, industry-wide interest in Latino content that has done well in other countries; adaptations of a number of telenovelas have been shopped at all the networks, in continuing attempts to duplicate the multinational success of ABC’s own Ugly Betty, a hit throughout South America and Europe before it arrived in the U.S. market.
Longoria’s company also produce the short-lived Ready for Love for NBC; she is also a producer (and co-host) of the 2013 NCLR ALMA Awards that will be broadcast nationally for the first time on MSNBC, Friday September 27.
