Former Movistar Plus head of content Domingo Corral views his production agreement with HBO Max as the pathway to achieve his long-held aim: producing independent television and films that are both broadly appealing and of top-tier quality.
His unexpected departure from Telefónica-owned Movistar after an 11-year run in May 2025 was followed by news in March that he was launching a new chapter as an independent producer with a deal in place at HBO Max.
“Right now I don’t intend to produce a huge slate,” Corral tells Deadline in an exclusive conversation at the MIA market in Rome. “I have this partnership, and I feel fortunate to have found a place where the commissioners share the same outlook I do. It’s crucial that you and the commissioner see things the same way.”
Announced at Series Mania earlier this year, Corral — who served as an executive producer on Sîrat — will collaborate with HBO Max originals executives Sarah Aubrey and Casey Bloys, both now in senior content roles within the merged Skydance organization, to develop scripted series and feature films. The first project under the arrangement centers on the disappearance of small-time criminal El Nani (Santiago Correla) in 1980s Spain, set against the nation’s shift from dictatorship to democracy.
“After leaving Movistar, you always feel a bit battered,” he adds. “You wonder, ‘What comes next?’ But I felt very lucky. For me, HBO isn’t merely a client; it’s a team of people who hold similar sensibilities and a shared vision.”
Corral’s outlook is shaped by his tenure at Movistar, where the Spanish creative sector embraced him and his commissioning team for their insistence on festival-caliber storytelling that still aimed to reach large audiences. That combination aligns neatly with HBO’s ethos.
“I led original production at Movistar for 11 years inside a telecom company — that’s the intriguing part,” he explains. “I’m grateful to that company for the chance they gave me. Working there meant dealing with engineers and finance people — folks who live with numbers — and over 11 years we delivered originals at Movistar. Do you think people who scrutinize figures all the time would have supported that unless we were making quality work that also appealed to audiences?
“We weren’t producing niche projects solely to chase awards. We did win many awards, but the main aim was to keep subscribers and bring in new ones. I believe you can create quality that’s also mainstream. There’s no contradiction. HBO exemplifies that.”
Before Movistar, Corral spent 15 years at Turner Broadcast System, which for a long time operated alongside HBO under the Time Warner umbrella. He left Turner in 2014 after rising to General Manager and SVP of Turner Iberia, overseeing channels including CNN, TCM, Boing, Cartoon Network and TNT across Spain and Portugal.
Industry backing
When news broke of Corral’s exit from Movistar Plus the previous year, Spain’s creative community reacted with uncommon public outrage, sorrow and concern for a commissioning executive. An open letter signed by nearly 200 industry figures — among them Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz — criticized Telefónica-owned Movistar and praised Corral and his team for a strategy “based on respect for creators, close collaboration with independent producers and listening to all the partners they have worked with, without ever neglecting their focus on entertainment.”
Movistar appeared unsettled; Corral’s de facto successor on the cinema side, Guillermo Farré, later told Deadline that “the goal is clear, the direction of what Domingo started works on many different levels.” Behind closed doors in the Spanish production community, opinions remain divided over whether the company is maintaining the legacy of hits Corral greenlit, including Sîrat, La Peste, La Mesías and the current breakout La Bola Negra.
Movistar — which has since simplified its name by dropping the extra ‘+’ — declined to comment publicly about Corral and his team’s departures. We understand that internally the company frames the changes as part of a broader reorganisation that affected a number of managers, and that it believes it continues to hold a strong position in Spain’s audiovisual ecosystem.
Corral says he still doesn’t know the full reasons for his dismissal. “The vision I believed in worked — not just for me but for my team — so I don’t understand why they made that choice,” he says. “They carried out management changes and other moves, but you’d have to ask them. I don’t know why I was let go. I never asked.”
Corral was speaking to Deadline in Rome immediately after taking part in a MIA panel where he energized an audience by urging commissioners and gatekeepers to take bolder creative risks or risk missing the next cultural phenomenon like La Bola Negra.
“I stand by what I said on stage,” says Corral, a seasoned figure in Spain’s industry whose candid, urgent manner contrasts with the more measured, PR-managed tone of many executives. “I find it hard to act otherwise, because when you create a project you need a vision. That vision isn’t interchangeable. I can’t carry out a plan I don’t believe in. And it wasn’t just me — I had an incredible team supporting me. I led it, but I was surrounded by immensely talented people. Almost all of them were dismissed as well.”
Regarding Movistar Plus’s slate since his departure, Corral is diplomatic. “Honestly, I’ve moved on to something new,” he says. “I’m very excited about this next chapter, and I don’t dwell on the past. I can only wish them well, because they remain very important to the Spanish audiovisual market.”
Plans ahead
Corral’s life outside the corporate structure is still settling into form. At San Sebastián last year, speaking publicly for the first time after leaving Movistar, he joked that seeing “independent producer” next to his name on speaker rosters felt odd because he was still figuring out whether that label fit.
At MIA, he was playfully given a different identity when a giant screen at the Westin Excelsior incorrectly listed him as head of “Good Day Productions” — the name of a separate Domingo Corral, a multidisciplinary artist based in Oakland, California. He took the error in stride, laughing as he repeated his line about feeling uncertain about his new independent-producer status.
Corral’s central conviction is that filmmaking and series-making with festival pedigree and awards potential can — and should — resonate with mainstream audiences. “Many things without quality fail,” he says. “Why must we link the term ‘quality’ to something non-commercial? People want good food, good clothes, good television shows and good films. We should assume that high-quality films and series can also be mainstream.”
That challenges the widespread belief that producing quality material is inherently difficult to achieve. “Difficult is a different matter, yes,” Corral concedes. “But it’s possible.”
Daniel Hayes is a business journalist with a focus on market trends, startups, and corporate strategies.
His sharp analysis and investigative reports make complex financial topics accessible to all readers.
