Netflix began shooting La Regenta, a present-day feature adaptation of the 1884–85 novel by Leopoldo Alas, known as Clarín, on Friday 23 October, with Mar Coll directing Ester Expósito, the company said in its Spanish newsroom. María Zamora produces through Elástica Films, which is making its first project for Netflix.
Key facts
- La Regenta: Netflix original feature, shooting since 23 October 2026 in Spain.
- Director: Mar Coll, who co-wrote the screenplay with Anna R. Costa and Diego Vega.
- Producer: María Zamora, Elástica Films (first Netflix collaboration).
- Cast: Ester Expósito as Ana Ozores, with Oriol Pla, Vito Sanz and Borja Luna.
- Release date, budget, running time and any cinema window: not announced.
The pairing tells Spanish producers where some of Netflix’s local money is now going. Elástica is best known for festival-led auteur films released first in cinemas, and Coll comes from the same circuit. Netflix has handed one of the country’s most studied novels to that team as a streaming original.
The team
Coll, from Barcelona, made her debut with Tres días con la familia (2009). Her third feature, Salve Maria, received a special mention from the international competition jury at Locarno in 2024, according to the festival’s palmarès. That film was also produced by Zamora and also starred Oriol Pla, who here plays the cathedral canon Fermín de Pas. Vito Sanz is Ana’s husband, Víctor Quintanar, and Borja Luna the local seducer Álvaro Mesía.
Expósito, who rose to international attention in Netflix’s series Élite, plays the title role. In the Netflix statement, Coll calls her approach “radically personal” and says the film centres on Ana’s loneliness, describing the character’s search for meaning as “a form of resistance”.
Zamora and the distributor Enrique Costa set up Elástica in 2021, according to the company profile Netflix published. Its productions include Carla Simón’s Alcarràs and Romería and Jaione Camborda’s O Corno, and it co-produces Mia Hansen-Løve’s If Love Should Die. It also distributes La bola negra, No. 1 in Spain for five weekends, according to Box Office.
Earlier versions and the shoot
The novel has reached the screen twice before. Gonzalo Suárez directed a 1974 film with Emma Penella as Ana, and Fernando Méndez-Leite adapted it for TVE in 1995 as a three-part miniseries led by Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, as La Nueva España noted. Levante-EMV reported that the TVE series averaged close to six million viewers.
Vetusta, the book’s setting, is modelled on Oviedo. El Comercio, citing unnamed sources, reported that Mieres and Langreo in Asturias are among the locations, and La Nueva España added Oviedo. Netflix has confirmed neither the locations nor the schedule.
Where it sits in Netflix’s Spanish plan
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos pledged more than €1bn ($1.14bn at the rate Reuters used) for Spanish production over 2025–2028, in June 2025. Its 2026 Spanish films include Oriol Paulo’s En nombre de otro, Variety reported in January. In its exclusive on La Regenta, Variety placed the project alongside Netflix’s adaptations of One Hundred Years of Solitude in Colombia and The Eternaut in Argentina.
Terms between Netflix and Elástica were not disclosed, nor whether Netflix holds worldwide rights, the usual model for its originals. Netflix also buys into films as one prebuyer among several, as on the French thriller Le grand réveil, where a French distributor and a sales agent kept their roles. More is in our Distribution & Streaming coverage and on the Spain page.
Our reading
For independent producers in Spain, this is a template worth watching. Elástica has built its value on films that win festival prizes and then earn real admissions at home. A Netflix original swaps that route for a single buyer, a guaranteed budget and worldwide reach, at the likely cost of the cinema run and the rights library. If the deal follows Netflix’s standard terms, Elástica gains a fee and a credit; it does not gain an asset.
For Netflix, a classic novel with a festival director is a bet that Spanish prestige can travel the way its Latin American literary adaptations did. The next evidence is the release plan: whether La Regenta gets a Spanish cinema window or a festival premiere before streaming, and how high it reaches in Netflix’s global non-English chart.