GO BACK

Esparza has new plan for Latin venture

By Nicole Sperling

July 21, 2005

Veteran Latino producer Moctesuma Esparza is launching an exhibition company and a production-distribution company appealing directly to the 41 million Latinos living in the U.S.

Called Maya Cinemas, the producer of “Selena” and “Introducing Dorothy Dandridge” will open the first of eight multiplexes July 29 in Salinas, Calif. The $24 million project will serve what Esparza calls an underscreened community within Monterey, Calif. The executive’s business plan centers on building theaters in Latino-centric, family-oriented communities offering mainstream, first-run Hollywood movies, along with one screen reserved for specialized, community-interest films.

According to Esparza, U.S. Latinos are the largest moviegoing audience in the country. With and average age of 18, Latinos go to the movies 15 times a year; other Americans average five times a year.

The project, which is on track to open eight theaters by the end of 2006, is being developed in concert with Urban Retail Properties Co., with theatres scheduled to open throughout California and New Mexico, as well as in Chicago, Dallas, and the Bronx, N.Y. In total, the company plans to construct more than 500 screens in the next five years.

Esparza also has opened a new production and distribution company, Maya Pictures. With a mandate to produce and distribute films that play commercially and have an appeal to young Latinos, the company has hired longtime Esparza associate Kimberly Myers. Michael Harpster and Kevin Benson are set to oversee theatrical marketing and distribution.

Esparza in financing both the exhibition and production/distribution companies himself, along with funds from private equity sources.

The first film from the company is the Edward James Olmos feature “Walkout” for HBO. Based on a true story, the film, which just completed its first week of photography, centers on the unequal treatment a Mexican-American student and her fellow students receive in their East Los Angeles high school.

The company also is producing “Circumcized Cinema,” the first scripted series on Si TV – the first English-language Latino cable network. Esparza is an investor in Si TV and was responsible for raising the equity capital for the launch.

Other projects on the company’s slate include “Columbus,” a comedy written by Jorge Aguirre, to be directed by Gabriela Tagliavini; “How Joe Got His Pimp Grimp,” a teen comedy written and directed by Joaquin Perea; “Mango Passion,” a romantic comedy written by Rosemary Alderete; and “Milagro Beanfield War,” a development project with Touchstone Television for a one-hour television series, written by Jeff Melvoin (“Alias”).

 

GO BACK