The true-fiction novel by the Argentine writer will be adapted by both companies into a podcast, a TV fiction and a docuseries.
BTF Media and Madrid-based IP management company TheMadMediaCo announced on Tuesday, during Iberseries Platino Industria, that they are teaming to co-develop and co-produce Argentine true crime non-fiction novel Magnetized (Magnetizado), as revealed by Variety.
The adaptation will be made across a range of media, formats and markets. First up is a podcast, to be followed shortly by a TV fiction series and docuseries.
Magnetized is the final book published by Argentine writer Carlos Sebastián Busqued, and the new productions will be based on the novel, along with 90 hours of recorded conversation with psychiatric ward inmate Ricardo Melogno decades after Melogno, then a 20-year-old, killed four taxi drivers in Buenos Aires in 1982.
“With impressive literary skill, Magnetized first follows and then subverts all true crime, serial killer genre conventions in an intelligent, fascinating, and chilling way,” BTF Media and TheMadMediaCo commented Tuesday.
“Melogno’s mind and deeds defy every single forensic and psychiatric category and [suggest] how challenging it is to apprehend horror at its deepest level in the human soul,” they added.
“The exceptionality of MagnetizED as a work of literature and the way it is written using recorded conversations between the killer and the writer, forensic reports, press clips, interviews, etc., provides ample opportunities to be developed as premium content across a variety of formats and media,” noted Francisco Cordero, BTF Media partner and CEO.
Podcast development, using the recorded conversations between the killer and the writer, is at an “advanced stage,” he said. A TV fiction series and a docuseries will follow “soon.”
“The agreement with BTF Media is the best example of our strategy of acquiring, creating, and developing premium IP content for a variety of media as part of our managed portfolio of IPs and partnering with key players in the most important territories and markets,” observed Rocio Rodiel, partner and CEO of TheMadMediaCo, praising BTF’s “creative vision and production knowledge.”
Few companies have grown and diversified as fast as BTF Media, one of the best connected and most active of independent production houses in Latin America.
BTF Media is one of the most well-known producers in Latin America with credits such as the bioseries about Juan Gabriel and Selena, with Disney Media Distribution; and the upcoming Maradona: Blessed Dream for Amazon Prime Video, among others.
