Miriam Segal’s state-backed banner moves ahead with a 20-film international slate

Inside a workshop at Alicante’s Ciudad de la Luz, a boat used on “People of the Book,” now sold at Toronto by Bleiberg Entertainment, is still sitting among the physical remains of Good Films Studios Spain’s first production. It doubled as part of a ferry and, later, carried refugees across a Mediterranean recreated in the studio’s vast outdoor water tank.

For that sequence, the production recruited migrants through associations in Alicante to work as background actors. Some had lived versions of the journey the film depicts. Producer Miriam Segal recalls watching them recreate the bargaining for places and life jackets before boarding the boat as “one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever witnessed.” Six weeks later, the production picked up the sequence at Ciudad de la Luz, shooting the overloaded vessel capsizing at sea.

It is one vivid example of what Segal is trying to build in Alicante: not simply another international production passing through Spain, but a filmmaking operation designed to stay.

Ciudad de la Luz is busy again. Production trucks fill parts of the 197.7-acre complex; Disney’s live-action “Tangled” has taken over a large portion of the facilities, while Good Films has established offices, workshops and production space of its own. Between them, the two operations account for around 90% of the studio’s current occupancy, according to Ciudad de la Luz director Carmen Alfonso.

The facility has already seen several lives. During its first phase, from 2005 to 2012, it hosted major shoots including Francis Ford Coppola’s “Tetro,” “Asterix at the Olympic Games” and J.A. Bayona’s “The Impossible.” Since reopening in 2022, shoots have included Netflix hit “Under Paris,” “Venom: The Last Dance,” Alberto Rodríguez’s “Los Tigres” and Alejandro Amenábar’s “The Captive.”

GFSS is testing a different proposition: whether sustained production can replace the stop-start rhythm of individual shoots.

Backed by a €19.8 million ($23 million) investment from Spanish state fund SETT alongside private partner Orogen Media and Segal’s Milka Films, Good Films Studios Spain plans 20 international features over 10 years. SETT holds 46% equity of the company.

The model also speaks to a broader shift in Spain’s audiovisual sector: from attracting international shoots through locations, infrastructure and incentives to building companies that can originate, finance and retain ownership of projects from Spain.

Segal brings more than three decades of independent production experience, working across the U.K., Los Angeles and Europe. Her credits include “Good,” starring Viggo Mortensen; “The Infiltrator,” with Bryan Cranston and Diane Kruger; Johnny Depp-Forest Whitaker crime drama “City of Lies”; and, most recently, “Words of War,” starring Maxine Peake and Ciarán Hinds.

The timing matters. Segal argues that casting independent theatrical films has become harder than ever as actors with international market value are tied up for long stretches on films and series for studios and streaming services.

For Segal, the key advantage is not that agents are impressed by having the Spanish state on the cap table. “I’ve never had an agent ask me, ‘Where’s the money from?’” she says. What matters is having committed financing.

For the first time in her career as an independent producer, that allows her to offer pay-or-play deals to actors. “That’s very, very hard for independents. I’ve never been able to before,” Segal says. The structure lets her “play or swim in the same pool” and tell an agent: “We can offer your client a pay-or-play deal on this film.”

Orogen brings the private capital required alongside SETT, but Segal also points to its senior team’s experience in film sales and distribution and its involvement in casting, distribution and commercial viability. She describes its contribution as “business scrutiny,” balancing SETT’s longer-term focus on building a sustainable company in Spain.

That does not mean throwing money at marquee names. Segal says she will not spend millions on “stunt casting” simply to unlock sales, nor let above-the-line costs become disproportionate to the rest of a film’s budget. Her target remains the commercial independent theatrical space, broadly in the $17.4 million-$29 million range, where securing talent with international theatrical value can be critical to financing.

Committed financing also lets GFSS plan several films ahead, rehire crews and structure training with greater continuity.

“You can actually build an industry rather than just make films whenever you can,” Segal says. She estimates it will take around three years for the operation to reach cruising speed.

Inside the GFSS offices, a framed clapboard from “People of the Book” hangs alongside memorabilia from Segal’s earlier productions, while a notably young team works across development and production. Segal says the development team is almost entirely under 30, with younger writers receiving early-career commissions.

The training program follows the same logic. Participants are not unpaid interns, Segal stresses, but juniors hired on proper wages and placed across departments, with the expectation that repeated productions will move them up the ladder.

“People of the Book” offered an early test. Segal says roughly 85% of its crew was Spanish and describes it as “the best crew I have ever worked with across the whole world.”

Her verdict on the opportunity around Alicante is succinct: “It’s an industry waiting to happen.”

GFSS head of production Mamen Tortosa has seen the stop-start nature of production in the region first hand. An Alicante production professional, she has worked on international productions including “The Night House” and “Dr. Death” Season 2, as well as Julio Medem’s “8.”

Large productions have come before and then left. “To have a community, one project isn’t enough,” Tortosa says. Building stronger local crews and companies requires repeated credits and time, but having a producer based at Ciudad de la Luz with a long-term pipeline represents, in her words, “a brutal change.”

Alfonso makes a similar argument from the studio side. Good Films’ planned decade-long stay, she says, provides stability for the facility and surrounding economy while potentially helping justify further investment and attract other producers. The studios expect to remain heavily booked through the end of 2026 and into early 2027.

Ciudad de la Luz already has six soundstages totaling about 118,400 square feet, nearly 30 acres of backlot and about 120,600 square feet of workshops and storage. Its signature roughly 328-by-262-foot outdoor tank has a natural horizon, wave generators and a 394-foot green screen.

Segal also sees room to grow, both around the existing stages and in post-production. Final post on “People of the Book” will take her back to London for two or three months, and she argues that keeping more of that process in Alicante could make Ciudad de la Luz a more complete base for independent producers.

For Alfonso, however, Ciudad de la Luz remains a work in progress. No specific investment in post-production facilities at the complex has yet been approved, she says, and future decisions will be assessed through the Valencian government’s forthcoming audiovisual strategic plan.

Meanwhile, “American Paradise,” “Duchess of Malfi” and “The Seventh Most Important Thing” are moving through early production stages. Segal has also begun commissioning another six projects, including a Spanish-language true story set in Madrid and another Spanish story intended to shoot in English.

GFSS is moving into international sales as well. Veteran sales executive Glenn Ackermann has joined as head of sales. While Bleiberg Entertainment is handling world sales on “People of the Book,” subsequent GFSS titles are intended to be sold in-house.

For Segal, all these strands lead back to the same distinction.

“I make my own films. I’m not a service producer and I never will be,” she says. Europe, she argues, needs to avoid becoming simply somewhere productions arrive for locations and incentives before moving on.

“People come here and use it as a location,” Segal says. “They don’t invest in the ground of it, but we want to change that by embedding paid training into every production, to help build the local industry and develop the filmmakers of the future.”

At Ciudad de la Luz, Good Films is betting that staying put can make the difference.