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. 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.
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