Netflix has begun production on a feature adaptation of La Regenta, the Spanish classic by Leopoldo Alas, better known as Clarín, with Ester Expósito attached to play Ana Ozores and Locarno winner Mar Coll directing. The announcement, made Friday, positions the film as a major Spanish title for 2027.
Produced by María Zamora at Elastica Films, the adaptation reinterprets the 19th-century story for the present in what Netflix describes as a “fresh female perspective.” The novel, often ranked only behind Don Quixote in Spain, follows a young woman trapped in a stifling provincial city and a loveless marriage.
What the project is
Published between 1884 and 1885, La Regenta centres on Ana Ozores, married to Victor Quintanar, a former magistrate twice her age. Her private crisis becomes a conflict among desire, faith and social power as the men around her—her confessor Fermín de Pas and local seducer Álvaro Mejías—watch and judge her every move.
The film updates that frame for a contemporary audience. Alongside Expósito, the cast includes Oriol Pla as Fermín de Pas, Vito Sanz as Victor Quintanar and Borja Luna as Álvaro Mesía. Supporting players include Clara Ingold, Carlos González, Ana Torrent, Itsaso Arana and Gonzalo de Castro.
- Ester Expósito as Ana Ozores
- Oriol Pla as Fermín de Pas
- Vito Sanz as Victor Quintanar
- Borja Luna as Álvaro Mesía
Why it matters for streaming
This is the latest move in Netflix’s Spanish-language literary strategy. The platform adapted Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude in Colombia and The Eternaut in Argentina; both landed in the streamer’s Global Top 10 for non-English titles and became signature shows. La Regenta extends that playbook into feature film.
Coll described her approach as “radically personal,” focused on the loneliness and heartbreak of the regent’s wife. That point of view is the commercial hook: it gives a dense, nearly 700-page novel a clear modern entry point for audiences who have never read it.
What to watch
Coll has spent two decades questioning established norms, from Catalan bourgeois hypocrisy in Three Days With the Family to motherhood in Salve María, which won a Locarno Special Mention in 2024. Zamora has built Elastica Films into a home for a new generation of Spanish auteurs, often women.
For media planners and entertainment marketers, La Regenta is a useful test of how streamers turn literary prestige into subscriber-facing campaigns. The formula is familiar: a known IP, a star with international reach, an auteur director and a timely angle. Expect the 2027 marketing to foreground the female gaze rather than period-piece nostalgia.
Source: Variety
