Spain’s WAP Media Group has added a fiction label to its production stable, and it is pointing that label squarely at Latin America. At this week’s Iberseries & Platino Industria event in Madrid, the company unveiled Ultramar, to be led by Mexican executive Alonso Aguilar, who recently left Amazon MGM Studios Mexico.
Aguilar spent more than five years at the studio leading original productions and worked on titles including Mentiras, Cada minuto cuenta, ¿Quién lo mató? and Nadie nos va a extrañar. At WAP, he will run fiction initiatives across the group, with an anchor in Mexico and Latin America and a bridge into Spain.
Where Ultramar sits inside WAP
WAP Media was created in early 2025 from the merger of Wakai, a sports-docuseries specialist, and The Pool, an entertainment producer. Those companies have kept their identities as production labels. Ultramar becomes a third label rather than a consolidation of the group.
Aguilar said Ultramar will “promote the group’s fiction predominantly in Mexico and Latin America” and will explore synergies with Wakai Media and The Pool in sports and entertainment.
WAP’s structure is now built around three distinct production labels:
- Ultramar — scripted fiction for Mexico, Latin America and Spain
- Wakai Media — sports docuseries
- The Pool — entertainment formats and production
The financing math behind the launch
Ultramar will run a licensing model and target co-financing or coproduction for its projects. That is more than an operational detail; it reflects a wider shift in how streamers are funding scripted content.
WAP founding partner and Wakai CEO David Quintana put the market pressure bluntly: platforms are “increasingly open to sharing certain windows to reduce their costs,” and producers are trying to “reduce the percentage of the main platform’s contribution to each project.”
For media and entertainment planners, the signal is that a single-platform green light no longer equals a fully funded production. Deals are being rebuilt around mixed financing, windowing and retained rights.
Why it matters: a label with a licensing model can take a project to multiple buyers across windows, rather than handing the full commission to one platform. That changes risk, rights and the type of slate a producer can afford to build.
The wider market logic is simple. Platforms are rationalising original spend. Producers are using labels and co-financing to fill the gap. Spain-Latin America structures add one more layer: access to two Spanish-language markets with different buyers and quotas.
What to watch
The immediate test is whether Ultramar arrives with coproduction partners already attached, or whether it first develops a slate and then shops windows. Its mention of sports and entertainment synergies suggests WAP will package non-fiction and fiction capabilities in pitches that pure scripted houses cannot match.
For distributors and ad-supported services, the label is another potential supplier of licensed Spanish-language drama—useful as free ad-supported and FAST channels keep hunting for cost-effective scripted catalog.
Source: C21media
