Hypenate Eva Longoria Criss Abrego
Entertainment entrepreneur Cris Abrego and director, producer, and activist Eva Longoria launched a media holding company and premium content studio, Hyphenate Media Group, supported by Banijay. The announcement took place during the presentation “The future of content: What comes next?” at Mipcom in Cannes.
The new company will invest in creator-led companies and develop and produce original programming. Abrego will serve as the company’s CEO and Longoria its creative director.
Banijay, led by President Stéphane Courbit and CEO Marco Bassetti, where Abrego has served as President of the Americas since 2020 (a role he will retain), has made a strategic investment in the new business to accelerate its growth.
Abrego and Longoria, business collaborators for 20 years, identified several creator-led companies with proven leadership and potential to scale. They will dedicate the initial phase of Hyphenate Media Group’s growth to developing its portfolio of partners.
Hyphenate offers an alternative model, supporting creator-preneurs as they build their own companies and develop projects to sell independently. The new venture will boost the creative production and negotiating capabilities of its partner companies through capital investment, brand development, collaborative leverage, and infrastructure provided by Hyphenate’s core leadership team.
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Hyphenate Media Group acquired the entire roster of UnbeliEVAble Entertainment, an independent production label founded by Longoria in 2005 and behind titles such as Telenovela, Grand Hotel, and Searching for Mexico. UnbeliEVAble Entertainment’s projects will be incorporated into the core operations of the new business, with Hyphenate taking over and advancing the entire pipeline and the development of new scripted and unscripted projects.
Their first title, Apple TV+’s Land of Women, is expected to launch in 2024. Both Abrego and Longoria will produce exclusively for the new company, including all television projects directed by Longoria.
Cris Abrego, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Hyphenate Media Group said: “Eva and I are building an engine for culture-defining content by investing in visionary multi-hyphenate artists and providing these extraordinary creative leaders with the resources and infrastructure they need to scale their businesses (…) I have known Stéphane and Marco for many years and I am grateful to have their support and investment in this next chapter.”
Eva Longoria, co-founder and creative director of Hyphenate Media Group, added: “We intend to provide greater financial participation to creators, talents, and entrepreneurs – the Hyphenates. Given the multiple transformations our business is undergoing, I can’t think of a better time to lean on creators, who are the essential drivers of the creative enterprise.”
“This is our first strategic investment in the US script market, a space that we had explored for some time but never, until now, found the right solution,” noted Marco Bassetti, CEO of Banijay.
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