Secuoya Studios and Arrivelo Producciones are teaming to develop the first TV series focusing on the foundation and legacy of the Bacardi spirits company.
Inspired by the true story of Bacardi’s founding and rise to global recognition, the series is being developed in collaboration with The Bacardi Archives, a private collection managed by the Bacardi company.
Secuoya describes the show’s narrative as “one of ambition, adversity and family that begins with founder Don Facundo Bacardí Massó and his vision to create the world’s first light-bodied rum. The series will narrate how the company persevered from its humble beginnings in Cuba in the 1800s through countless hardships, political turmoil, economic crisis, and forced exile from its homeland to become a global spirits empire.”
While specific details about what will be included in the show are still being developed, Zeta says that the period drama will touch on era-appropriate themes such as “political revolution, economic crises, pioneering expansion, social changes, women’s emancipation, commercial disputes, Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, and the betrayals of Cuban revolutionaries, which forced many into exile.”
Founded in 1862, Bacardi remains family-owned after more than 160 years of operation. Today, it’s the largest privately owned international spirits company and boasts more than 200 brands and labels. Earlier this week, Forbes named Bacardi the 79th best company in the world to work for.
Production will be headed by showrunner and director Jonathan Jakubowicz (“Resistance,” “Hands of Stone”), with other talent from both sides of the camera set to be announced soon.
“For the past two centuries, the Bacardi company has played a role in the events shaping Cuban history while also leading one of the greatest entrepreneurial stories of all time,” Jakubowicz said of the story he plans to tell. “It’s a true honor to bring this never-before-heard story to life with the help of its protagonists, who have graciously opened their archives to us. I have always dreamed of creating an epic that captures the complex history of Latin America and its relationship with the United States and Europe.”
Zeta and Jakubowicz currently have a completed pilot script and a bible for the show’s first season. While all parties involved are hoping to tell a multi-season story, Secuoya CEO Brendan Fitzgerald says they’ll hold nothing back when producing season one.
“We’ve had conversations about how many seasons we’d like to do, but what we’re pushing for right now is one great season where we will use all our best ideas to deliver something special, then start thinking about the next thing,” the executive told Variety ahead of today’s announcement. “I think that’s what the market requires now, and if we start saving things for a later season, the later seasons may never come.”
Acknowledging that the industry has moved on past “peak TV,” Fitzgerald says the landscape is still a crowded one, and the Bacardi series will have to be special to cut through the noise.
“We know that two weeks before our series drops on whatever platform it ends up on, a world-class piece of television will come out from somebody else. Two weeks after our show drops, there’s going to be another one. We have that brief space to command the attention of the planet,” he explained.