Hot Spanish production outfit Apaches Entertainment is set to launch a new production company called Mapache focusing on smaller budget local titles.

Apaches have announced the news at the San Sebastian film festival where they are promoting their projects Verbo, directed by Eduardo Chapero-Jackson, and Nacho Vigalondo’s sci-fi romantic comedy Extraterrestrial

Mapache is an association made up of myself and Belen Atienza at Apaches, alongside Maria Angulo who will head up the operation,” Enrique Lopez Lavigne, founder of Apaches, told ScreenDaily. “Belen and I have every confidence in the good comercial sense and the magnificent relationships with talent that Maria has demonstrated with her previous projects, such as No Controles and Una Hora Mas En Canarias, among others. Apaches will serve as the financial umbrella in the following projects that Maria develops.”

The first two projects on their slate are Me, Man (Yo Hombre), a generational comedy about what it’s like to be a man in the 21st century, written by Abraham Sastre and Ivan Bouso, which will shoot in spring next year, and El Expediente, a genre project based on real events, written by Fernando Navarro, which is in the early phase of development.

“We will develop projects that adjust to the realities of the Spanish market with competitive buidgets and and formulas directed at the general public,” Angulo told ScreenDaily. “It is a flexible organisation that intends from the start to incorporate the television companies and the distributors in its projects. Our intention is to attend to the Spanish market, without distancing the possibilty of collaboration and sales in the international market.”

Apaches Entertainment currently has an incredibly busy slate, which includes Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s film Intruders, starring Clive Owen, which opened San Sebastian, Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Impossible, starring Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts, Extraterrestrial, Verbo, and Vigalondo’s new English-language project Windows, which will be co-produced by Antena 3 and is due to shoot next year with Wild Bunch handling sales.