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How ‘Widow’s Bay’ Became the Year’s Creepy, Kooky Breakout Hit

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For nearly 20 years, “Widow’s Bay” was nothing more than the project that Katie Dippold kept in her drawer — and the project that Dippold, who created, showruns and executive produces the Apple TV hit, had been thinking about since her childhood.

“The inspiration was really a feeling,” she said, recalling the sensation she experienced growing up in New Jersey in the 1980s whenever she and her friends would walk past the local (supposedly) haunted house. “I would be so giddy going out on a summer night because I knew I was going to be scared, but we would also laugh and it was very communal,” she said. “That’s been something I’ve wanted to capture my whole life.”

She took a crack at the series for the first time 18 years ago, and it was the original version of the “Widow’s Bay” pilot that landed her a job in 2009 as a staff writer on the Mike Schur-created NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation.”

While there are many similarities between Dippold’s initial spec script and the finished version of the pilot that premiered in April, including its coastal New England setting and many characters, the showrunner describes her original take as more “joke-focused” than she ultimately wanted. She’d always envisioned the show as a horror comedy, but she needed both sides to be serviced well and — even more important — respected.

Matthew Rhys in "Widow's Bay" Episode 1 (Apple TV)
Matthew Rhys in “Widow’s Bay” (Apple TV)

“I don’t know that I would have watched that version of the show,” Dippold said of that draft. “It felt like a parody, and I wanted [the island town of] Widow’s Bay to feel like a very real place in a real world. A place I would want to go to, even if I would die immediately. As a horror fan, I want the tension and the stakes to be taken seriously. I just kept digging away at it.”

It was time and effort well spent. When it debuted, “Widow’s Bay” felt fully formed. How else do you explain the word-of-mouth hype it built over the course of its 10-episode first season? Or its haul of 19 Emmy nominations, the most of any eligible freshman show, including Outstanding Comedy Series and noms for actors Matthew Rhys, Stephen Root, Dale Dickey, Kate O’Flynn, Hamish Linklater and Betty Gilpin?

According to Rhys, who earned an Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series nod, the show felt just as complete on the page as it does on the screen.

“When I read it, I was like, ‘Oh my God, who do I have to kill to make this?’” he said. “I was like, ‘I’ve never read anything like this. I just want to be a part of that.’
“That was the hard pitch I gave them: desperation,” the actor said with a laugh about vying for the starring role of Widow’s Bay mayor Tom Loftis, who is trying his best to promote the community as a tourist magnet despite the unnerving tales that the island may be home to evil spirits that demand human sacrifice.

Widow's Bay
Matthew Rhys and Katie Dippold photographed for TheWrap by Emily Assiran

Attributing the show’s success to any single element would be foolish. Part of the magic of “Widow’s Bay” is that every aspect of it works. But of all the reasons it makes such an immediate and lasting impression, chief among them may be the very thing that kept Dippold “digging away” at it for 18 years: On screen, its world feels vast, mysterious and, its many outlandish details aside, real.

That was a goal that Dippold, Rhys and executive producer and lead director Hiro Murai all latched onto early. “Our baseline visual language for the show became ‘What if this was real?’” said Murai, who nabbed a directing nom for the pilot. “Obviously, there are moments where we’re milking tension and having fun and leaning into the genre of it, but our base language is sort of plainspoken. I think what that does, hopefully, is when the genre piece shows up or something surreal or absurd happens, it hits you like a shock.”

When I read it, I was like, ‘Oh my God, who do I have to kill to make this?’

Matthew Rhys

Murai had previously played with the line between authenticity and surreality in his award-winning work on series like “Atlanta,” “Station Eleven” and “Barry.” His ability to manage unruly tones is what made him Dippold’s dream director for “Widow’s Bay.” Murai, meanwhile, found the show’s “combination of cozy and unsettled” appealing.

“When I talked to Katie, she explained the show as a place that she always
dreamed about,” he said. “It’s tied to her childhood experience of watching horror movies and it was tied to a lot of nostalgia, but it was also about her own anxieties. I just thought, ‘Oh, there’s a lot here. I don’t know what the show is going to be, but it feels like there’s a lot of material and things to excavate.’”

Murai was a trustworthy presence that Dippold welcomed as they shot the series in various Massachusetts locations in the summer of 2025. Not only is the series
a complicated creative beast for any writer to wrangle, but it also marks her first go at being a showrunner. Though she wrote such big-screen features as “The Heat” and the 2016 “Ghostbusters,” Dippold’s television experience had been largely limited to the few years she spent writing for “Mad TV” and “Parks and Recreation.”

Kate O'Flynn, Matthew Rhys and Stephen Root in "Widow's Bay" Episode 4 (Apple TV)
Kate O’Flynn, Matthew Rhys and Stephen Root in “Widow’s Bay.” (Credit: Apple TV)

“Going from being a featured writer to a showrunner was a real shock to the system,” Dippold admitted. “As a featured writer, you go months without an email or phone call. I feel like I would wake up in the morning and my email would just have, like, the New York Times. And that’s how I’d start my day.” Her life running “Widow’s Bay” is considerably busier: “I fell asleep standing in the shower once.”

Dippold compares making “Widow’s Bay” to walking an artistic tightrope — not just because of its mix of screwball comedy and genuine human drama, but also because of its use of horror and absurdity. She knew how possible it would be for one to detract from the other. “It felt like, if you had one false moment or if you undercut the horror, the show would just feel dead,” she said. “It just felt very easy to fall off the rails completely.”

Staying on the tightrope meant taking risks, like confirming the existence of the island horrors in the third episode rather than delaying the reveal to the finale, as many prestige television shows might have. “A lot of this was just following my gut,” she said. “I knew I would be frustrated by a show where the whole time Tom refuses to believe it, so I looked at Episode 3 as the end of Act 1.”

Widow's Bay
Matthew Rhys and Katie Dippold photographed for TheWrap by Emily Assiran

That episode includes an attack by the Sea Hag, an evil entity who nearly kills Tom in his own house. “I wanted to have something happen that was just undeniable,” Dippold said. The supernatural dangers are then reinforced in the standout fourth installment, “Beach Reads,” in which Kate O’Flynn’s Patricia is tricked by a witch’s book of spells into throwing a cocktail party that nearly claims the lives of a significant portion of the island’s citizens.

“Beach Reads” was key to pulling off all of “Widow’s Bay’s” many, varied horror experiments. “That brought in the one thing we always try to do when we’re using these horror tropes, which is tell a story about a character who is feeling very real, human emotions,” Dippold said. “Even though the book is scary, there’s nothing scarier to Patricia in that episode than no one coming to her [party].”

Rhys remembered Dippold describing her interest in using the show to explore “the social horrors that we all go through.” For that reason, the actor sees a parallel between “Widow’s Bay” and the FX drama that won him an Emmy in 2018 for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.

Betty Gilpin and Hamish Linklater in "Widow's Bay" Episode 6 (Apple TV)
Betty Gilpin and Hamish Linklater in “Widow’s Bay” Episode 6 (Apple TV)

“Patricia has that massive arc of social horror that she’s trying to overcome, and it’s so relatable,” he said. “It was like The Americans. The Americans was just a show marriage that had this elevated and heightened backdrop of the intelligence community. But ultimately, it’s about people when they lie to each other about themselves. It’s all f—ing relatable.”

O’Flynn’s character isn’t the only one who has her fears and desires reflected back at her in terrifying fashion. As the mayor on the lonely island where his teenage son, Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick), was born, Tom strives to turn the place into a tourist draw on the order of Martha’s Vineyard, despite the supernatural dangers he has always suspected may not be imaginary even as he publicly dismisses them as superstitions. He is repeatedly humbled for his refusal to accept the reality in front of him, while also clashing with the rebellious Evan — who, if the curse is true, will die if he ever leaves the island, as will anyone else who was born there.

“With Tom trying to win the respect of the town, I think it’s more to do with his son,” Rhys said. “He’s trying to prove something to himself through proving it to his son — that if this place flourishes, his son can flourish. He’s just trying to prove [something], like so many of us are.”

Kevin Carroll and Kate O'Flynn in "Widow's Bay" Episode 4 (Apple TV)
Kate O’Flynn in “Widow’s Bay” (Apple TV)

The show’s coastal New England setting and focus on a mayor who ignores the threats right in front of him bring inevitable comparisons to Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws.” While Dippold & Co. have all been quick to acknowledge the connection, Rhys contends that Murray Hamilton’s gutless mayor is not the only “Jaws” character that Tom Loftis shares traits with. He sees elements of Richard Dreyfuss’ marine biologist Hooper, Roy Scheider’s police chief Brody and Robert Shaw’s shark hunter Quint in Tom as well.

“I know they say Tom is cowardly,” he said. “I never saw him as cowardly. I think he’s obstructive because he wants to stay tunnel-visioned. He’s just desperately trying to get this thing over the line and bring the people in. There are elements of all three characters from ‘Jaws’ that I could relate to.”

That amalgamation of influences courses through the series. It is a show that is never content to be just one thing. Its inspirations may be obvious to dedicated film and television fans, but it is not a direct homage to any one movie or show, a conscious goal of everyone involved.

“Katie and I were always talking about how we didn’t want this to be a send-up where we’re dutifully re-creating certain shots from horror movies we love,” Murai noted. Dippold added that she preferred the show to bounce not just between horror and comedy but between horror subgenres, turning each installment into its own, quasi-standalone adventure.

Kate O’Flynn and Jeff Hiller in “Widow’s Bay” (Apple TV)

“I really love the idea that, even though it’s serialized and it should all feel of one piece, you could just say, ‘I want to watch the episode with the spooky inn’ and it could feel special on its own,” she said. “That was a real goal for me.”

The first season breaks down the entire history of the island and ends on a cliffhanger, as the malevolent spirits demand more human sacrifices, but Dippold has no interest in resting on her laurels. As she looks toward the future of “Widow’s Bay,” which has been renewed by Apple, she sees limitless possibilities. “There’s a lot I would love to do,” Dippold said.

As for how her own life has changed since the show became a hit, the former “Parks and Recreation” staff writer laughed and said her mornings are different now for one specific reason: “There’s more emails.”

This story first ran in the Down to the Wire Comedy issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

Widow's Bay cover Aug. 2026
Matthew Rhys and Katie Dippold photographed for TheWrap by Emily Assiran

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What This Weekend’s D23 Says About the Walt Disney Company

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If you’ve never visited D23, the once-every-two-years celebration of all things Disney, calling it Disney’s version of Comic-Con is an understatement.

The world’s biggest entertainment conglomerate takes over the Anaheim Convention Center, just steps away from Disneyland, the company’s first theme park and still its crown jewel, to showcase all that Disney has to offer – to celebrate its past, highlight its present and preview its future – and the faithful fans, dressed in cosplay as theme park characters or their favorite Imagineer, pay handsomely for the privilege (three-day tickets, with access to the Honda Center, ranged from $297 to $957 depending on your seats within the Honda Center; the Ultimate Fan Pass started at $1,299).

At the last D23, named after the official Disney fan club (1923 was the year Walt founded the company), the convention broke containment and spilled out into the nearby Honda Center, where the Anaheim Ducks (once owned by the Walt Disney Co. during the halcyon Michael Eisner days) play. With its more than 14,000 seats and separate ticket for panels on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it was a massive, hugely lucrative expansion that carried into this year, with events in the Honda Center on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

At this year’s D23 no corner of the Magic Kingdom went unexplored — on the convention floor there was a photo op for the ABC presentation of the Super Bowl; a booth devoted to Heinz’s new corporate partnership with Disney themed to the classic It’s a Small World attraction, complete with a sampling of condiments in a boat shaped like the attraction’s ride vehicle; and an immersive 3D theater plunging you into the experience of using the Disney+/Hulu app.

But perhaps the most striking thing about this year’s edition of D23 was that for all of the slavish brand loyalty that Disney expects from its fans, there was a surprising amount of attention paid to pleasing said fans, with a slew of Disney Parks announcements that don’t appear to make a meaningful impact on the company’s bottom line, but go a long way to showing that Disney is listening to its most ardent (and big-spending) devotees.

The move comes as Disney has battled bad press from two rounds of layoffs and mounting guest consternation as theme park prices continue to soar, all while new CEO Josh D’Amaro has promised more cost cuts to come as he reorients the company around a unified “One Disney” approach that treats Disney+ as the center of its flywheel. (If we’re going with the hub-and-spoke analogy associated with the layout of the theme parks, Disney+ is the castle.) And yet, as D’Amaro has made several moves to boost revenues and maintain cultural cache, the first Disney CEO to have grown up a fan of the Michael Eisner era is making several moves that proves he understands what motivates the company’s most passionate base.

During the big presentation devoted to Disney movies and television on Friday night, D’Amaro addressed the crowd. Dressed in his best CEO cosplay (black zip-up, crisp white shirt, even crisper white sneakers), D’Amaro shared a story from his childhood about loving Disney.

ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 16: Josh D’Amaro, Chief Executive Officer, The Walt Disney Company speaks onstage at the Disney Entertainment Showcase at D23: Legends on August 16, 2026 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Disney)

“I believe that in order to lead the company, you have to know what it feels like to be a fan. And I do,” D’Amaro said. Looking out over the sea of 14,000, he said that he likely had met some of them, since he is routinely stopped for selfies while he’s in the park. (Can you imagine Bob Iger stopping for selfies on his way to ride the Matterhorn?)

And while his comment about being a fan could, cynically, be heard as expertly crafted corporate-speak, it was also a sentiment that carried through the weekend. The overall feeling gave the impression that the Walt Disney Co. was a place that was actively listening to fans and delivering on promises that it had long held out for, particularly when it comes to maintenance and attraction refurbishments that should have happened years ago but haven’t because they didn’t serve any synergistic purpose. At the 2019 D23, which seems like a distant memory, a number of exciting projects were announced and then never mentioned again, victims of the pandemic, cost-cutting measures or some toxic combination of the two. After Bob Chapek’s brief, disastrous reign, Iger seemed unwilling or uninterested in restoring those projects. (Among them: a “Mary Poppins”-themed attraction for EPCOT’s United Kingdom pavilion and a Spaceship Earth redo.)

“All around us, companies are trying to acquire scale or acquire IP or acquire additional businesses. And the reason that they’re trying to do that is because they want to look a little bit more like Disney,” D’Amaro told CNBC on Friday. “I mean, we have the deepest library of intellectual property and characters and franchises by far. Our scale is enviable. The connection that we have with fans, you see it here, right here at D23, is palpable. And so we have everything that we need right now.”

Parks upgrades, Anne Hathaway and Fuzzball

During a press preview night for D23, this sentiment was already on display – not only in just how elaborate and fan-forward most of the bigger exhibitions and pavilions were, but in the way that executives were addressing journalists.

Bobby Kim, also known as Bobby Hundreds, a leading streetwear designer who was recently installed as a creative director at Disney Consumer Products, spoke about how he, for D23, wanted to resurrect a character that was important to him from childhood: Fuzzball, Michael Jackson’s alien sidekick from the 3D short film “Captain EO,” which used to run at Disneyland and EPCOT Center. Clutching his new Fuzzball plush, he said that it meant a lot to bring the character back for a new generation. “Captain EO” has long since closed at the parks and isn’t even streaming on Disney+. (An attempt to turn the property into an animated series at the Disney Channel was also unsuccessful.)

There is no data to suggest that investing in making a commemorative Fuzzball plush will meaningfully boost a piece of IP that cannot be mined for a reboot or TV series, although the character briefly appeared as an Easter egg in the background of a pair of “Star Wars” projects, successfully making the trip to a galaxy far, far away. The new Fuzzball plush is simply something a subsection of small but passionate fans would be interested in, and Kim was allowed to do it.

Instead of a stone-cold sales pitch, Kim’s comments seemed like a genuine outpouring of gratitude and a desire to return something to a fandom that meant so much to him.

Anne Hathaway and Josh D’Amaro, CEO, The Walt Disney Company, speak onstage at the Disney Entertainment Showcase at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event on August 14, 2026 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Disney)

This kind of reciprocation was felt over and over again throughout the weekend, whether it was during Friday night’s presentation, where a custom bit of animation was created by Walt Disney Animation Studios to announce a third “Zootopia” film or in the way that a pregnant Anne Hathaway, who was crowned a Disney Legend this year, took to the stage just to thank those in the Honda Center for making the “Devil Wears Prada 2” such a hit (and to issue a promise that she’s working hard on the third “Princess Diaries”). There was no real announcement and nothing she was promoting; it was just another instance of one Disney fan interacting with thousands of others.

This was even more apparent on Saturday, during the big parks presentation at the Honda Center (a surprisingly star-studded affair hosted by Neil Patrick Harris and featuring Tig Notaro, Gloria Gaynor, Beck and Glenn Close among others). Among the updates to previously announced projects like Villains Land, the “Cars”-themed Piston Peak and Tropical Americas at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, all for the sprawling Walt Disney World Resort outside of Orlando, Fla., there were smaller, but just as impactful announcements.

There was the offhanded news that Disneyland Paris’ Space Mountain, which has existed in a much-maligned, “Star Wars”-ified version for the past decade, will return to its former, steampunk-y glory. And the solid commitment to finally fix the broken yeti audio-animatronic figure on Expedition Everest, which at one point was the most impressive robot in the Disney portfolio but has been broken for almost 20 years.

Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, and Hayley Atwell speak onstage at the Disney Entertainment Showcase at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event on August 14, 2026 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Disney)

There was also a more vague (but still compelling) promise to update Spaceship Earth, the centerpiece attraction of EPCOT and one that hasn’t been properly updated since 2007. In addition to communication, this new iteration will be about community.

These are decisions that probably won’t drive attendance or spike merchandise sales, but are the right things to do, after years of fan outcry. They also felt like things that, at this point, Disney would never do because their implementation didn’t make sense on a spreadsheet or in a boardroom meeting.

And yet, here we are.

Rekindling fan trust

The announcements come at a time of tension between Disney die-hards and their corporate overlords has never been more fraught. In the past few years, a good number of guests have felt financial strain from the company as it attempts to squeeze every last penny out of those park visits (particularly the domestic parks but the international guests have also felt the pinch).

The shutdown in 2020 served as a reset button for Disney to do away with many of the perks that guests had come to expect, things like the Magical Express bus service that would whisk you from the Orlando airport to your Disney hotel or free FastPass tickets (now fully paid-for and known as Lightning Lane). A 2024 New York Times story reported on how many Disney guests go into debt just to afford their once-in-a-lifetime dream vacation.

There has also been D’Amaro’s recent, full-throated embrace of AI, a technology that some fans find in diametric opposition to the tenets of human creativity and innovation that the entire company has been based on. In a recent earnings call, D’Amaro noted that the company isn’t just looking to utilize AI in its various workflows; it’s already doing it. And a presentation inside the Walt Disney Imagineering booth at D23 made it clear just how all-in it is.

Towards the end of the presentation, there were a couple of announcements that shook the Honda Center to its core – that Disneyland’s Tomorrowland, which has largely languished without a proper refresh since the 1990s, would be receiving a bold reimagining and that the Imagination Pavilion, one of EPCOT’s most glittering crown jewels turned biggest laughingstocks, would be redone.

Much like these earlier announcements and things like the new Carousel of Progress, which is already underway (the company announced that Bryan Cranston and Jamie Lee Curtis would lead the voice cast), these developments are seemingly being done to appease fans of the parks. Maybe what it is understanding is that setting things right for older generations will actually ensure their vitality for future generations too. And there is a real power in that.

Perhaps, more clinically, the emphasis on the parks and cruise ships at D23 is an admission and embrace of just how much the company’s Experiences division has become the central financial engine for the entire company.

In the most recent earnings report, it noted that revenue for the Disney Parks and cruise ships (the fleet will soon balloon to 13 ships, sailing all over the world) for the quarter was up 10% from the year before, which it was quick to point out was the biggest increase in two years (so, since the last D23). Global parks attendance grew 4% from last year and, most importantly, per-capita spending increased, with occupancy of the company’s domestic hotels hitting 91%.

“Domestically we’re doing extremely well right now,” Disney CFO Hugh Johnston told CNBC.

Shawn Levy and Ryan Gosling speak onstage at the Disney Entertainment Showcase at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event on August 14, 2026 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney)

The Disney Experiences division accounted for a whopping 40% of third-quarter revenue and 54% of operating profit, which are staggering numbers considering how vast and diversified the Disney portfolio is.

And as much as the presentations over the weekend seemed to cater to the fans, there was still naked capitalism to be accounted for, with a slew of sequels, including “Coco 2” and “Incredibles 3” (both from Pixar), “Frozen III” and “Zootopia 3” (from Walt Disney Animation Studios) and new installments in the vast “Star Wars” and Marvel Studios franchises. But at least, during the presentation for next summer’s “Star Wars: Starfighter,” just before Ryan Gosling walked out on stage, we were treated to a montage of his appearances on the new “Mickey Mouse Club.” It’s something that the Comic-Con crowd probably wouldn’t have appreciated nearly as much.

For years after Walt died unexpectedly in 1966, those at the company wondered What would Walt do? By the time Michael Eisner and Frank Wells were installed to run the company almost 20 years later, that way of thinking had ossified the company in a place that was largely out-of-step with the rest of the culture. Eisner and Wells modernized the company, revitalized its core brands and turned Disney into an unstoppable international conglomerate.

Almost 40 years later, with a new CEO at the helm, Disney is once again looking to its past to help chart its future in the same way that Walt, a restless futuristic who was still hugely nostalgic for what had come before, charted the course for an earlier version of the company. And D’Amaro, as the first CEO who grew up a fan of the Eisner/Wells iteration of Disney, knows that the only way that the future of the company can be written is by appeasing and engaging with those same kinds of fans.

As he stood in front of the devoted masses in the Honda Center on Friday night, he spoke like a man who knew that in another life, on another timeline, in some parallel realm, he could be out there sitting in the crowd with a Scrooge McDuck T-shirt on, instead of speaking from the stage in his designer zip-up sweater. He’d still be as much of a fan – and have just as passionate thoughts about how Disney should be run.

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‘The Terminal List’ Reveals Season 2 Premiere Date & First-Look Photos

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Prime Video‘s The Terminal List is kick-starting promotions for Season 2 with a set of first-look photos featuring Chris Pratt as James Reece (above and below). All eight episodes will premiere on Wednesday, October 21.

From the best-selling novels by Jack Carr of the same name, The Terminal List centers on Navy SEAL Commander James Reece as he battles unknown conspiratorial forces seeking to upend the world order.

Season 2 comes from Carr’s second novel, True Believer, where he puts Reece on a journey of violent redemption, finding a new purpose after finishing his list. The psychological revenge story of Season 1 expands into a globe-trotting espionage thriller, taking Reece across the Indian Ocean, Southern and Northern Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.

Constance Wu

Constance Wu

Prime Video

Joined by returning fan favorites like Raife Hastings (Tom Hopper), Katie Buranek (Constance Wu), Mohammed Farooq (Dar Salim), Jules Landry (Luke Hemsworth), and newcomer Freddy Strain (Gabriel Luna), Reece will uncover a conspiracy that reaches from Moscow to Langley and ties into his own family’s history.

The cast also includes Costa Ronin, Olga Kurylenko, Yul Vazquez, Martin Sensmeier, Arnold Vosloo, and Shiraz Tzarfati.

The Terminal List is executive produced by Chris Pratt through Indivisible Productions, writer and showrunner David DiGilio, author Jack Carr, Antoine Fuqua and Kat Samick through Fuqua Films, former Army Ranger and writer Max Adams, and former Navy SEAL, writer, actor, and technical advisor Jared Shaw. The series is produced by Amazon MGM Studios, MRC, and Civic Center Media.

Additional photos can be seen below.

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DramaBox Sets Brazilian Series From Cimarron & Three Colombian Shows

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EXCLUSIVE: DramaBox is going deeper into the Latin American verticals world.

We can reveal the microdrama platform has put into production a Brazilian series starring telenovela actor Duda Reis with regional production powerhouse Cimarrón and is rolling out a trio of productions from Colombia: Mi Barco del Amor Zarpó Sin Ti, Besando al Hermano Equivocado and Soy la Novia de mi Peor Enemigo.

The Brazilian show has begun filming in São Paolo with Cimarrón’s Diego Robino and Lourenço Sant’Anna producing. A Q4 release date has been slated.

Production details are scarce, but will star Reis, whose credits include TV Globo’s telenovelas Vai na Fé, Vale Tudo and Coração Acelerado, and Flávio Leming, whose has acted in the likes of Record’s series Reis and Se Eu Fosse Você 3.

We understand it follows a woman who marries a stranger, not knowing he is the billionaire who destroyed her past.

Cimarrón’s Star+’s titles include Star+’s Impuros, Amazon Prime Video’s September Mornings and Dom, and Society of the Snow, which was a Netflix co-production nominated for an Academy Award in 2024. The company produced 17 titles across Latin American in 2025. Sant’Anna is also known for I’m Still Here, the Brazilian feature film that won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film last year, while Robino produced Netflix’s The Two Popes, which received three Academy Award nominations in 2020.

For DramaBox, the microdrama app that’s been downloaded more than 460 million times since launch in 2023, the production is part of a wider expansion into Brazil. With microdrama production much shorter than regular TV series, DramaBoz recently released its first Brazilian original, has another scheduled to launch late this month and two others are in post-production.

Colombian expansion

A similar expansion is ongoing in Colombia, where three titles are debuting this month, each of which was developed with Willy Barragán’s Dos Ke Tres Films.

Mi Barco del Amor Zarpó Sin Ti dropped on August 4 and stars Mattias Vega, Laura Cano, Johanna Fadul and Jose Luis Uribe Ochoa, while Besando al Hermano Equivocado goes live on Monday (August 17), with Eros Castillo, Karol Saavedra, Alejandra Tejada and Miguel Ángel Ramos leading the cast.

The third, Soy la Novia de mi Peor Enemigo, premieres on August 27.

Mi Barco del Amor… follows a woman trapped in a loveless marriage who discovers that her husband still loves his ex-girlfriend, then files for divorce and revives her career as a fashion designer, while Besando al Hermano Equivocado sees a woman ending up romantically involved with the wrong brother after an unexpected mix-up. Soy la Novia de Mi Peor Enemigo follows a sassy young woman who makes a one-night mistake with her childhood nemesis, and then team ups with him annoy their exes

“Directing for DramaBox has been a deeply enriching experience,” said Barragán. “The vertical format allows for an immediate, intense connection with the audience, and the support from producer John Lozada and the entire team has been exemplary. I am grateful for the trust DramaBox placed in us and look forward to our future collaborations.”

This comes after DramaBox launched its first Colombian original, Su Amor Fue una Mentira, which was from Albereda Films and directed by Felipe Paredes.

“Colombia possesses an extraordinary pool of talent, and these productions are a testament to that,” said Marcela Kartaszewicz, Head of Comms at DramaBox. “Each show brings a distinct voice to the vertical format while delivering the intense emotion and strong character performances our audience craves. We are proud to expand our presence in the country by partnering with local creators who master this fast-paced, immersive format.”

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