It may be a couple of years before it hits the screen, but with this new series, Netflix has made its intention to dominate the market clear.
Maya and the Three is the story of a mythical Mesoamerican warrior princess that embarks on a quest to recruit three mythical warriors to stop a war which has erupted between Gods and humans. Jorge Gutierrez is the creator, writer, and director of the Netflix animated mini-series, considering the Mesoamerican civilization. It addresses the mosaic of indigenous cultures which flourished in parts of modern-day Mexico and Central America which thrived thereat before the Spanish invasion in the 16th century.
Approximately two-thirds of Netflix’s audience zero-in on content for family and children. With a viewer base of about 140 million, it is a massive figure. And that audience group is vital for its original strategy. Animation has been the choice of the creators.
Netflix is concentrating on including fringe talent, which can bring in a lot of freshness onboard, creators that can bring in stories from different cultures. This jells with Netflix’s strategy of adding niche audience from every culture who will ultimately contribute to the bottom-line.
The series is some way away yet it’s already created a buzz in the television world. Mexican writer, animator, voice actor, and director Jorge R. Gutierrez, has created magic with the movie The Boom of Life, nominated for the Golden Globe is at the helm of this fantasy narrative. The total program is slated to be a four-and-a-half-hour-epic. It’s inspired by Mesoamerican mythology and was further inspired by popular soaps and The Wizard of Oz. The hero is Jorge’s creation - a female, as Latin American stories generally lack female protagonists.
The protagonist, Maya, is a female warrior princess who is half God, half-human. She intervenes to end the war that has flared between the Gods and the human race. For that purpose, she enlists the help of three mythical characters, “a Caribbean wizard, an albino archer, and a giant barbarian from the mountains.” It is like Dorothy, the tin man, the scarecrow, and the famous lion from The Wizard of Oz, according to the director. Maya is the cause of the chaos as her stepfather, the God of War, has promised the Goddess of Death, her mother that he’d sacrifice her on her fifteenth birthday.
The series flaunts a rich, colorful and vibrant world. The setting is one rarely depicted as a part of Latin America – the period before the Spanish invasion of the Aztec Empire in the 16th century. According to Truth Theory, Gutierrez chose the mini-series format because he didn’t want to be limited by the time frame of a movie. He wanted the freedom to tell the complete story and not be constrained by time. Thanks to Netflix he’s finally achieved that.
The series is likely to appear in 2021. It may even look like a Lord of the Rings spinoff with a bad-ass female protagonist.
Netflix looks forward to diversifying their series and movie collection. We’d seen such a spectacular move with Roma. Let’s hope something powerful comes out of Maya and the Three too.
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