It was just announced that Gina Rodriguez (Not Dead Yet, Jane The Virgin) will develop TV adaptation of Princess Of South Beach for Netflix. According to Deadline, the streamer has optioned the Sonoro Media podcast with Rodriguez being an executive producer.
Created by Jasmine Romeo (Sesame Street, Chompers), Princess Of South Beach was first released on September 15th and is a bilingual Audio Telenovela which stars Rachel Zegler (Shazam! Fury of the Gods, West Side Story), Gina Torres (Suits, Serenity), and Danny Pino (Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Mayan’s F.C.) among others. According to Sonoro Media, the main idea is as follows, “Everyone’s heard of Gloria Calderón – she´s Miami’s hottest socialite. But Gloria has a secret…she’s dead (gasp!). When her long lost twin sister María del Carmen takes her place, the perfect facade of the powerful Calderón family falls apart. Princess of South Beach has it all – twin sisters separated at birth, a nosy maid with a secret backstory, and a dead body in the trunk of a car. Sounds cliché? Duh! This is a telenovela. Follow the lives of the Calderón family as they cling onto fame one face-slap at a time.”
The announcement of the T.V. series comes two years after Sonoro and iHeartMedia collaborated on eight “My Cultura” Podcasts with the aforementioned Princess Of South Beach being one of them. via. iHeartMedia.
The scripted podcast itself is set to release on iHeart Radio in both English and Spanish for its upcoming second season.
Rodriguez will work on the project under her company, her I Can & I Will Productions. They will be joined by Sonoro Media, iHeart’s My Cultura Network, and Romero (Sesame Street, Chompers). According to her own website, Romero is, “currently a consultant focusing on podcast development, writing, editing and production. Clients and partners include Spotify, Neon Hum, Marketplace, Google, PBS and more.”
Rodriguez herself would not star in the series and as of now there have not been any official casting announcements. According to Deadline, Princess of South Beach is one of iHeart’s My Cultura Network’s number one listened podcasts. It was nominated for the Best Fiction Podcast at the Ambies in 2022. The second season will host fan favorites including X Mayo (The Daily Show, The Farewell), Raúl Esparza (Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Find Me Guilty), Torres, and Pino.
From that same article, this upcoming season for the podcast itself would see Raul and Estrella search for the latter’s high school sweetheart. After that road trip is done, they will put together the dark past behind Esteban Calderon. Camila Victoriano (Room 20, Princess Of South Beach) and Joshua Weinstein (Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, The Last Tycoon) will serve as executive producers for season two of the podcast from Sonoro, and Gisselle Bances (Sisters of the Underground, Hungry for History with Eva Longoria and Maite Gomez-Rejón) would serve as an executive producer for iHeart’s My Cultura Network. Romero and Joanna Hausmann (Tacoma FD, Hamster and Gretel) co-directed season one and would both return for the second season.
For the series, it is likely that Netflix would keep similar characters and would more than likely market it to a global audience, especially in English and Spanish. It is unsure when production would start or when the release date would be. More information would be reported once announcements come out in the near future.