Spain’s Apaches Ent., which has Intruders, Extraterrestial and Verbo all playing San Sebastian, announced Wednesday at the fest the creation of a low-budget label, Mapache, TV division Apachete, and more details on Windows, the upcoming pic from Extraterrestial
helmer Nacho Vigalondo.

María Angulo, exec producer on Basque Borja Cobeaga’s Love Storming and With or Without Love, is heading up Mapache, which will focus on tightly-budgeted comedies and local movies budgeted at under Euros2 million ($2.7 million), Apaches Ent. Enrique López Lavigne told Variety at San Sebastián.

Films will be “in Spanish targeting very much the Spanish box office without international elements. If they do international business, it’s great but they target the Spanish market,” López Lavigne added, citing films produced by Franscisco Ramos or Antena 3 teen comedies.

First Mapache project up is “Yo hombre” (Me Man), written by Abraham Sastre and Ivan Bouso both screenwriters at Globomedia. Pic shoots spring 2012.

Apaches has also launched Apachete, a TV division overseen directly by Belen Atienza and López Lavigne, who founded Apaches Ent.

Apachete is readying “Verguenza ajena”(Spanish Shame), a sitcom, for Spanish paybox Canal Plus.

Written by Juan Cabestany and Alvaro Fernández Armero. In pre-production, to shoot spring 2012, Shame will be “irreverent, provocative, incorrect and great fun, the opposite of a free-to-air general sitcom,” López Lavigne said.

Angulo will exec-produce Shame. He added: “Apaches can’t absorb more projects, nor, as a talent-driven production house, do we want to grow more in such a difficult contemporary film and TVcontext.”

One solution is to create divisions, collaborating with quality producer talent as necessary.

Meanwhile, after 18 months in development, the English-language Windows, which Vigalondo also wrote, is skedded to roll first quarter 2012.

Windows is produced by Apaches Ent. and Antena 3 Films, and sold internationally by Wild Bunch.

Part of Apaches’ first slate, Windows started off as an experimental movie in the line of Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield.

Since then, Windows has “gained in commercial design,” added Lopez Lavigne who described it as “a highly tense fast-paced thriller with drops of humor and horror about the world of the Web which has made prisoners of us all.”

Currently casting,Windows is budgeted at about $4 million but has an highly ambitious production design which multiplies its value.”

Launched 2009,Apaches put into development a first four film slate of Intruders, Verbo,Windows and The Impossible, now in post.

Apaches’ second slate “won’t be less or more ‘ambitious’but will be determined by these directors’ success,” López Lavigne said.

JOHN HOPEWELL, EMILIANO DE PABLOS