Azteca America premiers Pantanal.
July 27, 2007
Azteca America announced the United States premiere of the wildly popular Brazilian telenovela, Pantanal, successor to Xica, which garnered robust ratings for the network.
Pantanal will air weeknights starting Monday, August 27, from 10 to 11 p.m. Eastern/9 to 10 p.m. Central on the Azteca America network of stations in 60 U.S. Hispanic markets. The last episode of Xica will air on Friday, August 24.
Pantanal is set in the mysterious and beautiful backwoods region of southwestern Brazil. More than half of the scenes were filmed on location with high production values and breathtaking natural settings. Pantanal introduced urban novela audiences to a part of their country few had visited and spawned a booming tourism industry in the town of Rio Negro and vicinity.
The exotic world of Pantanal is home to river spirits who communicate with human inhabitants and Juma Marruá, a beautiful young jaguar-woman who falls in love with Jovenito, a handsome young man from the city who returns to his birthplace to reconnect with his father and his roots in the marshland.
Pantanal’s producer (Nilton Travesso), author (Benedito Ruy Barbosa) and directors (Jayme Monjardim, Marcelo Barreto, Carlos Magalhães, and Roberto Naar) use special effects to create a fantastic world in which they use the jaguar-woman persona as a plot-device. This turned Rio de Janeiro-born actress Cristiana Oliveira, who portrays Juma Marruá, into a celebrity practically overnight and made Pantanal the most talked about program in Brazil.
