A PROMESSA opens on June 18th
A luxury cast and a passionate story are two sure-fire guarantees that A Promessa, the new soap opera produced by SP Televisão for SIC, will win over audiences from June 18th.
The soap opera, adapted from the Turkish original Zalim Istanbul by Inês Gomes and Cândida Ribeiro, and directed by Jorge Queiroga, stars João Catarré, Victoria Guerra, Joana Ribeiro and Lourenço Ortigão, as well as actors such as Sofia Alves, Ana Padrão, José Wallenstein, Luis Esparteiro, Adriano Luz and Luisa Cruz, among others.
The story centers on the relationship between two families from the same land, with very different financial backgrounds, who end up getting involved in a secret agreement, giving rise to conflicts, but also to forbidden passions crossed in a complicated web.
At the center of the plot is the relationship between the nephew of the family tycoon, paraplegic due to an accident, and one of the daughters of the other family, who ends up becoming completely dependent on the former.
Around them, betrayals and conspiracies unfold, led by a woman, married to the tycoon, who wants to maintain her power and influence at all costs, while at the same time uncovering the sordid secrets of the wealthy family.
The authors of the adaptation of A Promessa took on this challenge, selecting the most interesting plots from the 39 scripts, of around 80 pages each, of the original, making them the central line of the story.
Cândida Ribeiro, one of the authors, added:
"To the 10 strong characters that Zalim Istanbul's scriptwriter created, we added 20 new characters and tried to unite them to the main plot with equally rich backgrounds and biographies. What we hope to have represented in the script is a narrative that is just as exciting, but closer to Portuguese reality. In other words, we dispensed with the strong pride, tradition and religion embodied in the Turkish version and strove to maintain, in dialogue, the intensity of emotions and the creativity of conflicts that we believe are the ingredients that keep audiences hooked on television."
Inês Gomes, the other author, highlighted the quality of Turkish fiction, which justified this adaptation:
"Turkey is producing content with great quality and a big budget, always with strong and very emotional stories. These products are based on universal themes such as love, family, friendship, passion and conflict, and manage to emotionally involve the audience. Turkish series and soap operas have very different universes and stories that appeal to a wide audience. Perhaps these are some of the reasons for the success of Turkish fiction."
As for expectations, Cândida Ribeiro says she considers it “dishonest to hide the fact that we wanted our adaptation to be able to captivate the audience with the same intensity as the Turkish story did. Starting from a successful original and building an appealing story has been a major undertaking and we'd like to recapture the audience we've had in previous soap operas, even though we know that the public is increasingly, and naturally, dispersed across platforms and different content distribution channels."
"We hope that people will be absorbed by the adventures, misfortunes, victories and passions of the characters that, together with our team, we have created in Promessa,” adds Inês Gomes.
The two scriptwriters, both trained in journalism, already have extensive CVs, as is the case with Inês Gomes, who began her career at NBP (now Plural), then joined SP Televisão, where she wrote projects such as Mar Salgado, Amor Maior, Terra Brava, A Serra and Flor sem Tempo, and series such as Depois do Adeus, Glória and Codex 632.
While still a trainee, Cândida Ribeiro wrote the soap opera Dancing Days, an adaptation of a Brazilian soap opera written by Pedro Lopes. More than a decade after she started writing at SP Televisão, she was part of the teams for Mar Salgado, Amor Maior and Flor Sem Tempo. He is now co-writing for the first time with Inês Gomes, with whom he has shared “thousands of pages of scripts over the last decade”.