Patito Feo


Patito Feo is a comedy TV series for kids and teens from Argentina, starring Laura Natalia Esquivel, Brenda Asnicar, Juan Darthes, Griselda Siciliani, Gloria Carrá and Gastón Soffritti. It was formed into two groups, Las Divinas and Las Populares produced by Ideas del Sur for Canal 13. The show is distributed worldwide by Televisa. The opening theme, "Un Rincón del Corazón", is sung by Patito played by Laura Natalia Esquivel.

Background

With a huge marketing push, the show started its run in April 2007 in Canal 13. In September of that year, the show started airing in the entire Spanish-speaking Latin America market on the Disney Channel and soon, the program became a sensation among kids and teens in the entire continent.
When it debuted, Patito Feo performed exceptionally not only on TV but also on merchandising sales. The soundtrack album was the best-selling album of 2008 in the country and over 100 licensed products were released. An official magazine exceeded sales expectations and had its initial print sold out within a week and a stamp album also had record sales for Panini in Argentina. The song Las Divinas was the best-selling ringtone ever in the country.
In Argentina, 400.000 tickets were sold for the first national live tour, over 150.000 in Buenos Aires and 90.000 in the litoral city of Mar Del Plata during the summer. Afterwards, the complete cast toured Latin America with over 700.000 tickets sold for shows in Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Panama, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Ecuador, El Salvador, Bolivia and Paraguay.
In 2008, Patito Feo won the Martin Fierro Award and received a nomination for the International Emmy Award for Best Children & Young Adults program.
The show became a huge success soon after its debut. The soundtrack was the best-selling album of 2007 according to CAPIF, over 70 licensed products were released and the cast toured Argentina and, subsequently, the rest of South America, North America and Central America with stops in Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, Panama, Dominican Republic, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Ecuador, El Salvador, Bolivia and Turkey, selling out arenas and stadiums.
In 2008, Patito Feo won the Martin Fierro Award and received a nomination for the International Emmy Award for Best Children & Young Adults program.
Although the show was incredibly well received by the audience, Patito Feo attracted huge criticism due to the fact it glamorized the villains, a group of mean and beautiful girls that called themselves Las Divinas. Besides being superficial, Las Divinas were also mean and bullied Patito. The fact the villains were much more popular among young girls than the main character caused concern over some groups and the issue was even on the cover Noticias, Argentina's most important current affairs magazine, under the headline "The Triumph of Discrimination".
In early 2008, under the name De Tout Mon Coeur, Patito Feo started airing on children channel Gulli in France. It soon became a huge success, being the most-watched show on the channel. A few months later, Elastic Rights bought the rights to distribute the show in Italy, Portugal and Spain.
In Italy, Il Mondo di Patty and debuted on the Disney Channel and soon became a gigantic hit. Due to the big popularity, a huge merchandising line was unveiled and Laura Esquivel visited the country to promote the show. The rights were bought by terrestrial Mediaset-owned Italia 1 which started airing the show in the Summer of 2009. Il Mondo di Patty became an even bigger success in the country, being one of the most-watched shows on the channel.
Also in 2008, Patito Feo debuted on Cartoon Network in Spain. It was very well received and became one of the top shows among young girls on cable. In 2009, it debuted on the Disney Channel and became one of the highest-rated shows on cable in Spain, topping Hannah Montana.
In Italy and Spain, the show spawned over 200 merchandising including toys, apparel, cosmetics, food items and a video game for PlayStation and a special Singstar game. The soundtrack album was certified
over 5x Platinum in both countries. It was also a huge rating hit in Portugal, Greece and Turkey. In Greece, the album was certified for 11x Platinum.
With the success of the show, Laura Esquivel launched a successful Italian acting career in Italy, where she stars in movies and TV shows. Legal problems between the executive producers of the show and the production company made hard for the cast to tour in those countries. However, a new musical with local actors was licensed and, even though none of the original cast members were part of the production, over 250.000 tickets were sold in Italy and Spain. Over 30.000 tickets were sold for concerts in Athens.
In March 2009, a Mexican remake, Atrevete a Soñar, made its debut in Canal de las Estrellas in Mexico, produced by Televisa.
There are plans for a US version and MTV Networks is currently developing a pilot.

Legal problems

In late 2008, Alejandro Stoessel, creator of Patito, was fired. Disagreements between him and the production company started after two shows he was in charge of, the second season of Patito Feo and the teen-oriented show Atraccion x 4, failed to reach expectations and ended up being canceled. After parting ways with the company, he started a lawsuit against Ideas del Sur asking for a part of Patito Feo profits because he claims he was responsible for creating the entire concept. The lawsuit not only was the reason a new leg of a Latin American tour was canceled but also a European tour, where the show was also enjoying huge popularity.
After his dismissal, Alejandro Stoessel was hired by Dori Media to develop a new show targeted to kids and teenagers.
At the same time, Ideas del Sur started to develop a new youth-oriented show, Malcriados, and chose Brenda Asnicar, who had enjoyed high popularity in her role as Antonella, as one of the lead actresses. At the same time, Dori Media and Stoessel wanted her to star in their new show, Ñeka.
Brenda finally decided to do the Dori Media project and, not satisfied with being turned down, Ideas de Sur started a lawsuit against Brenda's management since her contract stipulated she should prioritize Ideas del Sur projects over other production companies.
Finally, Ñeka was renamed Mia, mi Amiga Invisible and will debut at Mipcom in Cannes starring Brenda. But the show is also facing various lawsuits: besides Ideas del Sur, Valeria Britos, the creator of the original script, is also suing Dori Media.
The lawsuit prevented the cast, especially Brenda Asnicar, of touring across Europe in 2010 to promote the show.

Plot

First Season

The beginning of the story introduces single mom Carmen and her daughter Patricia, simply known as Patito. They live in San Carlos de Bariloche, a small town in Argentina. Patito falls in love at first sight with Matias – she meets him just after falling off her bike, he helps her up. Matias is there on vacation, but he soon returns to his hometown of Buenos Aires. Patito names her dog after him.
Soon after, Carmen and Patito travel to Buenos Aires for medical exams. There, Patito meets the hospital director, Leandro Díaz Rivarola. It turns out that he is her estranged father. Neither Patito nor Leandro know this, however. Carmen and Patito remain in the city for Patito's medical treatment. Leandro learns of Patito's desire to sing and suggests that she apply to the fine arts school directed by his mother, the Pretty Land School of Arts. Patito agrees.
As time passes, Leandro suspects that Patito is his daughter and takes a DNA test, which is a positive, but Leandro's girlfriend, Bianca, pays one of his employees to change the result to a negative to avoid Leandro leaving her. Bianca wants to marry Leandro, but only for his status; she does not love him. She did the same thing years before with another rich man, the father of her two children, Facundo and Antonella, she then told her children that their father is dead. Bianca does everything she can to make sure Leandro stays with her with the help of her 'friends', Dorinha and Polo, from paying Leandro's employees to tell him that Patito is not his daughter to pretending to be pregnant. When Carmen and her best friend Ashley find out Bianca is not pregnant, Bianca threatens to take Patito away from Carmen, as she did repeatedly in the past to keep Carmen from telling Leandro what she knows. Bianca's daughter, Antonella, goes to the same school as Patito and is Matias's girlfriend.
Given these circumstances, rivalries crop up between Carmen and Bianca as well as Patito and Antonella. Within the school, this leads to the creation of two rival musical dance groups – Las Divinas led by Antonella, and Las Populares led by Patito. As time passes, Antonella does more and more things to Patito to make her life miserable from almost drowning her to making sure she can't release her CD. Eventually, the two become friends because of one very important thing they have in common: they both grew up without a father. Meanwhile, Bianca, who learns that Carmen had found out that she isn't pregnant and planned to tell Leandro, commands Polo to eliminate her. Polo, trying to please her, hires a man to hit Carmen with a car, but their plan goes haywire when Antonella sacrifices herself to save Carmen, ending up in Leandro's hospital in a coma. She eventually wakes up, and her 'friend', Pia, and Bianca tell her that Patito is happy that Antonella is hurt so that she can have her CD published. The two go back to being enemies, and Antonella, who has some of Bianca's lying genes, helps keep Leandro with her mother by pretending to be unable to walk. Matias later realizes his deep feelings for Patito and decides to become her boyfriend. Patito being eager, accepts.
Patito is not the only one who gets a boyfriend: Leandro, despite his marriage to Bianca, gives his heart to Carmen, who accepts. However, their relationship comes to a crashing end when Carmen tells him the truth: Patito is his daughter. They decide to tell her at the right time together, but when Antonella and Patito are having a competition on television, Leandro announces it when the third judge was telling Patito that he did not want to give her a 10 because of her appearance. An enraged Patito then moves in with her father and refuses to forgive Carmen, until Carmen's birthday arrives, and mother and daughter make peace after Carmen told her everything that kept her from telling her the truth.

Main Characters

Las Populares
Las Divinas
In the second season Patito fully enjoys her family and Matias' love. The Populars and the Divines participating in a tournament with the group Populars & Divines, representing the Pretty Land School of Arts. Belinda, a famous singer sees their performance and offers them to join her international tour that will begin shortly, but Antonella refuses to work with Patty, this will be the cause of battles between the two groups to see which group will support this popstar.
Soon, Matias' love will again be a source of dispute between Patito and Antonella and also of a new girl called Linda. Everything is going to complicate.
New boys and girls will come to the Pretty Land School of Arts and already known people will have to deal with complicated and funny situations.
Also in one part of the second series there is a girl called Linda interferes with Matias and Patitos relationship which after a while makes everything thing complicated as Matias get blown out of his mind. After this it makes Patito more strong and she is no longer ugly and she becomes beautiful.
The love story of Carmen and Leandro will be at their best time, especially with Carmen's pregnancy and this promises only happy moments. However, Carmen has put on an incredible amount of weight and Bianca will use this to try to separate them. Carmen takes a babysitter for the newborn baby, who is nothing but Bianca's unrecognized sister. Then Bianca's mother, actress and showgirl frustrated that will help his daughter and his niece Antonella to achieve all their ambitions, regardless of means, but will not know the appearance of this daughter who has remained in oblivion, giving rise to complications in the life of Bianca, Antonella and society. Carmen and Leandro in this season get married.

International release