Madrid-based Álvaro Brechner, “one of the leading South American screen talents to emerge in the last decade,” Variety wrote in a review of his Venice-selected “A Twelve-Year Night,” is attached to direct “Mägo de Oz, La Película” a big-scale bio of the Spanish folk metal band.

Behind Cannes Critics’ Week player “Bad Day to Go Fishing,” sales hit “Mr Kaplan” and the Venice-selected “A Twelve-Year Night,” all Oscar entries from Uruguay, Brechner will initiate principal photography on March 17. He will shoot in Madrid, the Canary Island of Gran Canaria and Mexico City with an international Spanish-language cast including Spain’s Adrián Lastra (“Velvet”) and Roberto Álamo (“Riot Police”) and Mexico’s Michelle Renaud (“Malvada”) and Michael Ronda (“Cuando sea joven”).

The movie is produced by on-the-rise Spanish outfit Eterno Island Pictures, a subsidiary of El Sueño Eterno Pictures (“El Largo Viaje”). It is written by Sofía Cuenca, a co-scribe on “My Fault,...