Impressed by the financial success of films such as Frida and A Day Without a Mexican, a growing number of U.S. production companies and distributors are gearing their efforts toward English-speaking Hispanics.

The potential market is enormous: The nation’s largest and fastest-growing minority makes up 40 percent of opening-weekend moviegoers, according to Arenas Entertainment, a leading Hispanic film producer and distributor in Los Angeles.

More attractive still is the market’s high proportion of English-speaking youth. Independent film companies believe they can target this segment of the Hispanic audience without losing the mainstream market.

“We found that 55 percent, almost 60 percent, of what is considered the Hispanic market consumes American TV in English. That’s a huge number because, in the end, that’s the young audience and the audience that really carries the money,” says Alvaro Garnica, film division director at Plural Entertainment, a Miami-based entertainment production subsidiary of Spanish media giant Prisa.

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