In a cavernous studio outdoors Madrid teeming with TV trade stars, Netflix is mixing outdated information with fashionable know-how to attempt to concoct a successor to its world hit “Money Heist”.
The dystopia “Billionaires’ Bunker,” set in a huge underground fortress providing gyms, a backyard and a elaborate restaurant, is the U.S. streaming big’s newest Spanish superproduction.
The intention is to conjure the magic of “Money Heist”, a sequence a few group of wily robbers who maintain up the Spanish nationwide mint, which was Netflix’s first non-English-language world success after launching in 2017.
Migue Amoedo, visible inventive director of “Billionaires’ Bunker”, described “Money Heist” as “the turning point of the industry”, saying they now had “the recipe” for repeating its success.
Almost 1,000 Netflix motion pictures and sequence have been shot in Spain since 2017, highlighting the nation’s position as a rising audiovisual manufacturing powerhouse.
Co-chief govt Ted Sarandos has mentioned the corporate’s Spanish titles generated greater than 5 billion hours of viewing in 2024 alone.
Spanish screenwriters Alex Pina and Esther Martinez Lobato had been behind “Money Heist”, its spin-off “Berlin” and “Sky Rojo”, productions that underline the potential for native settings to succeed in worldwide stardom.
“I am always surprised by the huge power of how an exotic local story can be universal at the same time,” Pina just lately informed reporters.
“I don’t feel we had to change anything in terms of the programs’ character, narrative or DNA,” he continued, saying Netflix demanded no adaptation.
The website’s head of manufacturing, Victor Marti, added: “We are very happy to work from this narrow angle in the world… and offer our local storytelling to a global audience.”
After bursting onto the Spanish market in 2015, Netflix inaugurated its first studios outdoors the United States in Madrid’s northern outskirts in 2019, making it a serious European hub.
In June, Netflix introduced a couple of billion euros ($1.2 billion) of funding in its Spanish productions by to 2029.
The Tres Cantos studio harbors conventional bodily decor along with cutting-edge know-how resembling digital plateaus inside its virtually 22,000 sq. meters of area.
In a hangar, a large plateau measuring 30 meters lengthy and 6 meters excessive brings to life static or animated photographs: a sea of clouds, a panorama of skyscrapers or a rustic highway.
“We have a little bit of everything here to shoot and produce… we are testing a lot of technologies for the first time,” mentioned Marti.
The know-how “allows us to reduce the gap” between Spanish and European cinema and the United States, added Amoedo, who mentioned 80 p.c of “Billionaires’ Bunker” was shot indoors.
© 2025 AFP