Netflix seeks ‘Money Heist’ successor in Spanish hub

The Netflix logo is shown in this photo from the company's website on Feb. 2, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

In a cavernous studio outside Madrid teeming with TV industry stars, Netflix is blending old knowledge with modern technology to try to concoct a successor to its global hit “Money Heist”.

The dystopia “Billionaires’ Bunker”, to be released on Friday and set in a gigantic underground fortress offering gyms, a garden and a fancy restaurant, is the U.S. streaming giant’s latest Spanish super production.

The aim is to conjure the magic of “Money Heist”, a series about a group of wily robbers who hold up the Spanish national mint, which was Netflix’s first non-English-language global success after launching in 2017.

Migue Amoedo, visual artistic 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 movies and series have been shot in Spain since 2017, highlighting the country’s role as a growing audiovisual production powerhouse.

Co-chief executive Ted Sarandos has said the company’s Spanish titles generated more than five billion hours of viewing in 2024 alone.

Spanish screenwriters Alex Pina and Esther Martinez Lobato were behind “Money Heist”, its spin-off “Berlin” and “Sky Rojo”, productions that underline the potential for local settings to reach worldwide stardom.

“I am always surprised by the huge power of how an exotic local story can be universal at the same time,” Pina recently told reporters.

“I don’t feel we had to change anything in terms of the program’s character, narrative or DNA,” he continued, saying Netflix demanded no adaptation.

The site’s head of production, 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.”

Recipe for success

After bursting onto the Spanish market in 2015, Netflix inaugurated its first studios outside the United States in Madrid’s northern outskirts in 2019, making it a major European hub.

In June, Netflix announced more than one billion euros (US$1.2 billion) of investment in its Spanish productions through to 2029.

The Tres Cantos studio harbours traditional physical decor together with cutting-edge technology such as digital plateaus within its almost 22,000 square metres (236,000 square feet) of space.

In a hangar, a giant plateau measuring 30 metres long and six metres high brings to life static or animated images: a sea of clouds, a panorama of skyscrapers or a country road.

“We have a little bit of everything here to shoot and produce... we are testing a lot of technologies for the first time,” said Marti.

The technology “allows us to reduce the gap” between Spanish and European cinema and the United States, added Amoedo, who said 80 per cent of “Billionaires’ Bunker” was shot indoors.