Netflix launches the “billionaire bunker” in search of a new world success after “La Pope House”

On the facades of the huge studios that shelter physical decorations and digital plateaus, the posters remind of the great Spanish successes of Netflix: near Madrid, the streaming giant combines consecrated ingredients and technological innovations in the hope of repeating the world success of “La Popel House” (“Factory”), AFP).

“At the Papel House” he was born in Spain, but he conquered the imagination of the whole world. The decoration of the Madrid National Currency, robbed by ingenious criminals in the series broadcast for the first time in 2017, left this time the place of a gigantic bunker, reproduced tens of kilometers from the Spanish studios.

Sports rooms, Zen garden and Chic restaurant follow each other in this yellow and blue fortification from the floor to the ceiling, in the center of the new Spanish platform, “El Refugio Atómico” (“Bunkerul Billionailor), whose broadcast begins on Friday, including Romania.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar68a3kr-um

At the origin of this new project is the duo made up of Álex Pina and Esther Martínez Lobato, producers and screenwriters, who have already been behind “La Papel House” (a project originally produced by Antena 3 channel with a limited budget before being bought at the end of 2017 by Netflix), “Sky Rojo” or, “Berlin” the characters in the initial series.

All these productions have become symbols of the internationalization of contents, whose specificities and geographical anchorage constitute, according to Álex Pina, the key to success: “I am always surprised by the incredible power that a local story can have, while remaining universal.”

“I have absolutely no impression that we should have changed something in terms of their characters, narrative or DNA. And I don't remember any conversation with Netflix about an adaptation needed to achieve them,” he added in a recent meeting with the press.

The new series, the “Bunker of the Billionaires”, tells the story of a group of rich who find refuge in a luxury shelter, and an old rivalry between two families in the middle of an unprecedented global conflict.

During the pandema, Álex Pina and Esther Martínez Lobato came across a newspaper. The construction of bunkers for rich, including one of thirteen floors, with swimming pool and cinema, had begun. “It was drawn to our attention because it was a wonderful scenario to make a black humor series, with rich used as guinea pigs.” That's what happened, writes to Vanguardia.

The American streaming giant, who arrived in Spain in 2015, inaugurated his first studios outside the United States in April 2019, in a suburb of northern Madrid. In total, almost a thousand films and serials have been produced in Spanish cities by the online streaming platform since 2017.

“Reducing the gap”

And at Tres Cantos, in the studios of about 22,000 square meters that is one of the main audiovisual creative centers in Netflix in Europe, the group has also relied on peak technologies to try to repeat the triumph of its first world success in a language other than English.

In a huge hangar, with a few elements of physical decoration, a vast screen covers a thirty-meter and six-meter long digital plateau: on the screen are static or animated images, with country roads, an ocean of clouds or a panorama of skyscrapers.

“This type of technology allows us to reduce the gap between Spanish or European cinema and other cinemas, such as the American one,” Praise Migue Amoedo, the artistic director of “El Refugio Atómico”, which was filmed “about 80%” inside.

“We have everything here to film, produces and tests many technologies for the first time,” adds the Víctor Martí production manager, who also enjoys seeing a “local narrative” offered to a “world public”.

Migue Amoedo does not hide his ambition for this dystopia whose frozen world imagined it: “The most important thing was to try to reproduce success at the Pope House”, which, according to him, represented “a turning point” and who now knows the “ingredients” of success.

Netflix announced in June investments of over one billion euros in its Spanish productions by 2029, both to “support the country's economy” and to “tell more important stories in Spain,” according to the Ted Sarandos Co-Ceo.

“Only last year, our Spanish titles generated over five billion hours of viewing,” said Ted Sarandos.