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Plenty of TV- and movie-industry insiders were stunned by the seemingly overnight success ofSquid Gameback in late 2021.
For veteran writer-producer Alex Pina, however, such a concept was already old news.
As has become its practice for most acquisitions, Netflix did zero marketing forCasa.
MexicosWho Killed Sara?is firmly entrenched in Netflixs all-time non-English top-ten list.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Take me back to whenMoney Heistfirst started breaking out on Netflix in 2018.
The show has already been on linear TV in Spain and was doing pretty well.
But then it exploded when it hit streaming.
What did that success tell you about how Netflix could be a different kind of platform than traditional television?
I think it said that Netflix had democratized fiction.
Only Netflix could do that at that time.
So it was completely unexpected what happened, completely inexplicable.
It was a word-of-mouth phenomenon.
Im curious how you, as a showrunner, felt about the old status quo pre-Netflix.
Theres a lot of creativity outside of Hollywood.
Weve always done fiction for prime time.
We have the craft and the creativity; we did different hybrids and genres.
We have many, many ideas, so we knew we had it.
The difference now is its all about the distribution channels.
They were all dedicated to Hollywood products.
I couldnt remotely imagine we could be where we are.
I think the biggest change is to the American industry, actually.
So they do have a problem with the democratization of ideas.
They need to somewhat increase their own creativity to search for new ideas.
And you credit Netflix with this.
What Netflix did is they included creatives from all over the world in the gang.
I also think theres a general lack of self-criticism among showrunners.
The streaming services bring the same opportunity for the rest of us.
I think we are better off now because we have the ability to be No.
1 in the world.
I thinkBerlinalready has reached No.
1 in the world.
So what this does actually is it makes everyone make a run at be better.
Only the best ones will survive, and I think we will eventually get better shows.
Lets talk about your latest show,Berlin.
And you saw howLa Casa de Papelpenetrated the Latin audience and then took off around the world.
But withBerlin, we didnt think about the global audience.
We always look forouridentity; that comes first and foremost.
Yousaid thenthat you and your shows are fundamentally Latino.
Our epicenter is always emotionally exaggerated.
Well, we always give a shot to give a little twist to our characters.
They have to have something special for the audience.
They have to be exceptional, they have to be better than oneself.
And withMoney Heist, if you take a close look at it, theyre hugging each other a lot.
You have this elevated friendship.
And its way more exaggerated than any kind of Anglo-Saxon show you’re free to see.
I think people like to see this.
Have either of these things changed how you approach making shows?
So when you dont have money to burn a gas station, you have to figure out something else.
We came to Netflix with a low-budget show and it worked.
you could do impossible action scenes on a virtual stage.
Netflix has made a Korean adaptation ofLa Casa de Papel.
Do you have any interest in doing that in other countries outside of Europe?
Maybe an American remake that you oversaw?
Adaptations or remakes made more sense before than they do now.
And I think this has changed and its quite the opposite now.
People like to see new faces, so Ive cast people that are quite unknown in my shows.
The audience is more and more international every day.
So I think it makes less sense to do local adaptations.
What we like to do is to keep combining different genres.
InBerlin,youll be able to find four different genres.
I am already doing scripted content for the whole world.
Before, if I wanted to do that, you had to travel to the U.S.
But now, its something we can do from here.
I think you could have a very nice life in Spain.
I love it, and I invite you to come here and see.
If you did this, you would understand me.
The beauty of 2024 is that you dont have to migrate to reach the whole world.
