Alex Pina Javier Gomez Conferencia
During SmartFilms in CDMX, there was a masterclass with the creator of La Casa de Papel, Álex Pina, and Javier Gómez Santander, scriptwriter of the series, where they revealed the creative process behind the most important robbery in history.
It all started when Pina founded the Spanish production company Vancouver Media: “We had to do something that contributed novelty to the landscape and suddenly realized there was a genre in cinema that was the perfect robbery, which didn´t exist on television. It was more viable to take 90 minutes of a robbery but a huge challenge to take it to 1,000 minutes of fiction.” With storytelling in two moments, where the arches of the characters can be deepened, as opposed to cinema, “we gradually designed it to adapt it to serial fiction in the genre”.
With references to Tarantino with Perros de Reserva, Pina mentions that despite being a challenge, both Atresmedia and they were interested in taking a robbery to the screen, highlighting how only four days after the launch on linear TV in Spain, he spoke with Netflix and the closed the deal for the presence of the series on the platform. “They saw it clearly from the very first moment”.
The challenge of editing a format that would adapt to Netflix was not a big problem pointed out by Gómez. “We realized that wherever you cut it, it would end well because it worked fine. That editing worked even better than the original” since it was more successful on the platform since it was an addicting series that the audience could consume however they wanted. “Platforms have disappeared in the Atlantic ocean, where the series is launched the same day in different countries, opening the doors to peripheral markets where the language is no longer a problem”, said Gómez.
However, when Netflix proposed the third season, Pina explained the dilemma of opening something that was well closed and generating disappointment, “but in two and a half months, we came up with an idea”. With more economic possibilities, the finished shooting the fourth and are in postproduction. Even without knowing the exact date, they hope it will come out in four or five months.
Netflix: We are very excited to announce a general agreement with Álex Pina
