How ‘Money Heist’ Spinoff ‘Berlin’ Points Up Netflix Evolution in Spain, as It Drops First-Look Image (EXCLUSIVE)
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“There are really only two things that can turn a bad day into a great one: The first is love. But to be honest, that’s not for today. My third wife just dumped me. The second is a heist worth millions of euros,” future Spanish Mint robber Berlin, played again by Pedro Alonso, says at the very beginning of “Berlin,” the spinoff of from Money Heist (“La Casa de Papel”) which Netflix drops Dec. 29.
More precisely, in “Berlin,” he aims with his gang to steal €44 million’s ($47.5 million) worth in 63 jewels from 34 cities across Europe – Zurich, Milan, Saint Petersburg, and so on – in just one night, as they come together in Paris’ biggest auction house.
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Netflix has also shared in exclusivity with Variety one of the very first images from “Berlin.”
From “Money Heist” creators Alex Pina and Esther Martínez Lobato, like the original “Berlin” is a notably Latin makeover of a U.S. heist format. But Berlin, its creators and the world has changed: It’s been six years since Netflix first released “Money Heist,” before repackaging it to become its first true-blue blockbuster. The world has seen a pandemic, yearns for lighter fare.
“We had just come from other projects that were a bit darker, with more tension, more violence. We wanted to make something bright, very comfortable and heartwarming as well as being a lot of fun, just needed to open up to Paris, that beauty, that air, that light,” says Martínez Lobato.
The eight-part series is set, as Berlin says, in his glory days, with one of his three gangs, when he had no inkling of his illness and wasn’t trapped like a rat in the Spanish Mint.
Berlin is his same sybaritic, dandy, mood swinging self, a machista bastard towards other men who dare confront him, but a big emotion junkie who soon gets his next fix when he falls head-over-heels in love with Camille, the hedonistic singer wife of Polignac, the auction house director.
Set mostly in Paris, and playing up or challenging culture clash cliches for laughs, the result is an eight-part series which is one part heist, one part comedy and getting on for two parts romance.
Over seven years since Netflix announced its first original series in Spain in 2016, “Cable Girls,” from “Grand Hotel” and “Velvet” producers Bambu Producciones, “Berlin” also underscores how its Spanish production – and the sector at large – has grown since 2016 and the launch of Netflix’s first European Production Hub in 2019, in international ambitions, scale and scope and best of its class technology. Eight takes on “Berlin,” its Spanish industry context, and this evolution:
What Netflix Has Achieved to Date in Spain
“Berlin” catches Netflix Spain on a high. World premiered at September’s Venice Festival to admiring reviews – “J.A. Bayona wrests the Andes flight disaster away from Hollywood,” said Variety – “Society of the Snow” was selected as Spain’s International Feature entry at the 96th Academy Awards in September and days later, won San Sebastián’s Audience Award with its highest score for any winner in history.
Produced with Madrid’s Rock & Ruz, “Nowhere,” a survival thriller starring Anna Castillo (“A Perfect Story”) as a heavily pregnant woman cast adrift in a container on open ocean, looks set tomorrow Dec. 19 to become Netflix’s most-viewed Spanish-language movie of all time.
In 2024, through Dec. 3, film and TV titles from Spain have ranked No. 1 on Netflix global non-English Top 10 charts for more weeks – 12 – than any other country in the world, with the sole exception of South Korea, which topped charts for 22. Spain beats France (9 weeks), Mexico (7), Germany (8) and Turkey (7). Spain has also scored more No. 1s (8) than any other country in the world, save, again, South Korea (12).
With “Nowhere,” Spain now accounts for 8 of the 20 entries in Netflix’s Top 10s of its most-watched non-English films and TV seasons ever, way more than any other country in the world, including France (3), Germany (3) and South Korea (2).
Netflix does not usually break out investment in individual territories. Given such results, investment in Spain must remain a high priority.
International Ambitions
“Money Heist” Part 3 scored the best first-week global result ever for a Netflix non-English-language series in July 2019.
The series “served as a confirmation that we could really connect with a global audience starting with the 600 million people who speak Spanish around the world due to the language and storytelling,” Diego Ávalos, VP Content for Spain & Portugal, said recently when Variety visited Netflix’s European Production Hub studio complex in Tres Cantos, a 20-minute drive north of Madrid.
“In that sense Spanish has a little bit of leg-up on everybody else,” he added.
“Part 3,” however, also broke records as the most-watched Netflix series or film of all time in any language, including English, in not only “Casa” creator Pina’s native Spain but also France and Italy, appealing to a Latin worldview which primes passion, chance and chaos, creating melodrama at every turn.
Another Spanish ace-card, Ávalos argued, is “its cultural affinity with Europe. It’s a perfect combination that I would say no other country has.”
Berlin” is perfectly situated on this axis. It celebrates Latin passions. Most of it is set in France, and much filmed there, over a four-week Paris shoot, it is an unabashed celebration of the French capital and European culture at large, from Montmartre, where Camille and Berlin take romantic walks, to the classic Belle Epoque housing of Rue Valentin Haüy where Berlin and his gang take rooms in a hotel to spy on the Polignacs’ apartment opposite, and the extraordinary 16th century Château d’Ormesson-sur-Marne, where Berlin and Camille enjoy a romantic getaway.
Netflix’s goal in Spain, as all over the world, is to make must-watch authentic films for a local audience. Netflix Spain is, however, attracting ever more Spanish creatives of tried and tested international ambition, as well as new voices.
Its 2023/24 lineup plays off new creative partnerships with two of Spain’s biggest international creators, J.A. Bayona and Alex de la Iglesia (“30 Coins”) who has shot serial killer thriller “1992” at Tres Cantos.
“It’s that recognition of us being a member of the creative community that convinced J.A. Bayona to bring his next film to Netflix, ‘Society of the Snow,’” Ávalos said at a panel of Netflix execs in Europe held at Rome’s MIA Market this October.
“Elite” creator Carlos Montero is now shooting “Respira” at Tres Cantos. Among new voices, “Nowhere” is the industry calling card of Rock & Ruz, which is now advancing on projects steered by some of Europe’s most sought-after screenwriters.
Scale
“Berlin” is “one of our most ambitious series ever,” Ávalos told Variety. It used 65 actors and female actors and 1,444 extras, across 146 locations, between exteriors and natural interiors, “quite a few more than in ‘La Casa de Papel,’” notes producer Cristina López Ferraz, “Berlin” executive producer at Vancouver Media, the Madrid label that Pina founded in 2016.
Bowed with five soundstages in April 2019, Netflix’s first European Production Hub opened five more in January 2022, including a 2,000 sq. meter (21,528 sq. feet) studio for big series and bigger movies. The new complex housed Charlie Covill’s Greek myth comedy “Kaos” last year; “Elite” has shot there on three soundstages for the last three seasons.
“Our soundstages allow for really ambitious projects. We have built sets that I would argue [are ] above anything you’ve seen in Hollywood. When you saw ‘Money Heist’ sets, you couldn’t believe that they were actually sets,” Ävalos said at the Rome round table.
“For ‘Money Heist’s’ last season’s big explosion in the museum, a set was built entirely that lasted two minutes before it was exploded. The level of work that went into that was incredible.
The stunt work is at such a complexity. Basically, Hollywood should be jealous of what Spain is doing. And our facilities allow for all of this,” he added.
In one spectacular decision, given the ultra low ceilings of the real Catacombs in Paris, the production’s tech team, lead by visual designer Miguel Amoedo, reconstructed a facsimile of them on a soundstage at Madrid’s production hub. That went to a meticulous move of flooding them, to bring them in line with the original.
In similar vein, currently occupying two floors on one Tres Cantos soundstage, the set of “Respira” replicates the offices of a hospital down to the smallest detail, down to its delicate aging of a pristine set to create a lived-in aura, as it delivers a candid chronicle of an operation and a six-part snapshot of a Spanish health sector in crisis, rocked by a strike.
One of the most complex stunt scenes on “Berlin,” says Vancouver action coordinator Carlos Nieto, is a car race at a Paris aerodrome, where Berlin gang members Roi (Julio Peña Fernández, “Through Your Window”) and Camerón (Begoña Vargas) challenge two locals, the girls strapped into skis bolted onto the automobiles roofs. These had to be reinforced, and the stunt women tensed by four-way harnesses and aided by a wind-machine at the back of the car so as to stand up at speeds of 120 mph.
“Hugely ambitious” series for 2024, says Ávalos, take in “Tremore Beach,” a psychological thriller set on the Irish coast from Oriol Paulo (“God’s Crooked Lines”) and “Mano de Hierro,” a Barcelona port drug war saga from “Below Zero” director Lluís Quíllez.
Authenticity
Netflix’s first iconic hits – “Cable Girls,” “Money Heist,” “Elite” were mostly focused on a number of fixed sets — the telephone exchange, the girls’ pension, the bar opposite — built at the Adisar Studios in Madrid satellite village Villaviciosa de Odón producer Teresa Fernández Valdés noted of “Cable Girls.”
By its final 2020 Season 5, however, 60% of “Cable Girls,” had been shot in exteriors, for example, Toledo’s Lillo airport, Segovia’s former prison, or villages outside Madrid. Over the last four years, Netflix series have opened to new locales, ever more situated in Spain’s regions.
Premiered in May 2022, “Welcome to Eden” highlighted the black sands and volcanic dome hills of the Canary Islands’ Lanzarote. Released this January, mystery thriller “The Snow Girl” unspooled in Malaga; May 2023 bow “Muted” is set and shot in Bilbao; “Through My Window” affords spectacular shots of Barcelona; shooting from July, “Respira” is set in Spanish third city Valencia, on the Mediterranean coast.
That is also a drive for authenticity, which cuts several ways.
“Authenticity means really reflecting the lives of everyday Spaniards,” Ávalos explained in Rome. “[We want viewers] to see themselves in some way reflected in these stories, knowing where they take place, or [recognizing the specific] restaurant where a scene takes place. Those are the moments where Spanish viewers see themselves and connect with these stories.”
Setting can also have a thematic point: the Bilbao-set “Intimacy,” for example, with its mix of traditional and modern backgrounds asks how modern are gender dynamics in the port city.
“We’ve now shot in all of Spain’s autonomous communities and Ceuta and Melilla and we’ve encountered tremendous technicians and artistry throughout the country,” Ávalos said.
Berlin plays spot the location. Multiple shots, supposedly in Paris, are made in Spain, such as the facade of the auction house in Galerías Canilejas, near the Madrid’s Puerta del Sol. Cameron’s memories of a trip by the sea with her ex-boyfriend take in beaches and two iconic hills slightly inland in Spain’s Cabo de Gata, on its South-West Coast.
Shot in a wider screen 2:1 giving the characters “more of a scenic experience of their surroundings,” contrasting with the more claustrophobic 16:9 ratio of “Money Heist,” Amoedo observes, the Paris scenes also celebrates the familiar, capturing the Eiffel Tower, dominated multiple settings’ backgrounds, walkways by the Seine, and the Place Concorde and Arc de Triomphe. These might not be local landmarks, but they form part of audiences’ mental and emotional landscapes worldwide.
Scope
“Spain is a perfect story that connects both investment innovation and growth, both from our members’ and a content perspective,” Ávalos said at Tres Cantos.
Starting with mostly drama soaps from highly experienced TV companies – Bambu Producciones’ “Cable Girls,” Zeta Studios’ “Elite,” Ávalos noted, Netflix has moved into thrillers (“Money Heist”), documentaries, more movies – “The Platform,” “Below Zero,” both global hits, as well as series from filmmakers such as Sergio Sánchez (“Alba”) and Daniel Sánchez Arévalo (“The Girls at the Back”), and documentaries, reality TV and now a reality talk show hybrid “Sálvase quien pueda,” released in November.
“Our story telling, which we’ve grown and varied,” runs parallel with the growth of our member base,” Ávalos said.
Now, more titles are shooting abroad: Two 2023 releases, “Berlin,” and “A Perfect Story,” have shot the most number of days in a single country, of all Netflix Spain original series.
A Spanish Post-Pro Pioneer
“One thing is ambition, another is that we have the technical capabilities in Spain to fulfil that ambition, though ambition doesn’t always mean stunts and fireworks,” Ávalos said, citing Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s “The Beasts.”
Parallel to its second-phase expansion of its Madrid Hub to 10 soundstages, Netflix also opened a state-of the-art post-production facility, which positions it as a pioneer in Europe. The facility has the first remote editing system in Spain – with 30 new suites that make it easier for technical professionals to work on projects from anywhere in Spain or indeed Europe – and the first post production lab in the Netflix cloud globally, as well as color-grading suites and a dailies lab.
High-tech innovation kicked in, however, as soon as Netflix opened offices in Spain from late 2018, and hired Victor Marti Farres as director, post-production, Spain & Portugal.
Parts 1 and 2 of “Money Heist” were shot in Standard Dynamic Range (SDR). Released “Criminal,” an English, French, German and Spanish-language four-part police interrogation anthology show-run by “Lupin’s” George Kay and taking advantage of Netflix’s just-opened Madrid hub, was shot in High Dynamic Range, a first for Spain. “Money Heist” Part 3 was remastered in HDR, priming realism via pixels’ color clarity, high contrast, and the mix of shadows and light.
Now pretty much Spain’s whole industry has moved to HDR for ambitious TV shows, with Marti Farres and Berta Coderch, Netflix manager, VFX, EMEA, training tech team by team, show by show, Ávalos notes.
Dropping April 2020, “Money Heist” Part 4 was the first Spanish show to use Atmos Sound.
Netflix is positioning as a Spanish post-production pioneer, whose know-how benefits Spain’s entire ecosystem.
Some tech innovations are introduced at the same time over Europe. In others, Netflix Spain pioneers and other offices adopt after it’s tested, according to Ávalos.
“The Spanish industry, not only Netflix, but talent, the different vendors, all companies have been really willing to embrace change because it’s not just technology per se, but gives more time for the creative side,” he adds.
LED-ing the Way
Part of that early high-tech adoption is virtual production, accelerated for Netflix in Spain by the acquisition of a LED panel, tested as the first four episodes of “Berlin” shot and used on “Berlin” Eps.5-8. It hit the ground running.
In one scene in “Berlin,” among its most touching, Roi, Berlin’s loyal young follower, takes Cameron, an adrenaline junkie, for a joy ride in a light plane, not that he’s ever piloted one. Background shots as the plane gathers speed down the runway were shot with Black Pearl 2 LED screen technology, a 12 meter x 5 panel owned by Netflix Spain, the display synchronizing background with the actors in a plane on a Tres Cantos soundstage, rather than having to shoot entirely on location.
LED solutions allow “an environment that is safer, greener, more controlled and far more time efficient,” than shooting the whole scene on a real runway, says Coderch.
In-camera VFX allows for better acting than green screen technology because actors can see their environment, and to initiate VFX and post-production much earlier, including in pre-production, and allowing new ideas to be incorporated, Ávalos adds.
Since the pandemic, LED panel quality has constantly evolved while pricing is more accessible, Coderch added.
Virtual shots are mixed with exterior shots of the plane at the runway. “We looking for reality, realism,” said Coderch.
Shots on the runway with Roi and Cameron in the cockpit capture hangers and blurred lights beside them near dawn as the plane advances. A few seconds later, the sun rises over the horizon, its magic hour light playing on Cameron’s face which briefly glows as she smiles, and takes, for her, a momentous decision.
Using LED technology, “Berlin’s” crew didn’t have to wait for the sun to rise and return to a location with a crew and actors several days in a row.
Upskilling Spain’s Creative Community
In order to facilitate high-tech evolution in Spain 2022, Marti Ferras and Coderch launched an annual Netflix Post-Production Summit where it brings talent – IT producers, DOPs, colorists, post-producers – to its facilities to get trained.
300 Spanish technicians attended in 2022, 300 cinematographers signed on for a second Summit this year. It featured two weeks of different courses for the industry and one day on Oct. 23 of virtual productions, its DOPs drawn from all over Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Held this year on Stage 7, the virtual set tested different technologies using the LED panels in 3D and with elements in 2D. “We like to have options. 3D allows us to create a replica of an actual set and can potentially be used for flashbacks or reshoots,” Coderch notes.
Pedro Alonso, Who Plays Berlin, Teases the New Heist Series:
Just how “Berlin” plays out is still under wraps. Dropped a few weeks back, its official trailer suggests, however, that it’s far more of a feel-good heist caper sluiced by romance, partying, drag racing and more joie-de-vie than the guns, bombs and semi-automatic violence of the original “Money Heist” (“La Casa de Papel”) franchise. Berlin himself, played by Pedro Alonso once more, remains. If the trailer is anything to go by, however, life in “Berlin” soon takes a different and highly romantic turn. Variety chatted to Alonso in the run-up to “Berlin’s” release:
From Berlin’s very first words – “there are really only two things that can turn a bad day into a great one” – and the title song, “Bullets and Flowers,” the series sets up a dichotomy between a meticulously designed heist thriller and a romantic melodrama which spills over and wrecks the best laid plans. That happened in “Money Heist,” and happens again in “Berlin” and in Berlin himself….Can you comment?
You’ve touched on the plot mechanism. As for Berlin, he can be a machine of calculation, an engineer designing artifacts if he puts his mind to it, but once he establishes a plan and it’s taking off, he swats it, unhinging chaos. He detests conventional sentimentality, but is dying to find genuine emotion. Some people said at the beginning that Berlin is cold, but no, he’s a volcano. ….
He’s also a complex personality…..
Berlin can be perverse, amoral, but he has an old school code of honor, very retro, and Camille brings out his sense of honorability, decency and coherence as a human being. I was moved feeling this honorability, even if everything around it was a lie.
There’s also the sense of character arc. Berlin begins the series saying: “Love is a fairy tale. Loves fades away,” but he changes his mind having met Camille, affirming very quickly that “Love is the only thing worth living for.”
The movement is towards the light, and an ever lighter series, stylistically, which is more amiable and moves around of course. The heart of this new life cycle is related to what the French call ‘joie de vie.’ Berlin tries to enjoy life as if [every moment] were the first and last time, extracting everything from it, its full taste.
“Berlin” is also far more of a comedy than “La Casa de Papel,” with some laugh-out-loud moments.
In acting style, “Berlin” really tested me because its stylistic range is far broader. There are moments of laugh-out loud comedy, but as you say, it has elements of melodrama and danger, of a thriller, and sometimes all in the very same sequence with brutal changes of register. A scene can start out as a thriller and then you’re suddenly talking about how you’d like to be the pet dog of a woman you’ve just seen singing in a bar that last night, when Demián wants to cut off your head because you are endangering the whole heist plan.
“Berlin” also teases out more explicitly a subtext in “La Casa de Papel,” a revindication of the Spanish and most especially Latin world. In a scene of high comedy, French Inspector Lavalle, insists that the criminal mastermind behind the theft must be French. But the audience already knows that the masterminds are Berlín and Demián, his right-hand man. “Sometimes we Spanish are just amazing,” says Inspector Alicia Sierra (Najwa Nimri), raising her hands about 14 inches apart.
French culture for me has always been a reference. Álex Pina has as you say a clear sense of cultural paradigms. Berlin takes an American, British sense of heist thrillers and French romanticism but mixes them with characters who are far more tumultuous, effervescent, febrile, wilder in emotions. Alex takes these paradigms and bends them, to large effect.
In international, Netflix’s first concern is to drive up the local subscriber base. But “Berlin,” and it’s very logical as a spinoff from “La Casa de Papel,” that it’s also a play for the international market. If it’s shot in Paris, it’s so often a recognisable Paris known from over the world not only from its landmarks – the Eiffel Tower is repeatedly seen, as are La Place de la Concorde and L’Arc de Triomphe – but also from films…..
If you’d told me not many years ago that we would shoot in Paris and steal its sense of romanticism, I would have thought that was science fiction. We shot in Paris for weeks. On the very first day we shot in the same street where Marlon Brando filmed “Last Tango in Paris.” Later we moved to the street where Christopher Nolan filmed “Inception.” We shot in iconic parts of the cinematographic Paris, one of the most complicated and most expensive places to shoot: It was a gift for life.
Could there be a “Berlin” Season 2?
We know “Berlin” is a spinoff but it’s as if it takes place in a parallel universe of its own. It’s as if “Money Heist” and “Berlin” are in the same metaverse. “Berlin” shows that Berlin can evolve, that “Berlin” has its own DNA. So, we just have to see what happens.
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