‘Senna’, ‘One Hundred Years Of Solitude’ & ‘The Eternaut’ Give Netflix Three Big Shots at Global Hits From Latin America

Could the next Squid Game, Lupin or Money Heist hail from Latin America? TV history teaches us you cannot engineer a global hit, but with three tentpole projects launching in the next few months, Netflix is stacking the odds in favor of the next worldwide watercooler show coming from the region. Each of Netflix’s big three is a local landmark, the streamer’s biggest show out of its country of origin. Or, in the case of Senna, the biggest ever from the region. This is super-premium TV, Latin America-style.

To break through the clutter, everyone is looking for IP, something that will tempt an audience to sample a show. That being the case, curiosity and anticipation levels are sky high for 100 Years of Solitude, the series adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez’s magical realist masterpiece, which filmed in Colombia. Out of Argentina there is comic book adaptation The Eternaut — not as well-known globally, but held in huge esteem locally and with breakout potential. Straying from the world of adaptations, Senna still brings immediate name recognition. It will dramatize the high-octane exploits of the iconic Brazilian racing driver Ayrton Senna.

The streamer’s programming strategy is down to Francisco ‘Paco’ Ramos, Netflix’s VP of Content for Latin America. He is a former terrestrial TV exec, having been a buyer and head of programming at Spain’s Antena 3, and was also the Spanish distributor for New Line, Morgan Creek, Spyglass and Miramax movies, and then a producer.

The realities of production are such that Netflix’s upcoming launches out of Latin America, while indicative of ambition, were not engineered as a triple-header. “It was not that we said five years ago, ‘Let’s make the three series and launch them at the same time,’” says Ramos. “They all came together when they did. The three of them are hyper-complex projects and we started developing all of them before the pandemic. However, the pandemic really gave us an opportunity to dig deeper into the creative and into the path forward.”

Netflix actually got into originals locally in 2015, before Ramos joined in 2017. There has been a steady flow since, but with the abovementioned trio on the starting grid, things are about to rev up. Given the motor-racing analogies, Senna is a good place to start.

Off to the Races: Senna

Ramos put the yards in on Senna. “When I joined Netflix, the Brazil team said, ‘We need to do this,’” he says. “We secured the rights and then I met the family. They’re extraordinary people; his sister and his niece would give me access to stuff and tell me stories, and then we would read letters. I also started reading books and watched Asif Kapadia’s documentary [also titled Senna], again.”

Showrunner Vicente Amorim has talked about the sheer size of the production. To give a sense of the scale, there were more than 14,000 extras used across the six installments, which filmed in the driver’s native Brazil as well as in Argentina, Uruguay, Northern Ireland and Monaco (remarkably, 100 Years of Solitude had even more extras — see below).

Drive to Survive has proven the appeal of Formula 1 on streaming. “For sure, it has shown that there is interest in the sport, but I feel also that the team — the producers, the writers, the two directors (Amorim and Júlia Rezende) — have been able to build a unique story about an extraordinary human being, full of resilience, full of passion and an honesty that drove him to this never-ending desire for perfection, which I think people really will empathize with,” says Ramos.

The series stars Gabriel Leone (Ferrari) in the title role. Matt Mella (The Bureau) is Alain Prost, Senna’s arch-rival. Kaya Scodelario (The Gentlemen) plays Laura, a fictional F1 journalist. Of course, there is plenty of burning rubber, but the story of Senna the man, who tragically died at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994, is equally gripping. “The car races are extraordinary,” says Ramos. “They turned out great and the emotional part is very powerful.”

100 Years in Two Parts

100 Years of Solitude is the first series adaptation of the book and was sanctioned by the Garcia Márquez family. Given the fantastical multi-generational tale following the Buendía family and the founding of the mythical town of Macondo, the Colombian series producer Dynamo had its work cut out. The book is in that pantheon of classics often deemed unfilmable. Garcia Márquez himself reportedly thought it could not be made into a movie, given the time constraints of even a very long feature.

Netflix is giving it room to breathe. The streamer is telling the story over 16 episodes, split into two seasons. Ramos promises, “You’re going to see something that is completely different.” He adds, “It has its own little world, its own little tempo, its own little dynamics, and a little internal grammar.” He uses the word “little” affectionately and for color, but strictly speaking this is a project that is large in both ambition and physical scale.

Production designers Eugenio Caballero (an Oscar winner for Pan’s Labyrinth) and Bárbara Enríquez (Oscar nominated for Roma) oversaw the building of four versions of Macondo to reflect the passage of time, per the story. Painstaking attention to detail was required for the desired aesthetic. Period furniture was sourced from local antique stores and other fabrics and artifacts were made by local artisans.

Alex García López (The Witcher) and Laura Mora (The Kings of the World, Colombia’s 2023 Oscar entry) share directing duties.

Netflix has one season already in the can and after a six-month break, Season 2 will begin filming in November.

Why break it in half? Ramos explains: “If we had shot this whole thing, then we would have to wait, but also, because we found a really powerful ending at the middle of the adaptation, there is a huge payoff.”

He breaks it down further. “We really needed to figure out, structurally, thematically and tonally, how to have a very strong finish for the first part, and then a very powerful way to have a very strong first episode in the second part, which has to be propulsive and has to push things forward, and not just be the ninth episode of a series.”

Grounded Sci-Fi

Comic adaptation The Eternaut rounds out the upcoming big three. On paper, it doesn’t have the same global pulling power as the other two, but Netflix has high hopes for a show that Ramos says is only feasible as a series because of how the premium drama market has evolved in Lat Am. “The producers have been trying to make it for a long while, but they weren’t able to put it together. There is something about adapting a graphic novel that is told in a strip that it makes it very difficult for the three-act structure.”

With the market for high-end drama developing in Latin America, all concerned were able to get the adaptation of the comic from Héctor Germán Oesterheld and cartoonist Francisco Solano López up and running. K&S Films is producing and Bruno Stagnaro directing. Martín M. Oesterheld, grandson of Hector, is a creative advisor.

The live-action series follows a group of people who survive a snowfall that kills millions and then have to fight a mysterious alien threat. Ramos says it is at the grounded end of the sci-fi spectrum. “It looks like the real world,” he says. “It’s like Buenos Aires today — it’s not that we created Buenos Aires of the future.”

A Local Legacy

Talk of shows landing at a global level maybe misses the point. An international smash would be most welcome, but Netflix also has work to do regionally and country-by-country in Latin America. With about 49 million subs in the region, there remains plenty of headroom for growth, which is no longer the case for the streamer in many other parts of the world as markets mature.

Local content can also be the special sauce for a platform, and that’s the point for Netflix’s Lat Am content chief. “The reaction you may have to a piece of content you love that is from another country versus a piece of content you love that is from your own country, is different,” says Ramos. “That doesn’t mean people like one better than the other, but there is a sense of belonging and connection, and also of feeling that these stories are about you or your neighbors with the local shows.”

Ramos says Netflix has created opportunities for talent to make series that rarely existed previously outside of movie making. “People were able to make films, but the television that they were able to make was linear and, in the classical way, was more serialized telenovela content. For sure, the long-formatted novellas are a huge and very successful business. But now you have talent saying, ‘Oh, I can tell my story in eight episodes or in 12 episodes. I get to dig deeper into characters in a seasonal arc.’ A lot of things have started opening up for filmmakers, creators and writers.”

Netflix can rustle feathers when it gets into local production. Its entry shakes up markets and provides deep-pocketed competition for the legacy players. The U.S. company is always keen to talk up its local bona fides. That is as true in Latin America as elsewhere across its huge footprint.

Ramos believes the legacy of these new originals is sure to be deeply felt throughout the region. “You know, the thing that is very impressive for me is that in each of these three countries where we made these, the production ecosystem has never made shows of this magnitude and at this scale before,” he says. “The talent has burst out of these shows, and there are huge learnings and experiences that they have garnered for their futures, and for the shows and movies they will go on to make in their careers. They will make shows for our competitors, which is great because they will develop and become better and better. It’s going to be extraordinary for storytelling in Latin America.”