Money Heist creator Álex Pina is taking on the super rich in his latest Netflix series Billionaires’ Bunker, a show that he describes as an “amalgamation of soap opera, black comedy, jail drama and thriller.”
In Billionaires’ Bunker, which launches Friday, some of the richest people in Spain hide in a specially-created bunker called Kimera Underground Park as they face the imminent threat posed by a nuclear war. Deep underground, there is resentment between two families fueled by a claustrophobic enviroment, while the super rich guests are looked after by workers clad in orange. Stick around until the end of ep 1 and a mega twist leads to a shift in the shape of the series.
“I think from episode 1 you will be able to see how the show changes tone,” Pina told Deadline from Netflix’s Tres Cantos studio in Madrid. “It becomes more ironic, with the subject matter of rich people escaping the apocalypse to get into a bunker, which is kind of ironic in itself. It works with many different genres. It’s like a Russian Doll, the genres change as you move forward.”
Pina created Billionaires’ Bunker (titled El Refugio Atómico in Spanish) with long-time collaborator Esther Martínez Lobato and the show stars Pau Simón, Alícia Falcó and Miren Ibarguren.
Pina, who has made five Netflix shows including Money Heist and its spin-off Berlin, said he first started thinking about making Billionaires’ Bunker during the depths of the pandemic.
“They started building buildings that went 13 floors underground and we thought this was a wonderful reason to tell this story,” he added. “We wanted to make a show that was naughty, witty and about rich people during an apocalypse.”
The claustrophobic environment that comprises the heart of Billionaires’ Bunker and was also super present in Money Heist is an environment that Pina and Martínez Lobato love to explore, they explained.
“From a drama perspective you can take all the characters to a more excessive limit,” Pina added. “We are fans of putting as much pressure on as we can and using this physical building where we trap people in time.”
For Martínez Lobato, the bunker acts as a great equalizer. “Those people with an aspirational life outside of a bunker are very different when you put them inside a bunker,” she explained. “Their money becomes almost worthless, so you can dig into their identity, their hearts and their personal relationships. And visually we have two teams wearing two different colors, so you challenge the audience from the beginning of the show.”
Pina, Martínez Lobato and the team at their indie Vancouver Media have tapped into Netflix’s razor-sharp tech at the Tres Cantos facility and Pina said the effort has been “humungous.” Billionaires’ Bunker is the first Spanish Netflix series to use virtual production extensively and Netflix describes it as “one of the most ambitious audiovisual projects [it has] ever undertaken in Spain.” The series was filmed on a multiset spanning more than 7,200 square meters and used 360-degree cameras to capture the dome feel. The multiset had a capacity for 300 people and allowed up to three different teams to film simultaneously. Within the soundstage there was a Zen garden, which featured an eight-meter-tall bonsai tree, which took over five months to create.
“I think all this shows how much we are at the very top in terms of technology,” said Pina.
“We can all compete with English-speaking shows”
Behind the scenes of filming on ‘Billionaires’ Bunker’. Image: Tamara Arranz/Netflix
Money Heist has long been seen as a superstar breakout series that ushered in a new era of non-English-language hits including Squid Game and Lupin.
While there may not have been one of equal size since, Pina thinks TV shows in different languages are still holding up just as well as they were when Money Heist exploded onto the scene.
“I think we can all compete with the English-speaking shows,” said Pina. “And I think what happened [when Money Heist launched] is still very much enforced. I’m still working on very big TV shows and I feel that we absolutely belong to this universe like any other.”
