Produced by Spain’s Nostromo Pictures, the new fiction is a police thriller that promises to be “the greatest encounter in television fiction from Spain and Brazil.”
Netflix is already working on a new Spanish original series. Titled Santo, it is a story produced in Spain but that will have a strong Brazilian presence. It will be the platform’s first original series shot in both countries.
The series is produced by Nostromo Pictures, whose first foray into television fiction was precisely a series for Netflix, The Midas Favorites.
Santo is created by Carlos López (El Príncipe, La embajada, Hache) and starring Raúl Arévalo (Antidisturbios, Tarde para la ira, Black Beach) from Spain and Bruno Gagliasso (O Sétimo Guardião, Sol naciente, Mujeres ambiciosas) from Brazil, who will play two policemen who come across while looking for the same drug dealer, an unknown character named Santo.
According to El País, filming will begin in the coming weeks, “with the idea of ending the first season before the end of the year.” According to Verónica Fernández, director of original content at Netflix Spain, the intention is that the series “have a journey and that the universe of Brazil grows.” Santo’s story, she explains, is “big enough to have a future.”
Thus, it will be the “largest meeting in television fiction between Spain and Brazil.” Although the production is entirely Spanish, there are Brazilian actors, scriptwriters and directors.
Carlos López, creator of the series, is joined by screenwriters Miguel Ángel Fernández and Gustavo Lipsztein. It will be directed by Gonzalo López-Gallego and Vicente Amorim.
Fernández says that Netflix Spain had an interest in making a policeman on both shores, and thus “merge their most compatible markets to the maximum.”
And Carlos López explains to El País: “They are cultures so close, especially on a spiritual level, where guilt is important, but so different, that it could give rise to something. The country is not an ornament, it is one of the pillars of the series.”
Santo thus promises to mix drug trafficking with the world of superstition and religion. “Obsessively persecuting someone who embodies evil and has no face, results in them not knowing very well who they are persecuting, if a criminal or all the evil that they carry inside,” explains the creator. “They feel that the evil they have done in this life does not have a face either, which helps me to reflect on the things we do not see, which I think is part of the language of television and audiovisuals.”
“Santo is a series that will surprise by the originality of its approach and by having a frenetic narrative pulse. Bringing together Spanish talent with Brazilian talent has sparked an explosion of creativity. It is a thriller that gives you goosebumps,” said the director of original content at Netflix Spain in a statement.
SYNOPSIS
Santo is a fast-paced crime series, an action-intrigue thriller that sometimes comes close to horror. It tells the story of Santo, a drug dealer whose face has never been revealed.
Two policemen who go after him, Cardona (Bruno Gagliasso) and Millán (Raúl Arévalo), radically opposed, will have to learn to collaborate to solve the case and keep their lives safe.
