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Meet Walter Blanco: 'Breaking Bad' Gets Spanish Makeover
Walter White has bid adieu to TV, but Walter Blanco, now that guy's just getting started. The wildly popular and Emmy-winning AMC show is being remade for Spanish-language audiences, where it will be known as Metastasis, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
We have to note a response to a Twitter posting of the Latin American series' cast of characters. "Esto es real?" Apparently so. If not, THR is channeling The Onion.
The remake's title is both a reference to the main character's cancer and his dangerous side business. As Walt himself once put it, "chemistry is about transformation."
The future meth kingpin (played by Diego Trujillo) now lives in Colombia with his wife Cielo (Skyler) and former-student-turned-partner Jose (Jesse). His DEA brother-in-law is now named Henry Navarro.
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"Breaking Bad is a fantastic series that wasn't widely seen in Latin America, partly because cable doesn't yet have full penetration in the region," Angelica Guerra, Senior VP and Managing Director of Production for Latin America and the U.S. Hispanic market," tells the Hollywood Reporter. "[But] there is a universality to the story and its characters that we recognized could work very well."
The series has been sold to more than 170 territories worldwide, but its subject matter makes it somewhat of a niche show in some countries. In the U.K., only the first season aired on television, the rest has been available thanks to Netflix.
Unlike, say, the many international versions of Ugly Betty, Sony says not to expect a French or Japanese version. They have already done foreign adaptations of other popular series, including a Russian Everybody Loves Raymond and Married … With Children for the Middle East.
While Guerra says they have consulted with original series creator Vince Gilligan on the remake, a few details will be changed, besides the names, location and language. There's no RV meth lab, for one thing. "Motor homes are not popular in Colombia," she tells the Hollywood Reporter, "so audiences will see Walter and Jose cooking up their first several batches of methamphetamine in an old, barely drivable school bus."
In other remake news, U.K.'s Broadchurch whodunnit series, which stars former Doctor Who David Tennant, will be remade for the U.S., starring... David Tennant, who will use an American accent.
Este será el reparto de ‘Metástasis’, el remake latinoamericano de ‘Breaking Bad’. pic.twitter.com/A1p1zjZTUg
— Madeca (@MadecaPalacios) October 2, 2013
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