Heres why Money Heist flopped in Spain before being picked by Netflix

When ‘La Casa de Papel’ also known as ‘Money Heist’ debuted on the Spanish channel Antena 3 in 2015, very few people knew about the series. The show was received well for its initial episodes but after few episodes, the ratings dropped drastically and the show turned into a complete failure.

In an interview with Variety, Ursula Corbero who essays the role of Tokyo revealed that after the completion of the first season the cast moved on. She said, “We’d all moved on. We’d said our goodbyes, shed tears and hugs and went on to our next projects.”

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Netflix discovered Money Heist later that year, they signed an agreement with makers to get the show on their streaming platform. After the show was onboard, Netflix re-edited the 15 episodes of the show into two seasons of 22 episodes with each episode being 50 minutes long.

European TV academic Christopher Meiro revealed the main reason for the hit show’s failure during its initial days. He said, “A real weakness in Spanish TV is that primetime shows, especially dramas, are very poorly programmed.”

He added, “Episodes are usually 100 minutes long and sometimes don’t start until 11:30. No matter how popular they are, they almost always lose momentum.”

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The show’s co-creator Alex Pina shared, “The way we watch TV is brutally addictive. With shows like ours, when you add commercials and only air them once a week, you lose power with the audience, and The compulsion disappears. Streaming allows them to feed this addiction.”

Money Heist became the most-watched non-English language series of all time. It will premiere its first part of season five on September 3, 2021, and part two will release three months later on December 3, 2021.