Dylan Clark and Chris Morgan, who produced the Sandra Bullock-starring postapocalyptic thriller, will produce the new feature that is being fast-tracked with the goal to be in production in Spain by the end of the year.
Adrián Guerra and Núria Valls Nostromo Pictures will also produce.
Bird Box, an adaptation of the novel by Josh Malerman, was set in a world in which demonic entities that, if seen, drive humans to kill themselves or each other. Bullock starred as a woman who tries to navigate that dangerous world, using a blindfold and caged birds, while also trying to protect a pair of children.
Nielsen reported in 2018 that 26 million viewers in the U.S. watched the movie in its first week.
No plot details were given but this is an example of Netflix mining its intellectual property to build out a sort of cinematic universe from the local level on up. The new feature will be mostly in Spanish and set in Spain, a huge territory for Netflix, and will give a sense of what was occurring in that part of the world as society was crumbling.
The streamer is already experimenting with local language offshoots of a mainline feature with the upcoming Army of the Dead, Zack Snyder’s zombie heist movie. Netflix recognizes the need for branded content and universes, and in the case of Army, is producing a prequel set and made in Germany, another key territory for the streamer.
Ainsley Davies of Chris Morgan Productions and Brian Williams of Dylan Clark Productions are exec producing.
The marriage of material with filmmakers seems to be a no-brainer for the Pastors, who hail from Barcelona and have made a career of making postapocalyptic thrillers. Carriers, their English-language debut that starred Chris Pine, told of a deadly global virus and a group of survivors who turn on each other. The Spanish-language thriller, The Last Days (Los ultimos dias), featured another global catastrophic event, this one with deadly agoraphobia at the center.
Most recently, the brothers co-created The Head, a 2020 series that was set in a South Pole research station whose staff may or may not have turned on each other. Head streamed internationally and in America on HBO Max.
The Pastors are repped by Verve, Kaplan/Perrone Entertainment,and Jackoway Austen.
