The Colombian powerhouse behind some of streaming’s biggest hits

TWO OF THE biggest Latin American television shows of recent years have depicted Colombia. One, “Narcos” (2015-17), showed the country at its worst: Netflix’s bilingual drama chronicled how Pablo Escobar became “the king of cocaine”. Undeterred by subtitles, viewers in 52 countries watched as the drug baron made mountains of blow and blew up his enemies. Parrot Analytics, a data firm, says that “Narcos” is one of the top 60 most-streamed series of the past decade. It even sparked a “narco-tourism” boom in Escobar’s home city of Medellín.

The other title, “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (2024), is rather different, based as it is on Colombia’s most celebrated novel. Netflix says that its adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez’s work is its priciest show in Latin America to date (though it has not revealed how much it cost). The magical-realist drama made its debut on December 11th; subscribers spent more than 31m hours watching the programme in the week of its release.

Besides Colombia and Netflix, a third factor connects these two hit titles: a production company called Dynamo. Founded in Bogotá in 2006, the firm combines shrewd commissioning and budgeting with an emphasis on authenticity and regional talent. In the past four years Dynamo’s titles have made more than $20m for Amazon Prime Video and $600m for Netflix, Parrot Analytics reckons. It is at the crest of a wave of local, independent production companies making entertainment for a global audience.

To date Dynamo has made 49 feature films and 26 television series, shot in Colombia, Mexico and Spain. Even before “One Hundred Years of Solitude” was released, in 2024 three Dynamo titles ranked in the top 20% of Spanish-language shows made in Latin America: “Distrito Salvaje” (“Wild District”, 2018-19), a corruption drama set in Bogotá; “Frontera Verde” (“Green Frontier”, 2019), about a detective investigating murders in the Colombian Amazon; and “El Robo del Siglo” (“The Great Heist”, 2020), which retells how thieves made off with $33m from Colombia’s central bank in 1994. “Pimpinero: Blood and Oil”, about petrol smugglers on the Colombia-Venezuela border, was released on Amazon Prime Video in November. Dynamo says it is the most expensive film ever made in Colombia.

According to Ampere Analysis, a research firm, there are about 3,000 production companies worldwide. Streaming has increased the opportunities for small outfits, which are behind around 60% of new series each year. Stacy Perskie founded Redrum in Mexico in 2009 and has produced “Narcos: Mexico” and an adaptation of Mexico’s national novel, “Pedro Páramo”, which is even more confusing than Márquez’s masterpiece, for Netflix. After “Squid Game”, a thriller from South Korea, shot to the top of Netflix’s chart in 2021, Hwang Dong-hyuk, its creator, set up his own production firm. (The second season of the dystopian show was released on December 26th.)

Such companies have benefited from streamers’ wish to commission work from a variety of countries—a strategy that Netflix has spearheaded. In 2011 the platform began looking for new subscribers in Latin America, and sought ideas from independent studios in the region. Production companies quickly learned to pitch and make shows in which “each episode was like a little film,” says Mr Perskie.

Dynamo has an unusual financing model. (Its co-founders, Andrés Calderón and Diego Ramírez Schrempp, came from the world of business and finance, not entertainment.) Rather than chase money on a project-by-project basis, Mr Calderón set up a private-equity fund in 2006. The idea was to encourage investment in Colombia’s emerging cinema industry.

Back then, he “didn’t know anything about films”. What he knew was how to raise money: he brought in several million from private investors, including pension funds. With that cash, Dynamo made its first dozen projects. It helped, too, that Colombia had passed a law to subsidise the film industry in 2003. Dynamo was able to produce content cheaply: each project had a budget of between $500,000 and $1m.

Dynamo courted Latin American talent. In 2009 it produced “Rabia” (“Rage”), a romantic thriller by Sebastián Cordero, an Ecuadorian director, and Eugenio Caballero, an Oscar-winning Mexican set designer. (Mr Caballero helped to bring Márquez’s fictional town of Macondo to life in “One Hundred Years of Solitude”.) Dynamo began to collaborate with studios farther afield by co-financing productions.

The company was instrumental in establishing Colombia as a film and tv hub. Mr Calderón persuaded the team behind “Narcos” that the drama should be shot on location. “My attitude was: ‘Let’s do it here, let’s show the real Colombia’,” he says. Crew members and actors from Latin America were hired. To improve accuracy, Mr Calderón set up a meeting with César Gaviria, Colombia’s former president, who was in office when Escobar was apprehended and later killed. (He also appears as a character in the series.)

Francisco Ramos, Netflix’s vice-president for Latin America, says the show’s success debunked the idea that only Americans and Britons could make prestige television. “Narcos” marked a “turnaround”, says Silvia Echeverri, director of the Colombian Film Commission, as Hollywood consequently saw Colombia as a viable place to shoot. An uptick in productions followed, helped by a 40% tax rebate on foreign films. (Dynamo lobbied for the law, which came into effect in 2012.)

Dynamo seeks entertaining yet nuanced stories about Latin America. The titles in its catalogue—which includes westerns, political comedy and true-crime capers—eschew predictable storylines. “Wild District”, Netflix’s first Colombian original, probes the challenges of reintegrating former guerrilla fighters into society. “Green Frontier” is a police thriller that touches on subjects such as the environment and indigenous people in the Amazon. (What could have been a tedious polemic is instead gripping.) Several shows have earned acclaim as well as viewers: “Falco”, a police series, won an International Emmy in 2019.

In 2025 streamers are hoping to economise—which means they may focus on proven franchises and inexpensive formats such as reality tv and avoid risky bets on dramas. Dynamo’s total production budget peaked in 2022 at $80m. (For comparison, A24, a leading American independent entertainment company, had an estimated film budget of $115m that year.)

Behind the scenes in Bogotá

Yet Dynamo is used to parsimony, and quality productions are cheaper to make in Bogotá than Burbank. The company has momentum: demand for Spanish-language content has more than doubled in the past four years. Beyond the second season of “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, the firm is tight-lipped about its work. It hopes, however, to make television of the same scale and ambition as its American counterparts. Mr Calderón says Dynamo is “ready to do ‘Game of Thrones’”.

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