Fans of post-apocalyptic horror thrillers and alliteration, rejoice: Bird Box Barcelona, a spinoff of the 2018 film starring Sandra Bullock, is set to premiere on Netflix on July 14. The streamer released the first teaser for the film on Tuesday, and from the looks of it, a lot of people are scared, running around with blindfolds on, and leaping from tall buildings.
If you never watched Bird Box, you might be surprised by how much that fact alone makes you an outlier. Despite garnering mixed reviews upon release, the film amassed a sizable audience, becoming the most-watched film on Netflix within a month of its release.
A Spanish-language spinoff was announced shortly before the film’s release, with Alex and David Pastor (The Occupant) attached to direct. Bird Box Barcelona stars Georgina Campbell (Barbarian), Mario Casas (Three Steps Above Heaven), Diego Calva (Babylon), and Alejandra Howard (Don’t Be Afraid).
The original film takes place in a world where a mysterious wave of unexplained suicides spreads across Europe and Asia, sparking worldwide panic and the collapse of civilization. After learning that the suicides are being caused by ghostly creatures that inflict mass hysteria when seen, survivors begin wearing blindfolds while outside and using caged birds to alert themselves to the creatures’ premise. Basically, it’s like M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening meets Death Stranding.
Bird Box Barcelona is intended as the first in a series of multiple local-language spinoffs set in the universe of the original. It makes sense, given the success of other similar Netflix acquisitions like Money Heist, that Netflix would iterate on that same approach of creating localized iterations of popular titles in order to capitalize on Bird Box’s initial success.