General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20265 min read

Metástasis

Metástasis is a Colombian television series, the authorized Spanish-language adaptation of the American drama Breaking Bad, produced by Sony Pictures Television (SPT) and the Colombian company Teleset for Latin American and U.S. Hispanic audiences. It follows Walter Blanco, a chemistry teacher who, after a fatal cancer diagnosis, enters the methamphetamine trade with a former student. The series ran for 62 episodes in five seasons, first airing in the United States and Latin America in 2014.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Origin	Announced May 13, 2013 as the first adaptation of Breaking Bad by Sony Pictures Television, produced with Teleset for Latin America¹
Format	5 seasons, 62 episodes of about one hour, adapted from the five seasons of the original series²
Original run	First broadcast 8 June 2014, final episode 18 September 2014; Colombian premiere on Caracol Televisión in January 2015²^•³
Lead cast	Diego Trujillo as Walter Blanco, Roberto Urbina as José Miguel Rosas, Sandra Reyes as Cielo, Julián Arango as Henry Navarro¹
Setting	Filmed in Bogotá, replacing the Albuquerque, New Mexico locations of the original⁴^•³
Reception	IMDb rating of 2.5/10 from about 5.4 thousand votes; Caracol's debut drew 8.9 rating and 1,671,322 viewers⁵^•⁶

Production and announcement

Sony Pictures Television and Teleset announced the project on May 13, 2013, while Breaking Bad was in the second half of its fifth and final season in the United States. SPT described Metástasis as the first adaptation of the award-winning series and said the show had been cleared in most major Spanish-speaking markets, including Univision's UniMás in the United States.¹ SPT had a prior record of local-format adaptations, including Married...with Children in 12 territories, Everybody Loves Raymond in five, The King of Queens in Bulgaria and Russia, and I Dream of Jeannie in India.¹

The series was filmed in Bogotá under the supervision of Sony Pictures Television and Mundo Fox, with a premiere set for the second half of 2014.⁴ Executive production was handled by Andrea Marulanda, who described the result as "very faithful to the original, keeping the same chapter structure."⁶ Andrés Baiz, a Colombian director whose first feature Satanás (2007) represented Colombia in the Oscar foreign-language race, directed eight of the 62 episodes.⁷

The adaptation had the approval of the original's creators. According to El Espectador, the team of Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan reviewed at least the first ten scripts of the adaptation, and Gilligan collaborated with the producers on the changes.⁸^•⁹

Cast and characters

The characters map directly onto the originals. Diego Trujillo, known in Colombia for El Capo and A Corazón Abierto, played Walter Blanco, the equivalent of Walter White.¹ Roberto Urbina played José Miguel Rosas, the counterpart of Jesse Pinkman and Walter's accomplice in manufacturing methamphetamine. Sandra Reyes played Cielo, Walter's wife (Skyler White in the original), and Julián Arango played Henry Navarro, Walter's brother-in-law and a Colombian narcotics agent, the equivalent of Hank Schrader.¹

Other counterparts include Saúl Bueno, played by Luis Eduardo Arango, standing in for Saul Goodman; the adaptation changed his television-advertising persona to a format closer to Colombian reality.¹⁰ The drug lord Tuco Salamanca was played by Damián Alcázar.¹¹

Adaptation choices

The adaptation follows the original's plot and dialogue closely. The Spanish newspaper El País described it as the "latinized" version of the series, keeping the characters, plot, and dialogue of the world Vince Gilligan created, with the drug remaining methamphetamine even in Colombia.⁹ Director Andrés Baiz coined the term "latinización" for the process of contextualizing the story for Latin American audiences.⁹

Several changes localized the story. Walter Blanco teaches at a private school rather than a public one, because a public teacher's salary in Colombia would not support the character's standard of living in Bogotá. His house has no pool, since Bogotá's climate is cooler than Albuquerque's. The recreational vehicle where White and Pinkman cooked became a school bus.⁹ The arid landscapes of Albuquerque gave way to the green mountains around Bogotá, a change that significantly altered the series' atmosphere.³

As a telenovela-style production, its broadcast pace was much faster than the original, compressing the five seasons of Breaking Bad into a single year of emission.²

Broadcast and reception

The series premiered in the United States on 8 June 2014 on Univision's channels and ran through 18 September 2014.²^•⁹ El País reported that 3.4 million viewers watched the debut live in the United States, making it the highest-audience broadcast of that day on a generalist channel in Los Angeles.⁹ In Colombia, the series reached Caracol Televisión in January 2015; its debut there registered an 8.9 rating, 1,671,322 viewers, and a 34.7 share.³^•⁶

Critical and audience reception diverged sharply. On IMDb the series holds a rating of 2.5 out of 10 from about 5.4 thousand votes.⁵ Spanish-language commentary frequently characterized it as a near scene-by-scene copy: the Cadena SER critic wrote that each episode follows the original scripts almost to the letter and that the shot choices copied rather than adapted the original.¹² A retrospective piece by SensaCine called the remake a failure that did not take off despite its fidelity.³

Colombian critics focused on the transplant problem. Mario Morales, director of the Department of Communication at the Universidad Javeriana, judged the production well made but said the scripts and character construction had not fully managed to transfer what was created for a specific cultural context into a narrative that Colombian audiences could recognize as their own.⁸ Other observers noted that the strict fidelity to the original script kept the series from becoming a conventional culebrón, unlike contemporary Colombian narco-serials.¹²

Availability

In the United States the series is available for free with ads on the streaming service Tubi.¹¹ Netflix also lists Metástasis in its Colombian catalog, describing it as a 2014 drama starring Diego Trujillo, Roberto Urbina, and Sandra Reyes.¹³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › Telenovelas and Latin American/Iberian serials › Colombian telenovelas and serial dramas

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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