For Netflix, “with El Eternauta, Argentina won the TV series world championship.”

A festive atmosphere of collective euphoria reigned this Friday at the Buenos Aires Book Fair with the presentation of El Eternauta , the new Netflix series based on the iconic work by Héctor Oesterheld . This monumental audiovisual project required 148 days of filming between May and December 2023, more than 50 real locations, 30 virtual sets, and the participation of 2,900 people, including cast, extras, and technical crew. The ambitious production included the use of 250 weapons of 20 different models, 500 specially designed masks, and seven versions of Juan Salvo's gamulán until the final design was reached.

The technical deployment was also impressive: 598 tons of salt, between 3 and 4 tons of cellulose, and 600 kg of ecological snow were used to recreate the toxic snowfall, while 16 cameras, including drones and visual effects teams, captured every detail. Ricardo Darín , who plays the legendary Juan Salvo, had 113 days of filming and worked alongside a team of 32 effects artists on some key days. Despite this titanic effort, what is most striking is the emotion of seeing Darín, with his hermetic diving suit, embodying the hero who fights against the fearsome "Hands" in the solitude of the streets of Buenos Aires.

This Friday, May 9th, the brand-new series based on this captivating story was presented at the Sala Victoria Ocampo , and it was packed . Enthusiastic readers, from the first hour and the last, but also people of all ages and a large national and international press. Many people were left out . El Eternauta caused a sensation in Argentina and around the world. It's an unprecedented phenomenon.

And many of us grew up with the excitement and anxiety of receiving, each week, the installment of El Eternauta to dive headfirst into the fascinating story of this family threatened by the sudden fall of snow that, with just one touch, would annihilate them.

The panel included director and screenwriter Bruno Stagnaro ; producer Leticia Cristi ; the author's grandson, Martín Oesterheld , who also served as the series' creative advisor; and Netflix Latin America executive Francisco Ramos . The panel was moderated by journalist Hinde Pomeraniec.

This magnificent work that made history since it was first published in 1957, in the magazine Hora Cero Semanal , with a script by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and drawings by Francisco Solano López, ran until 1959, becoming a fundamental work of Argentine science fiction and had several reissues, all super successful, especially the one published in 1976, El Eternauta II, written by Oesterheld while in hiding, until his painful disappearance by the military dictatorship.

This year, Editorial Planeta reissued it, faithfully respecting the original publication, even down to its binding, and it sold like hotcakes. Copies sold like hotcakes, and more had to be printed to satisfy the huge demand from the public, who turned up from all corners of Buenos Aires to get their copy.

“Editorial Frontera (an independent publishing house under which the comic was published) was my grandparents' own house, which was across from the Béccar train station and was also the house that appears in El Eternauta,” said Martín Oesterheld, the author's grandson and creative advisor on the series, on Friday.

For his family, the moment of its first publication was a momentous occasion : “When my grandfather published the first edition of Hora Cero , he went with my grandmother to the newsstand,” Martín recounted. They had gone to see if the magazine was on display there and stayed until someone got off the train and asked for the comic . “I’ll take it,” the man said, and only then did they go to sleep.

"It's a visionary, culturally complex, and interesting graphic novel with very special characters ," said Francisco Ramos, executive of the Netflix platform for Latin America.

“It’s fascinating what’s happening because this country has a very special ability to connect with its cultural movements . Having so many young people here is very promising for a country. I think what’s happening with this series is something I haven’t seen in my entire career . The interweaving of what happens in fiction and what happens on the streets is a little overwhelming. We’re all overwhelmed and happy,” Ramos said.

One of the highlights was when the executive enthusiastically declared, "Argentina won the World Cup of TV series," a phrase that sparked a massive ovation and even shouts in the room.

Ramos also spoke about the series' global impact , highlighting that it has entered Netflix's global top 10 in the non-English language series category, with 10.8 million views worldwide.

For her part, producer Leticia Cristi explained how she went about bringing the script to life: “I love what you wrote, but how do you do that?” Cristi had asked Bruno Stagnaro.

“And we ventured forward with ingenuity, with audacity, a bit of improvisation, with a lot of professionalism and a lot of responsibility , of course,” the producer said, adding: “We were also able to do it thanks to the Argentine industry, so qualified and professional ,” a phrase that generated more rounds of applause and endless screams.

In all areas, Leticia said, "the concentration on the set of El Eternauta was incredible. There were so many of us, people with a wealth of experience and the opportunity to add new creations , a communion and a complete understanding of what we were doing," she expressed.

The producer also made a comment that again generated a standing ovation:

“All of this became a source of pride and a celebration. We never stopped sharing our emotions. These days we receive many messages from colleagues, friends, and the general public. Many people write to me and say, ‘I wasn’t part of it, but I’m proud. ’ And what I can say is, ‘You are part of it. To the extent that you are a spectator and you are proud, you adopt it, you share it, and you celebrate it, you are part of it. ’ We are all part of it, so I think it’s something very gratifying, very beautiful that fills me with pride, that allows our culture to travel, mainly Argentine culture, the confluence of great, celebrated authors , and the fact that, in Japan, they are learning to play truco ,” she remarked with humor.

Leticia Cristi also said that some people wrote to thank the team for helping their children develop a love of reading after watching the series.

How was Ricardo Darín chosen to star in the series? Pomeraniec wanted to know. Director and screenwriter Bruno Stagnaro replied: “When Matías (Mosteirín, Executive Producer of K&S Films) suggested that I play Ricardo, I didn’t see it because of his age ; since it’s a very physical story, I saw it as complicated. But, thinking about it, I realized that Ricardo’s age more or less coincided with what a Malvinas veteran might be today, and in some way , that resolved something that was very important to me, which was the issue of the character’s connection to weapons. Because one is used to seeing him in series that come from societies where they have a proximity, an immediacy (with weapons), but in our society they don’t. In fact, it’s good that it should be that way and it’s good to point it out. So, in some way, something that could have been problematic regarding Ricardo’s age later ended up playing very much in his favor.”

The director of the series explained that the fact of redefining the character's story "has to do with other aspects of the story that we had more developed , such as that the old works, so, just as the artifacts had a second chance, it is interesting that the same thing happened with the characters and we saw that transforming Juan Salvo into an ex-combatant, into a hero of the Malvinas Islands, which is our story, which is something that in some way we had not yet gone through and it seemed to me that it was a good opportunity to do it, added to the fact that the Malvinas Islands are a wound that is still valid, so it is interesting to evoke it," he concluded.