Drugs, Death and the DEA. Narcos' showrunner has a new series in production and a warning.

Chris Brancato's latest series "Hotel Cocaine" has a message: pleasure has a price.

Chris Brancato is the co-creator of “Narcos,” the compelling Netflix series about the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. I binge watched each season and booked a vacation to Colombia to see what it was all about. Such was its addictive power. 

I met Chris earlier this month at Content London, an international conference for producers, and we talked on The Media Mix podcast about his new series for Amazon’s MGM+ called “Hotel Cocaine.” He describes it as, “Casablanca,” but with the drug wars as the backdrop.

Filming starts in January in the Dominican Republic which is standing in for seventies Miami. The series, scheduled to air in 2024, is set in a nightclub and centers on the emergence of coke as the drug du jour. I got to see the sizzle reel of “Hotel Cocaine,” and it features wild clothes, wild cars, great retro music, and as you’d expect, plenty of skin and lots of lines of white powder. 

“In its heyday in the late seventies, it was the epicenter of the newly rich Miami cocaine dealers, DEA agents, CIA agents, movie stars, rock stars,” says Brancato.

“In some panels that I did after “Narcos” ended, people would ask me, how do you feel about the fact that Escobar is kind of glamorized in the show? And it led me to think a little bit more than perhaps I had at the beginning of doing “Narcos,” about what the effect of writing and producing this stuff and sort of putting it out in the universe. What effect it had on society and on, for lack of a better word, my own soul.” 

“I believe that we as viewers should be able to watch subject matter that is dark or dangerous and hopefully have the moral compass to not want to follow in Pablo Escobar's footsteps.”

He was shocked after finding out that “Narcos,” viewers were routing for Escobar. People love outlaws, he observes, adding that they had perhaps fallen for the charisma of Brazilian actor Wagner Moura, who played the cut throat villain.

Former President Santos of Colombia had a meeting with the team to remind them that Escobar and his cohort all ended up dead or in jail. 

With his newest series, Brancato wants to share the message that every pleasure comes with a price to poor societies far away from the excesses.

The series got started after actor, Maurice Compte, on “Narcos” told Brancato about how his father was general manager of “Hotel Mutiny.” Brancato suggested the actor write a script. Five years later he produced one.

Brancato speaks on the podcast about what the writers’ and actors’ strikes achieved. “There needed to be very firm protections put into place so that we’re not all replaced by the machines to quote “The Terminator.” 

“We live in a landscape where sometimes you see the heads of these companies making $100 million to $200 million a year when the average writer can barely struggle to pay their mortgage because writing is a show to show job and acting even more so. There had to be some sort of fundamental redress of the salary structure.” 

For those trying to create content Brancato has some practical advice about the hardest part: getting started. If eight hours seems insurmountable then try ten minutes a day, he says.  “Suddenly ten minutes becomes an hour. Then the hour becomes two as you start to get more and more into your story.” 

Brancato also has a reminder about what to keep in mind when writing for the screen. “There’s the writer, the characters, and then the viewer who watches those characters on screen. So it's actually a triangle. And what you're trying to do as a writer is create movements and actions and reactions by the characters that affect the third party, which is the viewer.” 

The showrunner, who worked on “Beverly Hills 90210” and “The X-Files” cites influences such as, “The Godfather,” “The Sopranos,” and “The Wire.” He’s also behind the MGM+ series, “Godfather of Harlem.” 

Tune in to this last episode of the 2023 season of The Media Mix wherever you listen to podcasts. 

What do filmmakers use in place of cocaine when they shoot? I’ll let you know in the comments.

Thanks as ever to EP’s Jamie Maglietta and Ray Hernandez and all our partners at Situation Room Studios who work so hard to bring you this content. If you have 30 minutes this holiday season give us a listen.