EXCLUSIVE: Culpa Tuya (Your Fault) premieres on Prime Video on Dec. 27 and writer-director Domingo González promises it is a step up from the hit first film, Culpa Mía (My Fault). The good news for fans of the YA franchise is he claims the third instalment, Culpa Nuestra (Our Fault), which will land in 2025, is even better still.
“When you have success with a first movie, the second one is often not as good, and then the third one even less so,” the helmer tells Deadline. “In this case, people are saying that the second one is better than the first, and everybody that has seen the third movie says that it is the best of the three.”
The films are produced by Pokeepsie Films, part of Banijay Iberia, and Amazon MGM Studios. It stars Nicole Wallace as Noah and Gabriel Guevara as Nick and traces their relationship.
One way the team avoided second album syndrome was to write the subsequent movies before the first one was out in the world. González wrote and directed the first film and then teamed with Sofía Cuenca to pen the sequel and threequel. So everything has happened at speed.
Mercedes Ron’s ‘Culpables’ trilogy was a New York Times bestseller. The Argentine-born Spanish author’s work sold more than three million copies and notched plus-100 million reads on Wattpad. The scale of the first movie’s success, however, bettered expectations.
In its opening weekend, Culpa Mía ranked among Prime Video’s top 10 titles in more than 190 countries, including the U.S., UK, Australia, India, Argentina, and France. It is Prime Video’s top international original movie to date. This comes amid a YA streamer boom that has seen Germany’s Maxton Hall – The World Between Us break records for Prime Video.
Nicole Wallace on set: Credit: Pokeepsie, Prime Video
“Yes, we expected to have that success in Spain, and I wanted to have success abroad; I thought it was going to be big in Mexico maybe, but not all around the world, in India, in Indonesia, Pakistan, Korea, everywhere. That was unexpected,” González says.
He was called in after Pokeepsie principals and producers of the films, Álex de la Iglesia and Carolina Bang, had optioned the books. They thought they were getting a director, but as González went deep into the source material, he ended up penning the screenplay.
“I realized I was writing a script, not just taking notes, so I told Carolina; ‘Hey, I already have the script.’ They gave it to Amazon Prime, and they said: ‘This is perfect’.”
Culpa Nuestra is in post and drops in 2025 with no release date yet confirmed. The Culpa Tuya premiere, meanwhile, just took place in the Palacio Vistalegre Arena in Madrid in front of 4,000 people, many of whom were fans and influencers. It’s safe to say the fandom is strong with this franchise.
Gonzalez says his adaptations accentuate the humor while amping up the action from the book series. “It speaks about first love and feelings that are universal,” he says. “And I wanted to have humor, they had to be fun, and funny. I also wanted the dialog to be a little a little more adult.
“When people think of a YA movie, they sometime think that young people are stupid. So, I wanted to have something a little more clever. This is a very clever generation. I treat them with respect.”
Gabriel Guevara on set: Credit: Pokeepsie, Prime Video
The new film sees the characters more mature, and the challenges Noah and Nick face steadily become more grown-up. Without heading into spoiler territory, there are parts of the second book that chunks of the fanbase took against. González says that played into how he and Cuenca approached the Culpa Tuya screenplay.
“It was very difficult to do the script of this book, because the fans didn’t want to see some things,” he explains. “On the internet and TikTok and our Instagram, they were saying: ‘We don’t want to see that. Please, please, don’t show that.’
“So, we had to deal with that part of the story in another way. It’s similar to the book, it’s not much different, but we did it in another way. I think they are going to be happy with that solution. The main thing is that I agreed with the things they said.”
With the second ‘Culpable’ movie days away and another landing next year, an Anglo version of Culpa Mia – My Fault: London – is also in production.
Prime Video is very much in the Ron business elsewhere too. An adaptation of the first book of a new saga by the author, Dímelo Bajito (Tell Me Softly), is already in production.