This House of Cards telenovela remake is deliciously cheesy
Netflix is promoting its hit series House of Cards in Latin America with a trailer shot as a telenovela that shows Francisco Jose (Frank Underwood) kill his secretary Zayra (Zoe Barnes) to save his marriage—just to discover that his wife is banging the gardener.
The trailer for the delicously cheesy “Residencia de Cartas” is hilarious because it works so well. So warning to true House of Cards fans: this can’t be unseen, and it might make it hard to watch the show in the same way after viewing this.
However, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Love ’em or hate ’em, telenovelas are big drivers of revenue for Spanish-language television outlets. According to a 2015 report by Nielsen, Univision’s “Mi Corazón Es Tuyo” averaged 3.7 million viewers per episode.
The melodramatic programs are so successful that some Mexican production companies are even reportedly exporting the formula to China to create versions in Mandarin.
Netflix, however, is showing that popular TV programs can be reimagined in a different genre or decade—similar to what fans have been doing for some time with these remakes of Game of Thrones, Mad Men and Breaking Bad: