EXCLUSIVE: Culpa Tuya (Your fault) premieres on Prime Video on December 27th, and writer-director Domingo González promises it’s a step up from the successful first film. Culpa Mía (My fault). The good news for fans of the YA franchise is that he is entitled to the third installment. Culpa Nuestra (Our fault), which will land in 2025, is even better.

“When you have success with a first film, the second one is often not as good and the third one even less so,” the helmer tells Deadline days before the release of Culpa Tuya. “In this case, people say that the second film is better than the first, and everyone who has seen the third film says that it is the best of the three.”

The Spanish-language 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 subsequent films before the first one was released into the world. González wrote and directed the first film and then collaborated with Sofía Cuenca to write the sequel and threequel. So everything happened quickly.

Mercedes Ron’s Culpables trilogy was a New York Times bestseller. The Argentinian-born Spanish author’s work has sold more than three million copies and been read over 100 million times on Wattpad. However, the scale of the first film’s success exceeded expectations.

On opening weekend Culpa Mía is one of Prime Video’s top 10 titles in more than 190 countries, including the US, UK, Australia, India, Argentina and France. It is Prime Video’s best international original film to date. This is happening in the midst of a young streamer boom that has also taken place in Germany Maxton Hall – The World Between Us Break records for Prime Video.

“Yes, we expected to have this success in Spain and I wanted to be successful abroad; I thought maybe it would be big in Mexico, but not all over the world, in India, in Indonesia, Pakistan, Korea, everywhere. That was unexpected,” says González.

He was brought in after the films’ Pokeepsie directors and producers, Álex de la Iglesia and Carolina Bang, optioned the books. They thought they would find a director, but as González delved deeper into the source material, he ended up writing the script.

“I realized I was writing a script and not just taking notes, so I told Carolina; “Hey, I already have the script. They gave it to Amazon Prime and said, ‘This is perfect’.”

Culpa Nuestra is in the mail and will be released in 2025, a release date has not yet been confirmed. The Culpa Tuya Meanwhile, the premiere just took place at the Palacio Vistalegre Arena in Madrid in front of 4,000 people, including many fans and influencers. It’s safe to say that the fan base of this franchise is strong.

Gonzalez says his adaptations emphasize humor while enhancing the action of the book series. “It’s about first love and feelings that are universal,” he says. “And I wanted to have humor, they had to be funny and funny. I also wanted the dialogue to seem a little more adult.

“When people think of a youth film, they sometimes think that young people are stupid. So I wanted something cleverer. This is a very smart generation. I treat them with respect.”

In the new film, the characters mature and the challenges Noah and Nick face become more adult. Without going into spoiler territory, there are parts of the second book that parts of the fan base disliked. González says that influenced how he and Cuenca approached the matter Culpa Tuya Script.

“It was very difficult to write the script for this book because there were some things fans didn’t want to see,” he explains. “On the internet, on TikTok, on our Instagram, they said, ‘We don’t want to see that.’ Please, please, don’t show that.’

“So we had to treat that part of the story in a different way. It’s similar to the book, not much different, but we did it in a different way. I think you will be happy with this solution. The main thing is that I agree with the things they said.”

With the second Culpable film just days away and another landing next year, there will be an Anglo version of Culpa Mia – My fault: London – is also in production.

Prime Video is also heavily involved in the Ron business elsewhere. An adaptation of the first book in a new saga by the author, Dimelo Bajito (Tell me quietly), is already in production.