Adaptations of dystopian literary sagas may have peaked over a decade ago following Hollywood’s relentless obsession with turning every mildly popular YA best-seller into a blockbuster destined more often than not to fall at the first hurdle, but Los iniciados isn’t that kind of movie.
Sure, it takes place in a near future where society has become defined by the absence of one element we take for granted in our current existence – in this case, the lack of clean water – but that’s about where the similarities begin and end in director Juan Felipe Orozco’s latest.
Andrés Parra stars as veteran journalist and private investigator Frank Molina, who gets drawn into a murder case that threatens to dredge up the demons of his past and throw them directly in his path as he uncovers citywide corruption and dangerous forces that threaten every fiber of his being on a personal and professional level.
Inspired by the series of novels by Mario Mendoza, the potential is there for Prime Video to build an entire franchise of stories revolving around Molina, at least if we take the potential opening installment’s current success on streaming as an early indicator of its potential longevity.
Per FlixPatrol, Los iniciados is currently the fifth most-watched feature on the streaming service’s worldwide watch-list, and a proud member of the Top 10 in 42 countries around the world. That’s after almost a week of availability, too, so it’s not as if it was just some flash in the pan that came and went without nobody really noticing it was even there in the first place.