Paco Cabezas has come a long way from his beginnings in Seville and being a boy who once dreamed of making films to becoming one of Spain’s most prolific directors.<\/p>\n
He’s found fame and fortune too in Hollywood and earned a reputation for having a unique audiovisual style that gracefully mixes genres. Cabezas is widely credited for adding his signature touch to every production in which he participates.<\/p>\n
If you’re a regular TV addict, there’s a very good chance you’ve seen his work. He’s the filmmaker behind successful series such as ‘Penny Dreadful’, ‘The Umbrella Academy’, ‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’** and one of the most watched shows on Netflix<\/strong><\/a>: ‘Wednesday<\/strong><\/a>‘ (known as ‘Mi\u00e9rcoles’ in Spain and ‘Merlina’ in Latin America).<\/p>\n Isaac Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez, Luis Guzm\u00e1n, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jenna Ortega, Joanna Lumley, Fred Armisen and Victor Dorobantu pose at the premiere of ‘Wednesday’ in July 2025 in LA. <\/span> – Scott A Garfitt\/2025 Invision <\/span><\/p>\n Although he frequently rubs shoulders with the likes of Tim Burton<\/strong><\/a>, Nicolas Cage<\/a>, Anna Kendrick<\/a><\/strong> and Sam Rockwell,** among many others, Cabezas hasn’t lost the humility of the person who started out by writing in his spare time between work shifts.<\/p>\n He took time to welcome us during a break in the middle of editing his next series in central Madrid and sat down for a matcha tea and a chat.<\/p>\n Alongside his ongoing work in Hollywood, Cabezas continues to direct projects in Spain and enjoys both worlds. He has never wants to lose the link with his homeland, he tells us.<\/p>\n There’s very little difference he says between the American and Spanish industries today he insists, claiming both countries now make very high-level TV and film productions.<\/p>\n The Spanish director stresses that working on American productions is like going to Disneyland: “Everything is built, the set, everything, you get there and suddenly you find yourself walking from one set to another as you change worlds”.<\/p>\n While Spanish productions have reached a level that was unthinkable decades ago, working in the United States is still a completely different movie. Cabezas describes it perfectly: “In Spain, I’m like the father of the child and I have to raise it and dress it and worry about every detail. When I go to the United States, it’s like the ‘tito’, who takes the nephews and nieces to Disneyland<\/strong><\/a>, to that wonderful world built where we go to have fun”.<\/p>\n Making ‘Wednesday’ has been a big challenge, but a challenge I’ve had a lot of fun with.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n “Before, going to America was like a wonderful place. Now the differences are technical, let’s say, about how you work. For example, in ‘Wednesday’ you have a lot of means, in ‘La novia gitana’, in ‘La nena’, I have less means, but more freedom. He explains that the complexity lies in finding the balance between creative freedom and the means you have.<\/p>\n In ‘Wednesday’, Cabezas has had the good fortune to work hand in hand with Tim Burton.** Despite what one might think, Burton has given him freedom to work on one of the American filmmaker’s most personal projects, in which the world of the Addams family is transferred to an academy for teenagers with powers. A world where comedy and terror go hand in hand.<\/p>\n The Spanish creator highlights the generosity of Burton, who has a very marked cinematographic style that is more than familiar to all lovers of the Seventh Art<\/strong><\/a>, when it comes to creating the atmosphere of the Nevermore Academy and the people that both have used to tell the mysteries surrounding ‘Wednesday’, played by Jenna Ortega.<\/p>\n Jenna Ortega and Steve Buscemi are so good at what they do beautifully in the first take. It’s like you’re managing a rock band and you’re playing with Jimi Hendrix.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Cabezas has also recently released ‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’, whose season focuses on a zombie apocalypse in Spain. Many critics in Spain have given up on this new series of television’s most famous zombies. But Cabezas says his compatriots can sometimes “take ourselves too seriously, we don’t talk about the past, about the Civil War, so it’s very refreshing that two Americans come along and take the Civil War, Franco<\/strong><\/a> and a thousand references to Spain and mix them into an explosive cocktail with zombies”.<\/p>\n Melissa McBride, left, and Norman Reedus pose for a promotional photo for ‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’ during Comic-Con International on July 25, 2025. <\/span> – Chris Pizzello\/Invision <\/span><\/p>\n Cinema and TV series are a mirror of the reality we live in, Paco points out that science fiction or horror have always been political metaphors for what is happening to us right now, such as the complex geopolitical situation in various hot spots on the planet. That’s why he tells us that “there’s nothing more liberating than putting zombies in the mix and trying to reflect, but also somehow using a catalyst to try to make it healing, that somehow fiction is healing for us”.<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n
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