RTVE & Amazon Prime Video Team for Boundless

RTVE and Amazon Prime Video have joined forces for the international co-production of Boundless, a four-episode adventure series that will take viewers on Elcano and Magellan’s first trip around the world.

Boundless follows the epic of a group of sailors heading into the unknown in a large-scale production consisting of four one-hour Spanish-language episodes. The production is part of a deal between RTVE and the Ministry of Defense celebrating the journey’s 500th anniversary.

The production of the series, which will receive cinematic treatment, will include filming on location in the Dominican Republic, where maritime footage will be captured at Estudios Pinewood, and in Spain in the Canary Islands and Basque Country. To recreate the journey, replicas of the Victoria and Trinidad ships will be built, as well as the Nao Victoria, the only one of the five ships that returned to port, making it the first ship to travel around the world.

Mono Films and Kilima Media will produce the series and will have a world-class technical crew on hand, led by Simon West, a long-running director of action and adventure films, and producer Miguel Menéndez de Zubillaga. Patxi Amezcua will supervise scripts.

The first trip around the world was an almost impossible mission that looked to find a new route toward “the spice islands” that eventually changed history, as it proved that the Earth was round. The discovery forever changed commerce, economy, astrology and the way the planet was viewed. It is considered one of humanity’s greatest feats.

A total of 239 sailors, captained by Fernando de Magallanes from Portugal, began the expedition. They launched from Sanlúcar de Barrameda on August 20, 1519. Only 18 famished and sick sailors returned three years later on the only ship that withstood the journey, captained by the Spanish Sailor Juan Sebastián Elcano. They had traveled 14,460 leagues from West to East, completing the first trip around the world and although it was not the trip’s original plan, it demonstrated that the Earth was not flat.