Alejo Sauras
Alejo
Overview
A group of friends have to survive a weekend in a hotel with a huge amount of virtual money to guard, putting their ingenuity to the test.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
4 min readThe Bitcoin Bubble: When Farce Meets Fortune in Hotel Bitcoin
I’ve seen this trick before. Four friends stumble into a fortune, hole up in a hotel, and spend the next ninety minutes tripping over their own greed, stupidity, and each other. It’s The Hangover meets Very Bad Things, with a dash of Spanish irreverence and a laptop full of Bitcoin.
The question isn’t whether Hotel Bitcoin is original—it isn’t—but whether it’s funny enough to forgive its familiarity. The answer, like the value of cryptocurrency, is volatile.
Manuel Sanabria and Carlos Villaverde, the directors behind the cult Spanish comedy La Fiesta, have built a career on chaos. Their films are less about plot and more about the escalating absurdity of human behavior when alcohol, bad decisions, and poor impulse control collide. Hotel Bitcoin is no different. The premise—a weekend locked in a high-end hotel with 4,000 Bitcoin (worth over €100 million) to protect until Monday—is a pressure cooker of greed and paranoia.
The film doesn’t so much unfold as it does spiral, each new scene ratcheting up the stakes and the silliness in equal measure. It’s a structure that rewards momentum over coherence, and for the most part, it works. The problem is that momentum, like Bitcoin, can crash just as quickly as it soars.
The cast is the film’s greatest asset. Pablo Chiapella, as Tano, is the de facto leader of the group, a man whose bluster is inversely proportional to his competence. His physicality—shoulders hunched, voice a perpetual growl—sells the illusion of authority, even as his schemes unravel in real time.
Alejo Sauras and Canco Rodríguez, as Alejo and Lucas, respectively, play the straight men to Tano’s chaos, though neither is above a well-timed pratfall or a panicked scream. Mauricio Ochmann’s Pascual is the wildcard, a character whose motivations are as opaque as his accent (he’s the only non-Spanish actor in the ensemble, a choice that feels intentional but never quite pays off).
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsNetflix bought the hotel weekend before Spain bought a ticket
Producers Juan Vidal, Paloma Tejero, and Beatriz Bodegas told DeAPlaneta the quiet part while the cameras were still packed. Netflix had already taken Hotel Bitcoin for Spain, Mexico, and the United States. The theatrical date was still 13 September 2024. The distributor copy is arithmetic. Four friends, 4,000 bitcoins, one laptop, a hotel, latestnetflix.com maintains, and a Monday that refuses to arrive.
Filmax later put the same logline on the American Film Market calendar. Hold out until Monday and you are rich. Until then you live with parties, loansharks, love, crime, and what the sales sheet calls a whole lot of crazy. Head of international Ivan Diaz called it a screwball comedy that would travel, and he named Mauricio Ochmann as the Latin American draw. Bodegas and Tejero told Variety the world needed comedy and that this one was "pure entertainment" and "an ode to friendship." That is a sales line, not a box-office forecast.
Five weeks, not seven.
Manuel Sanabria and Carlos "Pocho" Villaverde wrote it with Ángela Obón and directed it themselves. January 2024 trades said the shoot would run seven weeks. By late February the unit had wrapped in five, bouncing a Madrid hotel against Murcia exteriors and Cartagena interiors. Alejo Sauras plays Alejo. Marta Hazas is Mar. Pablo Chiapella is Tano. Canco Rodríguez is Lucas. Ochmann is Pascual. Vanesa Romero, Leonor Lavado, Jorge Bosch, Daniel Muriel, and Sergio Bezos fill out the hotel. DeAPlaneta's own page lists the same names and the route from Madrid to Cartagena.,
Sanabria and Villaverde come out of Spanish TV comedy, not a prestige crypto documentary. The parody is the point Diaz sold. Bitcoin is the MacGuffin you babysit in a building full of people who want the laptop. Golpe de Cripto sits on the production slate next to Ídolo Films and La Canica Films. DeAPlaneta handled Spain. Filmax handled the rest of the map.,
An audience prize, then 173 screens.
World premiere was 16 August 2024 at the Festival de Cine de Comedia de Tarazona y el Moncayo. The audience award for best feature went to Hotel Bitcoin. DeAPlaneta dropped the trailer after that vote. The festival palmarés lists the prize under Manu Sanabria and Carlos "Pocho" Villaverde.,
Spain opened 13 September on 173 screens. Opening weekend was $59,734. The second weekend fell to $19,579 on 115 screens. By 4 to 6 October it was one screen and a $131,186 Spain total. Spain's ICAA ledger sits in the same band, 20,195 tickets and 122,270.53 euros. The Netflix window the producers advertised is the copy that outlived the multiplex.,,
The official Spanish trailer still sells the Monday deadline and the found-wallet gag. That is the version Netflix inherited.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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