Three months ago, Mexican-American actress-producer-director and all-around Renaissance woman Eva Longoria announced she was making an English-language adaptation of Spain’s popular drama series, Gran Hotel. Considered the Downton Abbey of Spain, audiences waited with bated breath for news of the US remake titled Grand Hotel. The series has attracted some top-tier talent, including Oscar nominee Demian Bichir and actress Roselyn Sanchez. Now, ABC has released the first trailer for the series, and while it doesn’t quite look like Downton Abbey it certainly has enough to whet your appetite.
The “grand hotel” in question is the Riviera Grand, the “last family-owned hotel in Miami.” Run by Santiago Mendoza (Bichir), the hotel has fallen on hard times and is about to be sold. This causes strife between Santiago’s children from his first marriage and his new wife (Sanchez). On top of that, the hotel staff hold their own secrets which could complicate matters for the family.
We certainly get a lot of different threads swinging in this minute-and-a-half trailer. The Mendoza clan is introduced and almost immediately the different players are introduced. There’s the wide-eyed Alicia Mendoza (Denyse Tontz) who attracts the eye of new hire, Danny (Lincoln Younes). At one point Rosalyn Sanchez’s cool matriarch Gigi meets with an employee who alludes to Santiago doing something horrible. And through it all we’re gifted rapid-fire glimpses of everything you’ve come to associate the ABC network drama with: abs, sex, and a lot of beautiful women walking regally.
Although the Spanish series Gran Hotel is often compared to Downton Abbey, ABC’s Grand Hotel doesn’t look like that. If anything, this trailer situates it as another ABC melodrama but one that increases the tension and suspense in a telenovela kind of way. (It’s important to note the original series was not a novela.) If anything this looks to be a loose adaptation of the original series which could mean Longoria and the creative team has new avenues to go down. Regardless, we should all prepare to bow down in front of Roselyn Sanchez.
Grand Hotel hasn’t received a release date yet but it is expected to debut later this year on ABC.