Gary Levin

USA TODAY

Breaking Bad is going south of the border.

The Emmy-winning series about a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher who turns meth dealer, at first to provide for his family, has been remade nearly scene for scene in Spanish. The series, Metastasis, will premiere June 8 (10 ET/PT) on Univision, Unimas and Galavision (without English subtitles), and throughout Latin America. It will then air weeknights on Unimas, completing its run in three months, instead of six years on AMC, allowing Spanish-speaking viewers to binge more quickly, in a pattern common to telenovelas, a popular TV staple.

"They did all the 62 episodes we did, but made them much faster, on a smaller budget," says Bad creator Vince Gilligan, who had "zero" input in the adaptation but experienced a "slightly disorienting feeling of déjà vu" watching the first episode. "It simultaneously inspires me and makes me feel a little sheepish that we took as much money and shooting hours as we did."

Each episode was filmed in an average of two and a half days, compared to eight for the American version of the series. But there were minor tweaks to account for geography and cultural differences: Bad was shot in the flat, hot desert of Albuquerque,; Metastasis in colder, mountainous Bogota. In the new version, Walter Blanco (Diego Trujillo) and his former student Jose Rosas cook meth in an old school bus, because RVs are virtually non-existent in Colombia. Pest exterminators are uncommon, so the pair pose as demolition experts. And sleazy lawyer "Saul Bueno" hawks his services on a TV talk show rather than late-night telemarketing ads for legal services, which don't run there.

Trujillo, in an interview from Bogota, says he'd never seen the original series before preparing his audition but found it "fascinating" and says that while he "didn't want to get so influenced" by the original, "I couldn't stop watching." He previously starred in pan-Latin remakes of Desperate Housewives ("the adaptation was not well done") and Grey's Anatomy, which worked better because "it turned out more like a soap opera." But "it's a big challenge to do what somebody else has done so wonderfully. Very soon, you start to forget what you have seen and do your own person."

Angelica Guerra, senior VP at Sony Pictures Television, says Sony waited for the final season to be written before proceeding with its remake, and says the series' drug themes "didn't feel far away from the Latin American perspective to give it a shot. It completely respects the original version," she says. "If you have a genius script, why would you change it?"