'Breaking Bad' television series to get a new life with Latin America remake

As the camera pulled back during last week's final episode of Breaking Bad, chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-king Walter White was sprawled in a pool of blood. In Latin America, Walter Blanco is just being born.

Sony Pictures Television and Colombia's Teleset are remaking the Emmy award-winning show in and around the country's bustling capital. Here it will be called Metastasis, but that is virtually the only change the producers are making.

As many television viewers know, Breaking Bad follows the story of White, a New Mexico chemistry teacher who reacts to a cancer diagnosis by cooking up the US southwest's purest methamphetamine to pay his medical bills and leave his family a nest egg. Over the course of five seasons, the audience watched White evolve from mild-mannered, sweater-wearing schoolteacher into a sociopath with a knack for making drugs and eliminating his rivals.

At first blush, the idea of a home-grown methamphetamine empire in the hemisphere's cocaine capital seems dissonant. But the producers stuck with the plot point.

"We did exhaustive research on the issue because, obviously, [meth] is a business much more rooted in the United States and Mexico," the show's executive producer, Andrea Marulanda said.

"But we found that over the past two years the market has been growing in Colombia."