After building his career on some of television’s most demanding productions, producer Cristian Carretero is stepping into a new arena. Beginning in August 2026, he joins the upcoming seasons of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula and Dragula Titans as Story Producer, bringing experience from reality competition, animation, and large scale production to one of television’s most distinctive franchises.
The move comes after several years spent working behind the scenes on productions where speed, preparation, and instinct determine whether a moment makes it to the screen. Among those credits is the Emmy Award winning Survivor, a series that has become one of the most influential reality competition shows for more than two decades.
For Carretero, working on Survivor felt like a full circle moment. Long before he worked on the show, he had grown up watching it in Panama, where it became an unexpected part of learning English.
“I have been a fan of the show since I was 12,” he says. “It literally helped me learn English.”
Years later, he found himself working alongside the crew he had admired as a teenager, an experience that set a new standard for the way he approached television production.
“It is truly a well oiled machine, but with so much heart,” he says. “It is because of them that I have such a high standard for myself when it comes to my work ethic.”
His career began much farther from Fiji, where he recently spent months shooting the reality show. After arriving in Los Angeles his first role came as an unscripted television intern at Fox, followed by positions at NBCUniversal and DreamWorks Animation. Although each studio operated differently, the progression offered an unusually broad introduction to scripted and unscripted production before he entered the field full time.
One of the biggest influences on his approach came from animation. While audiences often associate reality television with spontaneity, Cristian Carretero credits animation with teaching him how to think visually before cameras begin rolling.
“In animation, the storyboard is king,” he says. “When I’m in the field now, I still approach every sequence that way.”
That perspective has stayed with him as his work shifted almost entirely to unscripted television. Instead of directing participants, he focuses on anticipating moments before they happen, ensuring that emotion and narrative emerge naturally through coverage.
“It is a balancing act between staying true to the raw nature of these shows while making sure every important moment is captured.”
Carretero has also produced fiction and award winning animation projects, including Things Are Good and the Panama Animation Festival winner Meow Space Ranger. The short film was created with his twin brother, Vicente Carretero, during the pandemic, without a production budget.
“It was a labor of love,” he says. “We had to adapt at every step, but I think the heart we put into it is what people connected with.”
Making the film required a different mindset, with creativity and collaboration replacing the resources of a major production.
That combination of creative and logistical experience brought Carretero to Bunim Murray Productions, where he served as Challenge Associate Producer on productions including Buddy Games. There, he supervised teams, coordinated complex production logistics, and helped execute large scale competition challenges.
Producing is a people driven profession as much as a technical one. Being hardworking and detail oriented is essential, but being able to connect with people from different backgrounds is probably the most important skill.
His arrival at The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula introduces him to a franchise that occupies its own space within competition television, combining drag performance, horror, practical effects, and elaborate production design. Although the format differs from the survival competitions and challenge based series that defined much of his early career, the goal remains finding those unexpected moments that stay with audiences long after the competition ends.
Dragula represents the latest stop in Cristian Carretero’s career.