The director of ‘Spy Kids’ Robert Rodriguez worked hard for the family to be played by Latino Americans

The Spy Kids have been a cult favorite for many years now and if the director would not have fought for his vision, the movie would have been starkly dissimilar.

During a virtual panel for the San Diego Comic-Con, Robert Rodriguez shared details about his time on the set of Spy Kids with Collider's editor in chief Steven Weintraub.

Rodriguez began by saying, "The studio was like, 'Why are you making them Latin, though? Why don't you just make them American?’ And, I was like, they are American. It's based on my family."

During the course of the discussion, Rodriguez revealed that he grew up in a family of 10 and always wanted to make a movie that greatly depicted his family.

However, studio executives did not believe in the story and pushed for the director to cast an ‘American’ family instead.

They told Rodriquez, "[If] you're doing something new, you're going to get questioned and you have to have a good answer. They're not being d---s or anything, they just [had] never seen it before.”

However, "I said, 'No, I don't think so” because that Latino family was American. He also went on to say, "I finally had to come up with a good argument. Finally, I said, 'OK. You don't have to be British to enjoy James Bond'. By being so specific, it becomes more universal. So they went with it."

For the unversed, the 2001 production follows the life of two spy kids, Carmen and Juni after they discover a troubling family secret following their parents' kidnapping. However, they later set off on the adventure of a lifetime and work together to save them from the clutches of a jealousy ridden nemesis hell-bent on separating the family forever.