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Jakubowicz pulls out due to Mexican drug war

posted 16 years ago by ohcinderella
1 reply | jump to latest

The escalating drug cartel violence in Mexico is taking its toll on Hollywood.

Security concerns over the movie adaptation of Mexican drug-cartel-themed novel "Queen of the South" have forced helmer-scribe Jonathan Jakubowicz and co-producers Elizabeth Avellan and Sandra Condito to pull out of the pic.

"I have worked really hard to make this beautiful movie, but the safety of my family and my team comes first, and making this movie put us all at risk, not only in Mexico but in the U.S.," said Jakubowicz.

News comes on the heels of Telemundo's deal to make a telenovela based on the same property by Spain's Arturo Perez-Reverte.

"I wish Telemundo the best with their telenovela but beg those involved to be responsible and mindful of the dangerous territory the subject matter inevitably gets them into," Jakubowicz added. "We wanted to shoot in the city of Culiacan in Sinaloa, northern Mexico, the epicenter of the drug wars, but it just wasn't possible. The world should pray for peace in Mexico."

If the project pushes through, it will be shot in Spain, where the remaining producers, Origen PC and Plural Entertainment, are based. Plural, the rights-holder, declined to comment.

Avellan and Condito cited security concerns and a lack of focus in their decision to drop the project. "We are doers, and this was taking too long," said Condito. "We have two movies about to go, which would have conflicted anyway."

Pic and its cast of Eva Mendes, Josh Hartnett and Ben Kingsley were announced in May. Before that, the project had been at the now-defunct Warner Independent, where it was put in turnaround.

"Queen of the South" is about a Mexican woman who flees to Spain after her drug-runner boyfriend is slain. She eventually becomes the reigning drug smuggler in Spain, where she seeks to avenge her lover's assassination.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118001671.html?categoryid=19&cs=1

:( I was not happy at all to see this! I love this book, love Eva, and have been awaiting news on this for so long now. I hope they get another director soon, and find somewhere viable to shoot their Mexico scenes.

[–] ppchuy91 16 years ago

I live in Culiacan, and there were all this rumors that the drug cartels were threatening the whole cast and crew to death if this movie was made.
This movie was going to be great, but it was a very stupid decision to film it here. I mean, if you want to film a movie about a certain war, you have to wait till that war is over if you want to film it in the actual place it happened. I don't see anybody filming a movie about the Irak war IN Irak right now, or about Al Quaeda in Al Quaeda's territory. I'm sure there will be more than one movie filmed there eventually; but I mean, there are some very dangerous people that can get very angry.

PS: It has been almost a year since the Drug Cartel war heightened here in Culiacan. It was May 10th, 2008. That week you were lucky if you saw more than 20 cars in the streets. Everything started when the Cartel divided in two and started attacking each other. They started using way bigger guns and even grenades and bombs. I mean, in the past year there has been around 10 bazooka shots and 5 grenade explosions.