Brazilian actor Moura, star of the country’s "Elite Squad" crime thrillers, will play the villain in Neill Blomkamp’s sci-fi thriller "Elysium." Matt Damon, Sharlto Copley and Jodie Foster are toplining the MRC-produced picture.
Andreas Rentz/Getty ImagesBUENOS AIRES — Brazil’s biggest male star Wagner Moura is set to portray legendary drug lord Pablo Escobar in a future Netflix series.
Moura confirmed to Brazil’s Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper his involvement in the show, said to be an English and Spanish 13-episode series depicting the drug trafficking circuit between Colombia, Mexico and the U.S. Escobar was named as one of the main characters.
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“It’s a Colombian story, but it’s also an American one, since Pablo Escobar became what he was because of the U.S. demand,” stated RoboCop helmer Jose Padilha to the newspaper. “I believe Wagner is going to rock as Escobar. He’s one of the finest actors in the world today.”
Padilha is producing and directing the first episode of the show, with Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard writing and Eric Newman (Children of Men) executive producing.
Escobar, who was shot to death by police in 1993, became a very popular fictional character for Latin American TV audiences: Colombian fiction series Pablo Escobar Lord of Evil broke local records last year.
A former soap-opera heartthrob, Moura starred as Captain Nascimento in Padilha’s Elite Squad — one of Latin America’s most popular films ever — and made the jump to Hollywood last year, starring in Neill Blomkamp‘s Elysium with Matt Damon.
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