Benicio del Toro Will Play Pablo Escobar In Paradise Lost

According to Variety, Benicio del Toro has signed on to play drug lord Pablo Escobar in the film Paradise Lost. Italian director Andrea di Stefano will be behind the camera for what is sure to be an interesting film as it will use the iconic figure as a tangential character to the main story, rather than basing the movie around him.

For those who don’t know, Paradise Lost is inspired by true events and follows Nick “a surfer who visits his brother in Colombia and falls in love with a gorgeous local girl named Maria. But the couple’s peaceful romance is disrupted when Nick discovers that Pablo Escobar is Maria’s uncle.”

Many filmmaker have been trying to get Escobar biopics off the ground for a while now and no one has really been too successful. Oliver Stone’s Escobar and Jor Carnahan’s Killing Pablo both failed to gain traction and Brad Furman’s effort seems to have disolved as well. Though Paradise Lost won’t be a full biopic, it will still be nice to see Escobar brought to life on screen, especially by a talented thespian like Benicio del Toro.

Paradise Lost will begin filming this March in Panama and as always, we’ll keep you posted when we hear more.