The company will produce the Pablo Escobar thriller with Atmosphere Entertainment based on a screenplay by UK writer Piers Ashworth.

Enrique Urbizu, whose Madrid 2004 bombings thriller No Rest For The Wicked won multiple Goya Awards last year, will direct.

Ashworth developed the screenplay from an original draft by Michael Kane based on Simon Strong’s book Whitewash: Pablo Escobar And The Cocaine Wars.

The film will focus on the personal war between Escobar [pictured] and General Hugo Martinez, whose life rights Relativity has also acquired, along with life rights for Joe Toft, the former chief of the Bogota office of the Drug Enforcement Agency who was involved in the pursuit, capture and death of Escobar. 

The film’s title derives from a phrase Escobar would use, “Plata o plomo”, referring to the choice he gave people to accept a bribe or die. Relativity’s Jason Barhydt will oversee the project for the studio.

Topics