The Yari Film Group is fast-tracking Killing Pablo, the long-gestating biopic about the late Pablo Escobar, with Javier Bardem and Christian Bale (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight) toplining.
Variety says the project, based on Mark Bowden’s novel “Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw,” has been in development for nearly five years.
Joe Carnahan (Narc, Smokin’ Aces) remains attached to direct, with Bob Yari, Mark Gordon and Jason Zelin producing.
Bardem is slated to play Escobar, while Bale is in talks to play Major Steve Jacoby, the Delta Force commander who led the hunt for Escobar.
Escobar’s rise as a leader of the drug cartel in Medellin, Colombia, began in the 1970s. After years of terrorizing police and political leaders, Escobar was targeted in 1992 by a coalition of Colombian police and military, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the CIA; he was killed the following year.
