Chanoc here has an interesting scoop on THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO, a tremendous book. Absolutely great. I love the novel, if this thing were to be adapted dead on... WHOA watch out!!! Anyway, take a look....
Hi Harry, you can call me Chanoc... I've got some news for you.
A note appeared on the Sunday edition of the mexican newspapers "El Norte" and "Reforma" that got my attention. Now, keep in mind that all this could be total bull, but it's worth keeping a tap on.
Jorge Rivero, a mexican actor with a very long career (he has done everything from movies with wrestler El Santo to soaps in Mexico and Southamerica, to low-budget action movies in the states), and who's currently working on a very popular horror/drama series called "La Chacala" announced that he has bought the rights for the book "La Conquista de Mexico", or "The Conquest of Mexico", by Jose Lopez Portillo (a former president of Mexico) for four years and hopes to begin production later this year.
He's apparently going big for the proyect and already has a lot of interested investors in Mexico, and would like to try and raise the money in his country before accepting some offers (?) from Hollywood. The budget will be of approximately 150 million dollars and hopes to be a huge production (he compared it to "Titanic" in the interview). He even sayed that he wants Cameron himself to direct the proyect and that he has already had some sort of conversation with him.
The stars of the proyect would be Mel Gibson and Salma Hayek (no parts named yet, but you could assume they would be spanish conqueror Hernan Cortez and La Malinche). Again, the participation of the stars hasn't been confirmed because the money hasn't been raised, but negotiations with both actors seem to be underway according to other sources.
Now, if this is true, it seems to be a huge ambitious proyect that might actually work. I would expect a bigger name attached to the proyect, like Alfonso Arau (who did "Like Water for Chocolate" and "A Walk in the Clouds" and is currently working on "Villa") or Arturo Ripstein (his movie called "Profundo Carmesi" or "Deep Crimson" in english was released in the states a few months back... if you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and find a copy NOW), but Rivero seemed very confident in his statements and rumors have been floating around for quite a while now.
I've talked to some people from the industry and they only know the proyect exists but don't really know the magnitude of it.
