Oliver Stone and Joe Carnahan both are planning on bringing the story of Pablo Escobar to the big screen. Each has quality source material (Stone owns the rights to Mi Hermano Pablo, by Escobar’s brother. Carnahan has Killing Pablo, the acclaimed book by Mark Bowden) and a gifted director (Stone has Antoine Fuqua, Caranhan is helming his own), so the question now appears to be who will get there first?

Bringing the story of Pablo Escobar to the big screen has been a goal of Joe Carnahan for several years. He has had the rights to Killing Pablo since the 2000s.

Now Oliver Stone and co have acquired the rights to Mi Hermano Pablo by Pablo’s brother, and Roberto Escobar Gaviria, are looking to start production before the potential writer’s strike shuts down Hollywood.

Not surprisingly, words are being exchanged.

On his web site, Joe made the following comments about the screenplay for Escobar:

I’m not in any way shape or form, what the youngsters these days refer to as
a ‘hater.’ Some douche who wants to drag someone or some thing down because
they’re either threatened or jealous or a combination of the two. I don’t believe
in it and I’m always the first to extol the accomplishments of not just my friends
but other peers whose work I admire.

THAT SAID:
I just read this other Pablo script called simply ‘Escobar’ and I can say
with great confidence that it’s simply….dogsh*t. Wow. If you’re gonna make
a movie about Pablo you gotta do better then some hackneyed, hagiographic
‘Scarface’ knockoff. It would’ve been great if the script had been solid.
Stern competition is good for the soul…but this one is so lacking in the very
basic tenets of dramatic storytelling that it comes off as this amateurish,
cardboard account of what was the single greatest criminal legacy of the last
century.

But this is what happens in a pre-strike environment: Garbage gets foisted from
all corners and studios, eager to cram the pipeline put insufferable sh*t like
this into development. Deeply disappointing.

And they better hope Pablo is actually dead. He gets wind of this script and it’ll create
marked men overnight and have fresh bullets flying anew.

Personally, I think the last bit about Pablo was great. That is grade A trash talkin’!

In an article in Variety, co-producer Justin Berfield said
“Joe Carnahan’s notion of us poaching his territory and rushing for a pre-strike start is false. We’ve been working with Robert (Escobar Garcia) and a half-dozen consultants for a year and a half to tell an accurate story.”

For casting, Killing Pablo has Javier Bardem playing Escobar. Javier is about to knock everybody on their fannies in the soon-to-be-released No Country for Old Men. He is about as badass as they come. No kidding, the boogeyman will be checking his closet for Bardem.

Christian Bale is slated to play the Delta Force commander leading the search for Escobar.

JC is reporting that he should have a major announcement, regarding casting, after Thanksgiving.

It appears that Carnahan will win the Escobar war. With White Jazz in limbo (see this post), Joe is making plans to move forward with Killing Pablo as soon as possible.

He has been meeting with potential foreign buyers and is looking to start scouting in Columbia shortly.