It’s a well-established rule that Hollywood movies tend to come in pairs, so I suppose we already should have been anticipating a second Pablo Escobar biopic right about now — one week after Joe Carnahan’s Killing Pablo was officially greenlit, with Javier Bardem and Christian Bale in talks to star. Lo and behold, Antoine Fuqua has been hired to direct Escobar, another movie about the Colombian drug dealer based on the book Mi Hermano Pablo by Roberto Escobar Gaviria. Unlike Carnahan’s movie, however, this one is being rushed into production with the hopes of getting it ready before the June strike.

The interesting thing about this story is that Oliver Stone is producing the film, which makes it the third time he has swooped in to capitalize on a similarly-themed movie in the past few years (World Trade Center competed with United 93 to be the first 9/11 movie on screen, and his widely panned Alexander movie effectively sidelined Baz Luhrmann’s take on the Macedonian general with Leonardo DiCaprio). Lately he seems to specialize in borrowing ideas and the results haven’t been working out all that great for him. I think it’s time to head back to the drawing board Olly! It will be interesting to see if both Escobar movies end up getting produced; the people involved in Killing Pablo have been trying to do the movie for years, and I’d hate to see them lose their opportunity. If they’re smart, they’ll recruit Adrian Grenier for a cameo, just to let everyone know that their version is the true, authorized Medellin experience.

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