Colombian filmmaker Ciro Guerra is going Hollywood. The director of Embrace of the Serpent, currently nominated for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar (the first time ever an entry from Colombia has competed in that category), has signed on to make his English-language debut with the upcoming thriller The Detainee. Deadline first reported this story.
Guerra will direct from a screenplay set to written by Grant Myers (The Maze Runner). Thunder Rose Pictures and Film House Germany are behind this dystopian thriller, an adaptation of Peter Liney’s trilogy. The set-up appears to be akin to something like The Hunger Games but for a more grown-up audience.
Embrace of the Serpent has received great acclaim from critics and cinephiles since premiering at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival in the Director’s Fortnight sidebar. Since then the film- which centers around an Amazonian shaman and two scientists on the search for a sacred healing plant- received the Alfred P. Sloane Prize at the recently concluded Sundance Film Festival and nomination for Best International Film at the Independent Spirit Awards to go along with its historic Oscar nomination. The film recently opened in theaters to robust specialty box office.
There is not a confirmed start date yet announced for The Detainee.
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