May 1, 2020 — Jennifer Lopez’s “Godmother” film project is finally getting off the ground. She’s in “J-Lo mode” and calling shots like its 2002 all over again. The superstar actress and pop singer announced her plans to make a movie based on the life of Colombian queenpin Griselda (The Godmother) Blanco back in 2016. But there were some bumps in the road to pre-production. Those bumps have smoothed considerably. Well-received outings in the 2019 film, Hustlers, and 2018’s Second Act and her buzz-worthy performance at halftime of February’s Super Bowl, has shot her back into the spotlight. Lopez’s career is red-hot again. And she wants to tell the story of the legendary “La Madrina,” famous for her cunning and ruthlessness and naming her son Michael Corleone after the fictional mob boss character played by Al Pacino in The Godfather trilogy, on her next trip to the silver screen. Griselda Blanco was the most powerful female crime lord in America in the 1970s and 80s, running the Medellin drug cartel’s operations in the United States and living lavishly. She was at the forefront of the cocaine avalanche that washed over the country in the neon-lit Miami Vice era and reported directly to Narcos kingpin Pablo Escobar in Colombia. Working mainly out of the South Florida area, Blanco also maintained outposts in New York and Los Angeles. The DEA suspects she ordered hundreds of murders, including a number of her husbands and lovers, and romanced both men and women. Jailed in 1985 for a case out of California, Blanco served 19 years in federal prison was deported back to Colombia in 2004. This week, it was reported in the Hollywood trades that STXfilms and Lopez have come together to produce the Blanco project and Reed Moreno, the directorial force behind Hulu’s hit The Handmaid’s Tale, is in the process of negotiating a contract to direct. William Monahan (The Departed) penned the script. Lopez originally set up the project at HBO four years ago, however, development lagged. Last fall, Lopez headlined, Hustlers, a film adapted from a New York Magazine’s story about strippers at Scores who rip-off Wall Street brokers and corporate CEO’s by drugging them and stealing their credit card numbers. Produced by Annapurna Pictures and Gloria Sanchez Productions, Hustlers was distributed by STXfilms and made $158,000,000 against a $20,000,000 budget. Catherine Zeta-Jones played Griselda Blanco in a 2017 Lifetime original movie titled Cocaine Godmother. Salma Hayek portrayed a character loosely-inspired by Blanco in Oliver Stone’s Savages back in 2012. Just two months after Savages hit theaters in July, Blanco was slain in Colombia in a drive-by shooting. She was 69 and alleged to have had an estimated net-worth in the billions at the time of her death. The cult-smash documentary Cocaine Cowboys from 2006, directed by Billy Corben, featured Blanco’s reign over the South Florida drug game as one of its central plot lines.
