Hollywood has long wanted to tackle the life of legendary Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.  In recent years, Oliver Stone led the effort with a biopic titled Escobar, while Joe Carnahan was attached to direct an adaptation of the Mark Bowden book Killing Pablo.  Both those projects are now on hold, but yet another Escobar project is moving forward at Stone Village Pictures.  Brad Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer) is in negotiations to direct the untitled feature from a script by Matt Aldrich (Cleaner).  Scott Steindorf, who collaborated with Furman on The Lincoln Lawyer, will produce with his Stone Village teammates Dylan Russell and Scott LaStaiti.

Hit the jump for quotes from the filmmakers, including Steindorff’s claim, “This is the Latino Godfather.”

Stone Village has hired Joshua Michael Stern (Swing Vote) to direct Carnaval.  Per Variety, the R-rated comedy is about “a sports scout sent by his boss to Rio during Carnaval to recruit a soccer phenom no one has been able to reach.”  Stern rewrote the original script by David Styne, who is still on board as producer along with producing partners Dylan Russell and Scott LaStaiti (Turistas) and Stone Village’s Scott Steindorff (The Lincoln Lawyer).  The $20 million production is scheduled to begin in January in Rio de Janerio.

Depending on how Stern wants to depict it, Rio is a beautiful place, and a particularly vibrant setting during Carnaval.  The festival takes place from February 18-22 next year, so I imagine production was scheduled to film in the middle of the action at the end of the shoot.  For my money, this has the makings of a very interesting comedy prospect.