Catherine Zeta Jones is set to star in a new biopic, in which she’ll play infamous drug lord Griselda Blanco.
The Godmother will detail the life and crimes of Blanco, who became a powerful influence over the drug world in Columbia in the ’70s and ’80s. Stories from her young life include tales of kidnapping and murder when she was just eleven years old, when she allegedly abducted a child from a neighboring town for ransom. She was the first and only female to rise into the higher ranks of the Medellin drug cartel and was reportedly assassinated in 2012; she has been the subject of much fascination over the years, as well as a documentary called Cocaine Cowboys II.
Jones will be joined by The Walking Dead‘s Jon Bernthal, among others, for the film. The title comes from one of Blanco’s nicknames, The Godmother of Cocaine.
Jones is about to celebrate her 14th anniversary with Michael Douglas; the couple recently sold their New York home for close to $8 million and purchased another in the same area, which boasts eight bedrooms.
Douglas seems well after a long battle with cancer, which he spoke about earlier this year at the International Federation of Head and Neck Oncologic Societies 5th World Congress.
“I went through seven weeks of radiation and chemotherapy, which somehow seemed very accurately mapped to the seven circles of hell. Each week I sank a little lower and I felt a little — no, I felt a lot worse…The doctors and nurses at Sloan Kettering had warned me not to expect to feel great the moment those seven weeks were over — that there would be another five weeks of feeling pretty awful until I could even hope to improve. All of that was enormously important. Like a soldier, I prepared for battle. … It was my job to toughen up and get ready for the treatment and later on for my recovery, and that’s what I was able to do,” he said.