Deadline is reporting that Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones has landed the role of Griselda Blanco in The Godmother. The film will chronicle the real life story of the female drug kingpin, the one and only woman to rise to the top of Colombia’s Medellin cartel. The film will be directed by Eva Sørhaug. 

This won’t be the first time that Zeta-Jones has tackled a drug drama, having portrayed Helena Ayala in Steven Soderbergh’s critically acclaimed Traffic back in 2000. It also won’t be the first time that the actress, of Welsh and Irish descent, has played a hispanic woman. Zeta-Jones rose to fame in Hollywood when she played a Mexican noblewoman named Elena Montero. 

Griselda Blanco was a formidable force in the drug wars of the 70s and 80s, with a story that jumps from Cartegena to New York, then Miami, and back to Colombia. She’s said to have ordered hundreds of assassinations during her reign as kingpin, and was nicknamed La Madrina, the Cocaine Queen, and Black Widow. Her story came to an abrupt end in 2012 when she was gunned down in a motorcycle drive by.

The Godmother is set to film next year, working off of a script by Frank Baldwin.

SOURCE: Deadline