Narcos’ José Padilha Working on Marielle Franco Drama

José Padilha (Narcos, Elite Squad) is on board to direct a new Globoplay original drama series about the life and death of Marielle Franco, a Brazilian politician, feminist and human rights activist whose murder is still unresolved.

Created by Antonia Pellegrino, who is also an executive producer, the series charts the story of the woman who became an important voice in the struggle for human rights and in combating LGBT-phobia—but her voice was silenced on the night of March 14, 2018, in a brutal assassination. The crime, which has still not been solved, has triggered a chorus of protests with everyone voicing the same questions: who killed Franco and who ordered her murder?

Scheduled to start filming in the second half of this year, the series is slated for launch in 2021.

The first and last episodes will be written by Padilha and Pellegrino. To head the writers’ room, Globo has brought on board George Moura.

Padilha said: “We will be telling the important story, of the life and, unfortunately, death of Marielle Franco. And in doing so, we will be addressing, once again, the ongoing problems of urban violence, police corruption and the militias and their influence on politics. The series will be fictional in the same way that Elite Squad 1 and 2 were, but with a story based on real events and on everything that it represents.”

He added: “We know that the memory of Marielle does not need us to live on. Those of us who are alive are the ones who need her to remind us of our own humanity. Marielle always went beyond the norm in everything she did, even in the way she died. The killing of Marielle Franco is not, unfortunately, an isolated incident in Rio de Janeiro, a city marked by violent crimes, but it is the only case powerful enough to bring the putrefying sludge of the city to the surface.”

Erick Brêtas, director of digital products and services at Globo, commented: “It is a real privilege to have José Padilha on Globoplay, at the helm of such an important project. The legacy Marielle Franco left in the field of human rights transcends borders and very few filmmakers have the capacity to tell a story of this nature with equal skill and competence to national and international audiences.”

Moura, who will also act as an executive producer of the series, said: “I was very excited when Globoplay invited me to join the team, in my first work experience alongside José Padilha. Fiction, even when it is based on real-life events, always allows us to have some freedom of manoeuver to dig deeper into the subjective motivations that drive the characters. It is as if in a documentary or report, reality was always the ultimate goal. On the other hand, in fiction, dreams and desires may carry greater weight. It is a great honor and joy to team up with those who want to tell the story of a contemporary Brazilian heroine like Marielle Franco at this moment in Brazil.”

Creative Artists Agency (CAA) will be negotiating all international distribution agreements. “We will look for an international partnership to make it possible to exhibit the series worldwide. The idea is to tell her incredible life story to the greatest number of people, inside and outside the country,” said Padilha.