Source:
ScreenRant
Amazon Studios has ordered
Cortes, a miniseries based on the exploits of the titular conquistador, with Javier Bardem in the lead role. Oscar-winning writer Steven Zaillian will pen the script, based on a 50-year-old screenplay by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo. Trumbo’s own saga was recently depicted in a feature film starring Bryan Cranston in an Oscar-nominated performance.
Calling the saga of Hernan Cortes (1485-1547) epic doesn’t begin to do the story justice. The 18-year-old future conquistador first arrived in the New World in 1504, following in the wake of Christopher Columbus. In 1519 Cortes embarked upon the expedition into the interior of Mexico for which he would later become infamous. Cortes would lead an army, partially made up of natives, into the kingdom of the Aztecs, ruled over by the famed Montezuma. What followed was a great conquest, or an act of genocide depending on your point of view. Either way, the Aztec empire disappeared from the face of the Earth, and Cortes achieved immortality.
Amazon Studios will now tell the story of the conquistador and his exploits in
Cortes, starring Oscar-winner Javier Bardem (via
Deadline). Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment will produce the four-hour miniseries, with Amblin TV’s Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey executive producing together with Bardem. Spielberg was himself at one time interested in tackling the project as a feature film before it was reworked in miniseries form. This project is different from a previous
Cortes series announced at HBO, with Martin Scorsese at one time set to direct the pilot. That project appears to have stalled out however.
