Gael García Bernal is reteaming with Jonas Cuarón and they’re heading for TV.
Deadline reported on Friday that Showtime has made a pilot commitment to a new drama that will bring together García Bernal and series creator Cuarón for the first time since the latter’s 2015 thriller “Desierto.” The as-yet-untitled project will be based on Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s book “Undocumented America,” which is due to be released next summer.
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García Bernal would play an undocumented immigrant who poses as an immigration officer to help rescue his wife from ICE custody. The Deadline story describes the series as “an emotional thriller about a man enmeshed in a dangerous double life; torn between his desire to help in any way possible and his family.” Immigration also formed a major part of the plot of “Desierto,” which saw García Bernal star as one person in a group of migrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
This would be Cuarón’s first TV effort, but García Bernal is no stranger to non-film work, having starred in four seasons of the Golden Globe-winning series “Mozart in the Jungle,” where he played a conductor based on the career of Gustavo Dudamel. Thorough Netflix viewers may also have seen García Bernal in the recent English-language remake of “The Kindergarten Teacher,” featuring fellow TV vet Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Cuaron and García Bernal are also potentially teaming up on “Z,” a reimagining of the classic Zorro story that has also brought on Kiersey Clemons to co-star. It would be his third feature as a director, after previously working on the screenplay for “Gravity,” which he co-wrote with his father Alfonso. He also directed a companion short for “Gravity” called “Aningaaq,” told from the perspective of an Inuit fisherman who makes contact with Sandra Bullock’s astronaut character.
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