Actor/producer/director Andy "Godfather 3" Garcia has signed actor Anthony "Silence Of The Lambs" Hopkins and Annette "Bugsy" Bening to star with him in "Hemingway and Fuentes," based on a screenplay he wrote with Hemingway's grand daughter Hilary.
The drama will follow the last 20 years of the Nobel/Pulitzer prize winning author, living in Cuba, fishing giant marlin aboard his modified, 34-foot Wheeler Playmate craft 'El Pilar', alongside his best friend, boat captain 'Gregorio Fuentes'. During that time, Hemingway fell in love with an Italian woman, that inspire him to write the classic short novel "The Old Man and the Sea."
Garcia will play Fuentes and Bening will play the author's third wife, 'Mary Welsh Hemingway'.
Fuentes, who died at the age of 104 years old, as opposed to Hemingway, who died at the age of 61, was the inspiration for the character 'Santiago', the protagonist in "The Old Man and the Sea".
Hemingway met Fuentes in 1928, and in the 1930's hired him to care for 'El Pilar'. Fuentes later inherited the boat and donated it to the Cuban government, which displays it outside Hemingway's former home, now a museum on the outskirts of Havana.
After moving back to the US at the height of the Cuban/Castro hysteria, Hemingway killed himself with a double-barreled, 12-gauge shotgun. Initial reports said he 'accidentally' shot himself after cleaning the gun, even though he was an expert on firearms. His body was found by his wife Mary.
Garcia will produce "Hemingway and Fuentes" for executive producer Mark Amin of Sobini Films, with Garcia's CineSon and Paradigm Motion Picture Finance Group currently shopping the package to foreign distributors....
