Queen of the South is a Hollywood movie based on the 2002 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Arturo Pérez-Reverte Gutiérrez is a Spanish novelist and journalist. He worked as a war correspondent for twenty-one years . His first novel, El húsar, set in the Napoleonic Wars, was released in 1986. He is well known outside Spain for his "Alatriste" series of novels...

. The movie is directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz

Jonathan Jakubowicz

Jonathan Jakubowicz is a Venezuelan filmmaker, whose film Secuestro Express was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the British Independent Film Awards and was a New York Times "Critics' Pick" in 2005.-External links:...

 and stars Eva Mendes

Eva Mendes

Eva Mendes is an American actress.She began acting in the late 1990s, and after a series of minor roles and performances in several smaller films such as Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror and Urban Legends: Final Cut , she broke into the mainstream, appearing in leading roles in Hollywood...

, Josh Hartnett

Josh Hartnett

Joshua Daniel "Josh" Hartnett is an American actor and aspiring producer. He first came to audiences' attention in 1997 as "Michael Fitzgerald" in the television series Cracker. He made his feature film debut in 1998, co-starring with Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later for Miramax...

 and Ben Kingsley

Ben Kingsley

Sir Ben Kingsley, CBE is a British actor. He has won an Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards in his career. He is known for starring as Mohandas Gandhi in the film Gandhi in 1982, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...

. The film is expected to be released in 2011.

Background

In 2002 Spanish journalist turned novelist Arturo Pérez-Reverte released his book ‘La Reina del Sur’, ‘The Queen of the South’ when translated into English. It is this publication that has led to a Hollywood cinematisation starring Eva Mendes in the lead role. The movie will be released as ‘Queen of the South’, without ‘The’ in the title. Along with Mendes in the starring roles are Josh Hartnett and Sir Ben Kingsley.

Plot and setting

The story takes place in multiple transatlantic locations – Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

, Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

 and Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

. The plot

Plot

Plot is a literary term defined as the events that make up a story, particularly as they relate to one another in a pattern, in a sequence, through cause and effect, or by coincidence. One is generally interested in how well this pattern of events accomplishes some artistic or emotional effect...

 centres around narcotic

Narcotic

The term narcotic originally referred medically to any psychoactive compound with any sleep-inducing properties. In the United States of America it has since become associated with opioids, commonly morphine and heroin and their derivatives, such as hydrocodone. The term is, today, imprecisely...

s trafficking and drug

Drug

A drug, broadly speaking, is any substance that, when absorbed into the body of a living organism, alters normal bodily function. There is no single, precise definition, as there are different meanings in drug control law, government regulations, medicine, and colloquial usage.In pharmacology, a...

s cartel

Cartel

A cartel is a formal agreement among competing firms. It is a formal organization of producers and manufacturers that agree to fix prices, marketing, and production. Cartels usually occur in an oligopolistic industry, where there is a small number of sellers and usually involve homogeneous products...

s.

Production difficulties

The film production has not been without issues. Filming was scheduled to take place in Sinaloa

Sinaloa

Sinaloa officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sinaloa is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 18 municipalities and its capital city is Culiacán Rosales....

 in Mexico’s North West. However, following security concerns, director Jonathan Jakubowicz was reported in Variety in 2009 as saying,

"We wanted to shoot in the city of Culiacan

Culiacán

Culiacán is a city in northwestern Mexico, the largest city in the state of Sinaloa as well as its capital and capital of the municipality of Culiacán. With 675,773 inhabitants in the city , and 858,638 in the municipality, it is the largest city in the state of Sinaloa...

 in Sinaloa, northern Mexico, the epicentre of the drug wars, but it just wasn't possible. The safety of my family and my team comes first, and making this movie put us all at risk, not only in Mexico but in the U.S."