Picture: TIFF / Netflix
Netflix has several big movies headlining its international movie slate to round out 2024. One of the movies on our list of most anticipated is Pedro Páramo, headlined by Manuel García Rulfo and Tenoch Huerta.
Rodrigo Prieto is the director behind the movie, and despite having an illustrious career in film, this is his directorial debut. Prieto has been predominantly a cinematographer, serving as director of photography on a number of Martin Scorsese movies, including The Wolf of Wall Street and, most recently, Killers of the Flower Moon.
Mateo Gil wrote the adaptation, with Stacy Perskie and Rafael Ley serving as producers.
Adapting the 1955 novel by Juan Rulfo, the Mexican movie is perhaps one of the biggest to come from the country in Netflix’s existence. The movie is based on the story of Juan Preciado (played by Tenoch Huerta), who is searching for his father, Pedro Páramo (played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), following his mother’s death. The town where Preciado heads to is seemingly abandoned, and past and present beguilingly coexist.
The TIFF website describes the movie as a “mesmerizing story of desire, corruption, and inheritance.”
Picture: Netflix
The first-time director has spoken about the source material and why he wanted to adapt it, saying in a quote:
“Pedro Páramo was deeply impactful for me from the first time I read it, and bringing this novel by Juan Rulfo to the screen will be a feat in all aspects. We are constantly searching for our roots, for who we are, and this really appeals to me from the novel. I can especially relate to Juan Preciado, who is looking for himself and for his country while searching for his father. He represents the Mexican people in that we are mixed– mixed in our roots and our races.”
Manuel García-Rulfo and Tenoch Huerta are the two heavyweights with the former best known for his Netflix series The Lincoln Lawyer and will soon be wrangling dinosaurs in Jurrasic World 7. The latter is best known for his role in Namor in the second Black Panther movie.
Rounding out the cast:
- Mayra Batalla (Huesera: The Bone Woman) as Damiana Cisneros
- Giovanna Zacarías (Ramona) as Dorotea ‘La Cuarraca’
- Gabriela Núñez (Noise) as María Dyada
- Dolores Heredia (Vantage Point)
- Ilse Salas (The Good Girls)
- Noé Hernández (We Are The Flash)
- Roberto Sosa (Lolo)
- Hector Kotsifakis as Fulgor Sedano
Netflix confirmed via its blog that production started on the project on May 8th, 2023, with a couple of behind-the-scenes photos from the shoot. The majority of filming took place in Comala, Mexico.
Picture: Netflix
When will Pedro Páramo be on Netflix?
There is no release date yet for the movie (indeed, a page didn’t even exist on the Netflix UI at the time of publishing), but we do know that it’ll be premiering sometime in the Fall of 2024.
Ahead of its Netflix release, the movie was announced to be part of the TIFF Platform lineup and make its World Premiere during the film festival. So, if you want to see this on the big screen, book your tickets to Toronto for September.
The movie has a 2-hour and 3-minute runtime and will be spoken entirely in Spanish.
Redrum (Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths) and WooFilms (The Last Car) are two production companies behind Pedro Páramo.
Will you be checking out Pedro Páramo when it drops on Netflix? Let us know in the comments.