When Anthony Hopkins finishes his work as Odin in Marvel's adaptation of Thor, Variety reports he will play a different icon — Ernest Hemingway in Andy Garcia's Hemingway and Fuentes.
Hemingway and Fuentes is the first movie Garcia has directed since making his 2005 debut, The Lost City. It chronicles the two decades Hemingway spent in Cuba fishing with best friend Gregorio Fuentes. The project became a personal one for Garcia, who plans to play Fuentes, after meeting some of the men who fished with Hemingway.
I was specifically most interested in Hemingway's connection to Cuba, where he spent the last 20 years of his life, and his relationship with his last captain, Gregorio. As an avid fisherman, I got to know older Cuban fisherman who knew Gregorio from the fishing culture of the '40s and '50s, and who would compete in tournaments outside the city of Havana, which was really the beginning of competitive fishing.
Garcia wrote the movie with the aid of Hilary Hemingway, the granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, though he put it aside to direct The Lost City. Annette Bening will play Hemingway's third wife, Mary Welsh Hemingway.
Officially, we are going out with the movie and starting conversations with all foreign distributors. I've done about six movies that way, and sold domestic later. When I worked with Francis Coppola on The Godfather 3, he said the way you make a movie is, you begin. We've begun.