Film on Pablo Escobar will be recorded in Panama

Benicio del Toro will play the Colombian kingpin

Panama is emerging as an important site for making movies, and the next to be filmed here in March will be 'Paradise Lost', a film in which the U.S. actor from Puerto Rica, Benicio del Toro, will play the role of Colombia's Pablo Escobar, the most famous drug lord in all of history, as announced by the weekly magazine Le Film Français.

Inspired by an episode in the life of the kingpin of the Medellin cartel, the movie will have a $25.6 million dollar budget, the source indicated.

The film, which will be co-produced by the firms Chapter 2, Pathé and Studio 37, “will follow the fate of a young surfer who falls in love with Pablo Escobar's niece.”

The youth “will live in intimate proximity” to whom was the most powerful man in the Colombian mafia until his death in Medellín, in December of 1993.

The movie was written by the Italian actor Andrea di Stefano, who will also be the director.

This will be the first time that Di Stefano, who was born in Rome in 1972 and left for New York to study at the Actor's Studio, will go behind the cameras, said the French magazine.