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Spanish thesp Paz Vega ("Spanglish") will play conspiring Renaissance aristo Catarina Sforza in Antonio Hernandez's "Los Borgias" (The Borgias), the biggest movie to date from commercial Spanish station Antena 3.

Budgeted at e10 million ($12.3 million), pic is a portrait of the bloody dynasty that spawned a pope, Alexander VI, as well as the role model for Machiavelli's "The Prince," his son Cesare Borgia, and a legend of femme duplicity, daughter Lucrezia Borgia.

Cast is headed by Spain's Maria Valverde ("The Weakness of the Bolshevik," "Melissa P") as Lucrezia. Luis Homar, Pedro Almodovar's bad priest in "Bad Education," is Papa Borgia. Antena 3 will draw from its stable of TV teen idols to fill young male roles.

"The Borgias" is a pet project of Antena 3 CEO Mauricio Carlotti, who owns hundreds of books on the family and has toyed with a Borgia pic for over a decade.