Trio team on Cordero's 'Rabia'

Director's 'Cronicas' was a Focus pickup

By EMILIANO DE PABLOS

MADRID — Spanish shingles Telecinco Cinema and Monfort Producciones have teamed with Mexico’s Tequila Gang to co-produce “Rabia,” a social thriller helmed by Ecuadorian director Sebastian Cordero, whose last film, “Cronicas,” was a Focus Features pickup for international.

Pic adapts the novel of the same name by Argentine writer Sergio Bizzio, co-scripter of Cannes Critics Week winner, hermaphrodite drama “XXY.”

“Rabia” tells the story of an immigrant couple who fall in love in a hostile milieu. Jose Maria, a construction worker, kills his foreman, and hides for a long time at the mansion where his girlfriend Rosa serves as a maid.

The Euro 3.5 million ($5.1 million) pic will roll in Northern Spain's Basque Country for seven weeks from March.

Mexican actor Gustavo Sanchez Parra (“Amores perros”) and Spanish actress Leonor Watling ("Talk to Her") are attached to a still-to-be-completed cast.

Project marks another step in the fruitful relationship between Telecinco Cinema, the film production arm of Spanish broadcaster Telecinco, and Mexican helmer-producer Guillermo del Toro, co-founder of Tequila Gang.

Companies co-produced Oscars-winning post-Spanish Civil War fable "Pan's Labyrinth," directed by Del Toro, who also served as creative supervisor on the Telecinco Cinema/Rodar y Rodar-produced chiller "The Orphanage,” an upcoming Picturehouse release in the U.S. and on track to become the highest-grossing film this year in Spain, with a $33.6 million take through Dec. 2.

Tequila Gang also co-produced Cordero's suspense thriller “Cronicas,” toplining John Leguizamo and Leonor Watling.

Recent credits at Monfort, the Madrid-based shingle of young Basque producer Iker Monfort, include the Julianne Moore starring true-life story “Savage Grace,” acquired by IFC Ent. for the U.S., which will preem Stateside at January's Sundance Film Festival.