Benicio del Toro to Play Cocaine King Pablo Escobar in ‘Paradise Lost’

Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar has fascinated Hollywood for decades. The Grey director Joe Carnahan has been trying to direct his take on the story Killing Pablo for years, once with Javier Bardem and Christian Bale attached and Edgar Ramirez was in talks to play him in two competing films. Plus, The Lincoln Lawyer director Brad Furman has his own project about Escobar in the works. But now it looks like one will finally get made, as Variety reports that Benicio del Toro has signed on to play the iconic figure in a new film called Paradise Lost for Italian director Andrea di Stefano, who also wrote this screenplay. Read on! Paradise Lost takes an interesting angle on Escobar, using him as a tangential figure to the main story. The plot surrounds Nick, a surfer who visits his brother in Colombia and falls in love with a gorgeous local girl …