Bardem says no to ‘Killing Pablo’

An interesting development at today’s press junket for Woody Allen’s romantic comedy Vicky Christina Barcelona when ComingSoon.net spoke to the film’s star Javier Bardem and asked him about Joe Carnahan’s Killing Pablo, for which the Oscar-winning actor was attached to play the title role of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

It was reported by Variety last October that the Yari Film Group was fast-tracking the film with Bardem playing the lead role and Christian Bale to co-star. When ComingSoon.net spoke to Carnahan earlier this summer, he was already talking about his trip down to Colombia to start preparing in order to shoot the movie in the fall. (At the time, he said nothing about the casting.)

In February, the National Ledger cast some doubt on whether Bardem would play the role, but it seemed more like Bardem hadn’t decided what he wanted to do yet, saying “Those credits are up in the air” even though Bardem was still listed to play the role on IMDb.com, having presumably been Carnahan’s first choice for Escobar.

With that in mind, ComingSoon.net asked Bardem today how he was preparing for the role, to which we were informed that it was “a mistake” and that it “wasn’t true” he was going to play the part in Carnahan’s movie. Since we presumed everything was in place for casting with the Variety report and Carnahan’s own progress on moving into production, we’ll have to wait and see who Carnahan gets to fill the role if Bardem is out. There’s been no word from Bale on his own part in the movie despite having spent the past few weeks doing press for The Dark Knight.