Tom Cruise coming to Colombia. Photo: Gage Skidmore
Hollywood heartthrob Tom Cruise will fly to Colombia in September to film scenes from his new film Mena, local media reported last week.
Cruise will play Barry Seal, a pilot and DEA informant who flies drugs into the US for Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel.
The 52-year-old actor will be in Colombia for just nine days shooting scenes around the country, including the military base of Tolemaida just outside of Melgar, and in the Cundinamarca department.
Cruise will reportedly arrive with an entourage of 12 bodyguards, as well as his own gym and personal chef.
The film is based on the true story of Louisiana native Barry Seal, who was one of Escobar’s key traffickers of cocaine into the United States in the 1980s, making the druglord billions of dollars in the process.
In 1984, the real-life Seal was tasked by the CIA to take photos, which showed Escobar and members of the Medellin Cartel loading cocaine onto a transport plane, as part of a DEA sting operation against the communist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The operation, which would later come to be known as the Iran-Contra scandal, nearly brought down then US President Ronald Reagan.
Seal was shot dead in 1986 in his home state of Louisiana, in what is widely believed to be a hit by Medellin Cartel killers.
The movie will be directed by Doug Liman, of Swingers, The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and Edge of Tomorrow fame.
Mena will hit cinemas in 2017, according to the IMDb movie website.
By Mark Kennedy