Tradecraft: El Rey's "Latino James Bond" Show Gets Title, Star

Last summer when Sin City and Spy Kids director Robert Rodriguez announced he was launching a new English language network targeting young Latino audiences, he also anounced that one of the fledgling El Rey network's first shows would be a spy series co-created with Alias and Mission: Impossible 3 writer Bob Orci. Today Deadline provided more details about the series. First off, it's got a title now: Matador. As someone who writes about spy shows and spy movies, I personally wish it weren't the same title as another movie with spy connections, the excellent 2005 Pierce Brosnan assassin comedy The Matador, but I guess that doesn't really matter. A good title is a good title, even if it's already taken within the genre. On top of a title, Matador has its stars. Relative newcomer Gabriel Luna will play the lead, Antonio "Matador" Bravo, a Bondian superspy who works for a "little known branch of the CIA" and, like I Spy's Kelly Robinson before him, operates under the cover of being an international sports star. Not a tennis pro and, confusingly, not a matador either, Bravo is a playboy soccer star. Australian actress Nicky Whelan (Franklin & Bash) will co-star. Orci's regular collaborator Alex Kurtzman has also come on board now (the trade lists him as a co-creator), and, as previously reported, Rodriguez himself will direct the pilot. Best of all, we haven't got long to wait to see this Matador! El Rey have slated it to debut this July, following the World Cup. I'm really looking forward to this one. While we've got some excellent serious spy shows on TV right now (like The Americans and Homeland), there's not really anything Bond-y out there at the moment. And Orci and Kurtzman worked on the best Bondian TV series of recent vintage, Alias. So this could be very cool.