Tradecraft: Robert Rodriguez and Roberto Orci Team Up For Bondian Latino Spy Series

Sin City and Spy Kids director Robert Rodriguez recently founded El Rey, a new English language cable network targeting young Latino audiences in partnership with Univision and Comcast. It's scheduled to launch at the end of the year. Deadline reports that one of the network's inaugural series will be an action spy series the trade blog describes as a "Latino James Bond" created by Roberto Orci (Alias, Mission: Impossible III) and Rodriguez, with the former penning the pilot and the latter directing it. Orci and Alex Kurtzman's K/O Paper Products (Hawaii Five-0) will produce. According to Deadline, "the K/O series is a big-budget adventure drama that is Latino James Bond in tone, but with more of a levity than the recent Bond movies. It centers on a super-star soccer player and notorious playboy who doubles as a highly-skilled spy, carrying out covert missions for a special branch of the CIA." Well now, Mr. Rodriguez... that's how you launch a network! I can't wait to see this! With Burn Notice coming to an end (the final season begins tonight), we'll be in need of a new Bondian cable spy series. (Though we're lucky enough to have an embarrassment of riches on the serious side of genre these days.) And I like that the tone will be somewhat on the lighter side. Rodriguez has said before that his first three Spy Kids movies were inspired by the Roger Moore Bonds, so he's clearly a fan of that tone. And I've always wanted to see him tackle adult spies! A 13-episode order is expected for the first season, with a budget north of $40 million. (And Rodriguez can do a lot with a little, so he'll no doubt find ways to stretch that even further.)