Along with a billion or so other people, actor Antonio Banderas watched live in 2010 as 33 Chilean miners were miraculously pulled from a hole in the ground, after 69 days trapped 2,300 feet below the surface.
“I was watching the television and said, ‘Somebody’s gonna make a movie out of this,’” he recalls. Five years later he’s starring in it, playing a miner named Mario Sepulveda. “The 33” opens on Nov. 13.
The mine collapse became a media sensation almost the instant it became a catastrophe. It wasn’t exactly the circus that Billy Wilder depicted in “Ace in the Hole” (1951), in which an opportunistic reporter played by Kirk Douglas turns a poor sap trapped in a cave into a scoop and tourist attraction. But world-wide media flocked to Chile, especially 17 days into the ordeal when rescuers drilled a narrow hole, and miners sent up a handwritten note saying “Estamos bien.” (“We’re OK”). While engineers worked to drill a wider hole to get the miners out, the trapped workers got media offers via the mail they were receiving via a small tube.
“Mario had a film offer while down there. Some of them were getting offers to do gigs, to do interviews with Japanese television or go to Spain for a talk show,” says Héctor Tobar, a Los Angeles journalist who wrote the authorized book, “Deep Dark Down: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free.”
