Oscar Isaac Exits 'The Ballad of Pablo Escobar'

A sure sign that an actor is blowing up uncontrollably is when they're forced to drop out of major projects due to scheduling conflicts, and that seems to be happening now with Oscar Isaac. He's on an incredible run right now, and it only looks to get better with the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis possibly moving him into Best Actor contention, plus he's got a handful of other high-profile gigs lined up. One of those which was probably the biggest of all was a biopic on famous crimelord Pablo Escobar, but Isaac is now out and his replacement being sought.

Latino Review says that the newly-titled The Ballad of Pablo Escobar, directed by Brad Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer) and featuring a Black List script by Matt Aldrich, is moving forward without Isaac. The search for someone to take on the Escobar role led to Wagner Moura, who played Spider in Elysium, but he's now out of the running and it's John Leguizamo doing screen tests for it. Kind of a surprising choice, because nobody would consider Leguizamo a bankable star capable of carrying a film such as this, so maybe Furman has plans of surrounding him with an A-list supporting cast.

There are a handful of Pablo Escobar projects on the way: Netflix has a TV series; Benicio Del Toro is playing him in Paradise Lost; and Antoine Fuqua has one in the works. So any delay or production issue could prove fatal because it's unlikely all of these will survive. The Ballad of Pablo Escobar should begin filming next month.