Vigo Mortensen is... el capitán Alatriste.

[Neville]

Looks like Spain is becoming rather engaged in making movies with "foreign" participation. This week a press conference in Madrid announced the beginning of the filming for "El Capitan Alatriste", an adaptation of a series of historical novels by Arturo Perez-Reverte, from who you may remember the film version of yet another of his works, The ninth gate.

The novels take place in Spain during the early 17th century and follow the exploits of the titular character, a soldier that spends the periods during wars earning a living as sword for hire. The books depict as well the mood of society at the time, when the Spanish empire's decline was already evident for the population.

Looks like the makers were looking for a foreign actor right from the start (the word is that Al Pacino was contacted first) but the final option for the titular role is Viggo Mortensen. Mortensen was grown up in Argentina and speaks a wonderful spanish, if slightly accented, plus has already worked in Spain in the past, which I guess that is, together with his popularity, one of the points that have settled the question (unlike the Fantastic Factory films, which are filmed in english, this one will be shot entirely in spanish). The rest of the cast is composed of local actors, like Antonio Resines (La caja 507), Javier Camara and Elena Anaya (both seen in Lucia y el sexo).

I'm really intrigued with this movie, because having read the novels I can't imagine how they're going to pull this one off. The books are narrated from the point of view of Alatriste's young protege, and while the plots are usually paper thin, their main attractive comes from their writing style, which faithfully reproduces the ambient and the language of the period. How to reproduce this on film is gonna be quite a challenge.