Gloria Estefan is circling the mother of a role…
The 63-year-old Cuban-American singer, songwriter, actress and businesswoman is in talks to star opposite Andy Garcia in Warner Bros. and Plan B’s Cuban-American reboot of the Father of the Bride films.
Directed by Gaz Alazraki, the film is being penned by Matt Lopez. Estefan would play Garcia’s wife, with Adria Arjona tapped to play the bride-to-be.
The film will tell the story of a father coming to grips with his daughter’s upcoming wedding through the prism of multiple relationships within a big, sprawling Cuban-American family. It will be more of a rom-com than previous versions of film. While this will mark the third iteration of the story, sources say this will be more in the vein of the original Spencer Tracy film and not the Steve Martin franchise from the 1990s.
WB execs thought it was a long shot that Estefan would be interested, but between Lopez’s script and Garcia’s and Alazraki’s involvement, the opportunity for Estefan was simply too hard to pass up.
“A resounding YES was my answer to the invitation to join my good friend, the incredibly talented Andy Garcia, for this new and wonderfully warm and funny incarnation of the classic, Father of the Bride! I’ve been a fan of director Gaz Alazraki since I saw his record-breaking comedy Nosotros Los Nobles and can’t wait to experience how he brings this amazing script by Matt Lopez to life,” Estefan said.
Estefan’s music has people running to the dance floor for decades going all the way back to when she was the lead singer of Miami Sound Machine and “Conga” hit the airwaves in 1985. Since then her musical library could rival any singer in the world, and Hollywood has been no stranger to using her music in dozens of movies. Estefan has rarely made the jump to the big screen herself, with this only being the third time she has acted in a movie. She made her acting debut opposite Meryl Streep in 1999’s Music of the Heart, also providing the Oscar-nominated song of the same title. Most recently she appeared in Kenny Ortega’s A Change of Heart.