Amazon Prime has released the official trailer for Cassandro, starring the 44-year-old Mexican actor/producer and Bad Bunny.
The film is based on the life of the wrestling and queer icon Cassandro, also known as the Liberace of Lucha Libre.
In the two-minute clip, the audience is introduced to Saúl Armendáriz (García Bernal) from El Paso, Texas, who dreams of becoming professional luchador after his father first introduced him to the sport. In the process, he transforms into Cassandro, an “exótico” who wrestles in drag.
“Are you a wrestler?” Bad Bunny asks García Bernal in the film’s new trailer. “Yes,” the Mexican actor responds. That’s the first interaction between the two in the teaser. Later in the clip, they are dancing, and there’s a first look at Bad Bunny as one of Cassandro’s love interests.
Roberta Colindrez, Perla de la Rosa, Joaquín Cosío and Raúl Castillo round out the biopic’s cast.
The world of wrestling is familiar to Bad Bunny. In 2021, the Grammy-winning Puerto Rican superstar ventured into the wrestling world by jumping off the top rope at the 2021 Royal Rumble. Most recently, the “Me Porto Bonito” singer defeated Damian Priest in a San Juan Street Fight at WWE’s premium live event Backlash in May.
After making its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in January, Cassandro is set to hit theaters on September 15, and will premiere on Prime Video Sept. 22.
Gael García Bernal is hitting the ring to play a Lucha Libre legend.
The 41-year-old Mexican actor/filmmaker will star in Cassandro, an independent feature from Oscar winning and two-time Emmy nominee filmmaker Roger Ross Williams.
Cassandro tells the true story of Saúl Armendáriz, a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso who rises to international stardom after he creates the “exotico” character Cassandro, the “Liberace of Lucha Libre,” and in the process upends not just the macho wrestling world but also his own life.
Armendáriz at the age of 15 quit school and began training for Lucha Libre, beginning his professional wrestling career in 1988 under the mask as Mister Romano. Ultimately he would abandon the character and take on the exotico character of Baby Sharon. Exoticos are male wrestlers who dress in drag.
Ultimately, Armendáriz would take the new ring name of Cassandro, from a Tijuana brothel keeper Cassandra whom he appreciated.
In January 1991, after bad press that he was going to wrestle El Hijo del Santo in the UWA World Welterweight Championship, Armendáriz reportedly attempted suicide by cutting his wrists with a razor blade, but was saved.
The title match occurred a week later and Armendáriz credits it as the match that earned him the lucha libre community’s acceptance.
While Cassandro failed to win the UWA World Welterweight Championship from El Hijo del Santo, he managed to win his first title, the UWA World Lightweight Championship in October 1992, by defeating Lasser, becoming the first exótico in history to hold a championship in UWA.
Bernal, who will star in M. Night Shyamalan’s new secret movie from Universal, will shoot that movie first before stepping into the ring for Cassandro, which is eyeing a November start in Mexico.
Cassandro will rep the feature narrative directorial debut for Williams, who took home the Oscar for his short docu Music by Prudence in 2010, and recently was nominated at the Emmys a second time, this time in Outstanding Documentary/Nonfiction Special category for the HBO doc The Apollo. That movie, which made its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, follows the historic and famed Harlem NYC venue and its legacy.
“As a filmmaker, my own life experience has inspired my passion to tell inspirational stories about outsiders and uplift the voices of people we don’t normally see on screen. The true story of Cassandro, Saúl Armendáriz, was one I knew I wanted to tell from the moment I met him. I look forward to being able to bring Saúl’s story to a wide audience,” said Williams.
Williams wrote Cassandro with Emmy-winner David Teague and Julián Herbert (Satelite).
Bernal is a two-time Golden Globe nominee and winner for the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle. He was part of the SAG ensemble nominated cast of Paramount’s Babel, and a BAFTA nominee for Focus Features’ 2004 The Motorcycle Diaries.
The filmmakers are reportedly in talks with Amazon to acquire Cassandro once complete, but that deal is contingent on several factors before it’s a negative pick-up.
The film is based on the life of the wrestling and queer icon Cassandro, also known as the Liberace of Lucha Libre.