MADRID — Disney’s “Jungle Cruise,” starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, has added Spanish actor Quim Gutiérrez, one of Spain’s most prominent thirty-something actors who broke out last decade.
Directed by Jaume Collet Serra (“The Shallows,” “The Commuter”), “Jungle Cruise” will see Gutiérrez play one of the movie’s villains.
Born in Barcelona, Gutiérrez’s big break came in Daniel Sánchez Arévalo’s debut “DarkBlueAlmostBlack,” a rights-of-passage tragicomedy which won star Gutiérrez a Spanish Academy best new actor Goya for his performance as a young janitor attracted to his brother’s prison inmate girlfriend.
Arévalo’s other credits include spy operative comedy thriller “Spy Time,” released in 2015, and Mediaset España’s 2016 mini-series “Cain’s Father,” about the dirty war against ETA terrorism, where he played a by-the-book Civil Guard lieutenant.
Consecration in Spain came in 2016 when Gutiérrez was chosen to model the new Emidio Tucci male fashion line of El Corte Inglés, Spain’s biggest department store chain.
Based on the Walt Disney World ride, “Jungle Cruise” marks Gutiérrez’s second English-language movie after the recent “Chasing Satellites.”
Gutiérrez joins not only Johnson and Blunt but also Jesse Plemons (“Black Mass” “Bridge of Spies”), British comedian Jack Whitehall (“Decline and Fall”) and Edgar Ramírez (”The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”), who plays another villain.
Set in the early 20th century, “Jungle Cruise” has Johnson as a boat captain who takes a sister (Blunt) and her brother (Whitehall) on a mission into the Amazon to find a tree possessing remarkable healing powers, wild animals and a rival German expedition notwithstanding.
John Davis and John Fox are producing via Davis Entertainment, Beau Flynn through his FlynnPictureCo. banner, and Johnson, Dany Garcia, and Hiram Garcia through Seven Bucks Productions. Scott Sheldon also co-produces.
Gutiérrez is represented by Antonio Rubial at Madrid-based A6 Cinema.
