MUMBAI: Jon Bernthal, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Oscar Jaenada and Mehdi Dehbi have been finalised to join Catherine Zeta-Jones in her next movie The Godmother.

Eva Sorhaug will direct the movie from a screenplay by Frank Baldwin, and production will begin next spring.

Oscar winning Zeta-Jones stars as the notorious Colombian drug queenpin Griselda Blanco, also known as ‘The Godmother of Cocaine’.

Blanco was the first and only woman in history to head a major Colombian drug network, and the film chronicles the rise and fall of the woman who became the wealthiest, deadliest, and most wanted drug lord in the world. Notorious for instigating and fueling the Miami drug wars that took place during the late 1970s and 1980s, Blanco grossed millions of dollars a month amidst fierce competition as cocaine replaced marijuana as America's drug of choice. Blanco was eventually arrested and convicted in 1985 in her home in Irvine, CA.

She served 18 years in prison before she was released in 2004 and deported back to Colombia. Blanco was murdered on 3 September 2012 — shot to death by a drive-by motorcyclist outside a butcher shop in Medellín, Colombia.

The film is being produced by Daniela Cretu through her First Born Films banner, while Oscar nominee Nicholas Pileggi is the executive producer along with Sierra/Affinity's Nick Meyer, Marc Schaberg, and Kelly McCormick.

It isn't Zeta-Jones' first turn in a movie about the drug trade. In 2000, she starred in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, which earned more than $200 million at the global box office.

Bernthal, who currently stars alongside Brad Pitt in David Ayer‘s Fury, was last seen in Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street.

Moreno was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Maria Full of Grace, and she recently appeared on the TV series ‘Red Band Society’.

Jaenada most recently starred in Cantinflas and was previously seen in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides while Dehbi's past film credits include A Most Wanted Man and The Other Son.