Brazilian director Jose Padilha has signed on to another Netflix production, continuing his long-running relationship with the streaming service. This time, Padilha will be turning his attention to the genesis and growth of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, with the film “Dead or Alive” set to explore how this mixed martial art spread across the world. Padilha is sharing scriptwriting duties with Peter Maguire, while he will also produce the film alongside Greg Silverman.
Production duties will come under the umbrella of Silverman’s independent entertainment media company, Stampede. The former president of Warner Bros. Pictures, Silverman, has stated his excitement about being attached to Padilha’s project. In the official press release for the movie, Silverman described Dead or Alive as a "film with universal appeal with remarkable real-life characters".
Padilha's role as producer and primary director of the Netflix original series “Narcos” propelled him to global renown, although he was already highly regarded domestically for his work in a string of Brazilian movies.
The Hollywood Reporter describes Dead or Alive’s plot as an "epic tale", with the storyline following two men who were pivotal to the spread of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Mitsuyo Maeda traveled from Japan to Brazil as an ambassador for the martial art, where he adopted an inspired Carlos Gracie as his student. Gracie passed on his craft down generations, with the family name becoming synonymous with mixed martial arts.
This culminated in Gracie’s nephew Rickson’s induction to the Legends of MMA Hall of Fame in 2014. The story of Dead or Alive will span centuries and continents to tell this unlikely tale of how a craft developed in Japan spawned an MMA dynasty in Brazil. Padilha’s film and television career has demonstrated his aptitude for exploring stories grounded in reality, which made him the ideal candidate to helm the production of Dead or Alive.
It will be interesting to see where this ranks among some of Padilha’s past work, and whether it can command the same degree of crossover appeal as some of the director’s most notable shows and movies.
Narcos
It is hard to start anywhere other than Narcos when discussing Padilha’s greatest successes. Padilha’s name is often preceded by the phrase "Narcos director", such as in the Collider report on the Dead or Alive announcement. While it may be frustrating to be continually associated with just one part of a body of work, there is no denying that Narcos is Padilha’s most global success. The Narcos brand has spun off into other forms of media, which is always a sure sign of a hit.
The most immediate spin-off is the Narcos: Mexico series from Netflix, on which Padilha is cited as an executive producer. NetEnt have produced a Narcos-inspired game which forms part of the Betway slots collection, where characters like Wagner Moura’s Pablo Escobar appear as symbols on the reels. The series has even prompted the creation of a Narcos board game from CMON Limited, in which players recreate the DEA’s attempts to bring down Escobar.
RoboCop (2014)
MGM entrusted Padilha to implement his creative version for this remake of the 1987 movie, which remains the director’s biggest Hollywood outing to date. Padilha worked with a sterling cast, including all-time greats in the form of Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton. The movie starred Joel Kinnaman in the leading role, heading a cast that matched the allure of the RoboCop name.
The film received mixed critical reviews, with its 6.2 rating on IMDb falling short of the 1987 version’s 7.6 score. The difficulty with such a remake is that the new film would have had to be significantly better than the original if it were to become the new definitive RoboCop movie. As it is, most people are likely to think of the original when they hear the name RoboCop. The movie’s legacy in other media is unlikely to extend beyond the third-person shooter game from Glu Mobile.
Elite Squad: The Enemy Within
This 2010 sequel to 2007’s Elite Squad marks one of the high points in Padilha’s career, with the crime thriller rated 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. The film is set in Brazil and sees Wagner Moura play the lead role. Moura and Padilha have been frequent collaborators; as well as the Elite Squad series and Narcos, the two also linked up in Rio, I Love You.
As detailed by Screen Daily, The Enemy Within became Brazil’s highest-grossing movie of all time, raking in R$103.8 million in the box office. It may have since been surpassed by 2016’s The Ten Commandments, but The Enemy Within remains one of the defining releases in Brazilian cinema history.
One notable feature of The Enemy Within is that Moura learned jiu-jitsu to prepare for his role as Lieutenant Colonel Roberto Nascimento. His trainer? None other than Rickson Gracie. Padilha enjoys working with people that he trusts and subjects that he feels can do justice. When it arrives on Netflix, Dead or Alive looks set to be another hit for Padilha.
The film grossed only $205M against a $150M budget, losing Paramount a significant amount of money. It did, however, gain a decent following on streaming, but the financial risk for a sequel is ever-present.