Blumhouse To Make Movie Telling True Story Of A Mother Who Hunted Cartel Members After They Murdered Her Daughter

Earlier this month, The New York Times published an article entitled "She Stalked Her Daughter's Killers Across Mexico, One by One," which told the true story of Miriam Rodriguez, a mother who hunted cartel members who murdered her daughter and took justice into her own hands. It was one of those stories that immediately made readers wonder who would end up adapting it into a movie, and now, just a few days after it was first published, we know the answer: Blumhouse has won a bidding war for the film rights.

According to Deadline, Blumhouse beat out sixteen other production companies and studios in a bidding war for the film rights to the New York Times' story, which was just published in mid-December. Blumhouse head honcho Jason Blum will produce the film version of the story, as will Azam Ahmed, who wrote the article, and Caitlin Roper, who is the executive producer of scripted projects for The New York Times.

Deadline describes the article as chronicling "one desperate mother's revenge spree in Mexico, when she avenged her daughter's murder by taking on the drug cartels and tracking down the perpetrators by herself." I won't spoil how things ended in case you haven't read the piece yet or want to wait for the movie to serve as your first interaction with this story, but holy cow, what a story.

56-year-old Miriam Rodriguez paid multiple ransoms to the Mexican cartel after her 14-year-old daughter was kidnapped in 2014, and the police did nothing concrete to help her during that difficult time. So Rodriguez, apparently in full-blown Liam Neeson mode, decided to go rogue and hunt the bastards down herself. Using disguises and multiple fake identities, she ingratiated her way into the kidnapper's and murderer's lives, chatting up family friends, learning information about their whereabouts, and eventually holding the cartel members at gunpoint, handcuffing them, and passing them off to the authorities like some sort of comic book hero. She hunted these men for three years, and it all came to a head in 2017.

There is no word yet about who might write or direct this project, but it has a relatable premise, it's based on a true story, and it's the type of movie that can be made on the cheap – all of which could turn this into a low-budget hit, and potentially be a major acting showcase for whoever is cast as Miriam Rodriguez.