What do Jesus Christ, Tim Ballard, and Jair Bolsonaro have in common? Soon, they’ll all be immortalized on film by Jim Caviezel. This is per The Guardian, which reports that a teaser for the project surfaced on X (where else) last night. The film, titled The Dark Horse, reportedly began filming three months ago and was written by Bolsonaro’s former secretary of culture Mário Frias. Frias shared photos of Caviezel in costume as the former Brazilian president on Monday. The project has since been confirmed by Bolsonaro’s son, also on X.
Clearly, the film has the approval of people close to Bolsonaro, who is currently serving a 27-year sentence for trying to overturn the results of a democratic election by storming the capital. (That sort of thing has consequences in Brazil.) Nevertheless, The Dark Horse is described as a “heroic” version of his story, which may or may not include the plot to assassinate his left-wing rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva that was foiled when the armed forces failed to join the attempted coup.
Dubbed “the true story of a real hero who survived,” the first look depicts one of Bolsonaro’s many hospital stays since his first presidential campaign in 2018. Based on the content of the trailer, it appears to be on the stay connected to his 2018 stabbing rather than one of the many related to COVID or myriad other maladies Bolsonaro has suffered over the years. The clip is also impossibly set to a dramatic and slowed-down cover of the Destiny’s Child song “Survivor,” which would be a lot easier to enjoy where this is not a flattering portrait of an attempted dictator starring a man who previously called Donald Trump “the new Moses.” Meanwhile, Caviezel is also about to play a CGI de-aged Jesus in The Passion Of The Christ sequel, which will begin production sometime after The Dark Horse wraps. Caviezel is keeping busy!
