News: Danny Trejo Biopic Has Found A Director






The planned Danny Trejo biopic has found its director.

Image courtesy Dimension Films

Brett Harvey (Ice Guardians, The Culture High) has been brought on to direct Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo, the story of Hollywood’s most unlikely hero Danny Trejo. Trejo will serve as an executive producer alongside Adam Scorgie, Rocky Mudaliar, Iliana Nikolic and Craig Balkam. Production has already begun in California, but there is no word on any type of casting and who will portray Trejo.

“Today, Danny Trejo is temperate, benevolent and likely one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. But he wasn’t always this way”, explains producer Adam Scorgie, whose credits include recent success Ice Guardians and upcoming Chasing Evel: The Robbie Knievel Story . “Growing up in the mean streets of Pacoima, California, he was raised and mentored by his uncle, a drug addict and armed robber. By the age of 12, he had tried heroin. By age 15, he was introduced to his first jail cell. At 23, he was sentenced to San Quentin for selling a $30,000 bag of heroin to an undercover agent. From bad to worse, he boxed his way through the prison jungle, winning fight after fight and learning self-discipline along the way. Surviving some of the most hostile conditions in the country, Danny would eventually find himself involved in a prison riot that would lead to the turning point in his approach to life.”

After being released from prison in 1969, he helped counsel youth drug addicts and worked as a boxing coach. This led to him training Eric Roberts to box for the film Runaway Train (1985). Since then, he's spent over thirty years in the industry working with the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Antoine Fuqua, Michael Mann, Ivan Reitman and Robert Rodriguez. It makes for an empowering tale and done right could end up being quite a powerful film. They are hoping to have it ready for a 2018 release.