Sameh Zoabi’s 2018 movie, Tel Aviv on Fire, has been optioned for a US remake as a drama set on the US/Mexican border.
Zoabi’s film is set in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and concerns a Palestinian man who works on a soap opera filmed in Ramallah. He finds out that one of the soldiers who mans the checkpoint he must pass through is a huge fan of the show, a fact that helps him get back and forth more quickly.
It’s a comedy that spoofs both soaps and politics and Zoabi’s star, Kais Nashif, won the Venice Horizons Award for Best Actor at the Venice International Film Festival. The movie also won the Ophir Award for Best Screenplay for Zoabi and Best Israeli Film at the Haifa International Film Festival.
The remake, which will be produced by Adam Mirels and Robbie Mirels for 141 Entertainment, a US-based company, will be set on the US/Mexican border, between the Sonora region of Mexico and a small town in Arizona. A Spanish-speaking director will direct it. There is a precedent for setting the remake of an international series along the US/Mexican border: the Swedish/Danish crime series, The Bridge, was remade there, in a version starring Demian Bichir and Diane Kruger.
Zoabi will work on the remake, along with his co-writer on the movie, Dan Kleinman. Ricardo Hernandez Anzolo also received a screenwriting credit on the original Tel Aviv on Fire, which was inspired by his story, Mejor es que Gabriela no se Muera, which is set in Mexico, so the story is returning to its roots.
Zoabi is currently collaborating with Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, the team that made Homeland, on an adaptation of Nathan Englander’s novel, Dinner at the Center of the Earth, about an Israeli spy in a Negev prison.