Eugenio Derbez has started filming Marcelo en el mundo real with Eva Longoria, putting Lucía Puenzo’s adaptation of Francisco X. Stork’s novel into production. The film has begun shooting in Uruguay and Boston, a two-country setup that signals a larger international reach than a single-location shoot would allow.
Longoria, Derbez and the cast
Eva Longoria and Eugenio Derbez lead the cast, joined by Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, Mathew Borrero and Ema Giménez Zapiola. Zeta Studios and Elefantec Global are producing, and Antonio Asensio said, “Marcelo transcends borders thanks to the universality of its story and the extraordinary talent of artists like Eva Longoria and Eugenio Derbez”.
José “Pepe” Bastón said, “We spent six years developing this story and taking it exactly where it had to be, because from the beginning I knew this was the film I wanted to make.” He added, “Today, with Lucía in the director’s chair, a cast of this caliber and a production of this scale together with our co-producers from Zeta, it is exactly the film we set out to make.”
Lucía Puenzo on Marcelo
Puenzo is steering a story about a young man with autism who is leaving special education and moving toward conventional work, and she set out the narrow territory the film is trying to cover: “Very few films capture that transition in which young people with autism stop being children but have not yet achieved full independence”. She also said, “Marcelo simply experiences the world differently, and his perspective will invite the public to question what we understand as ‘normal’”.
That gap in representation is the real commercial and creative wager here. Puenzo’s debut, XXY, won the Grand Prize of the Critics' Week at the Cannes Film Festival, so this project arrives with a director whose work has already traveled well on the festival circuit and with two recognizable leads built for cross-border visibility.
Uruguay and Boston
Filming in Uruguay and Boston suggests a production designed to move with the story rather than confine it to one market. For viewers, the practical takeaway is simple: the film is now in motion, the principal cast is in place, and the first hard production step has already been taken after six years of development.
The next question is when Marcelo en el mundo real reaches release, because the production has only moved from development to filming. Until that date is set, the meaningful update is that the film is no longer a package on paper; it is now a live shoot with a director who has already shown she can turn intimate material into internationally visible work.
