Jennifer Lopez has been blasted by the son of ‘Cocaine Godmother’ Griselda Blanco over her planned movie on his mother’s blood-soaked reign at the head of a Colombian cartel.
Michael Corleone Blanco told DailyMail.com that J-Lo and her Hollywood team have been ‘disrespectful’ and ‘offensive’ by not consulting over the projected blockbuster.
His move came as he exclusively revealed graphic details of what could be an extraordinary scene in the movie – being a child and seeing his father assassinated, possibly on his mother’s orders.
He also divulged astonishing insights as the son of a woman whose pioneering cocaine routes helped swamp the US with a drug that now kills 14,000 Americans a year.
Jennifer Lopez is slotted to portray ‘Cocaine Godmother’ Griselda Blanco in a movie about Griselda’s blood-soaked reign at the head of a Colombian cartel. In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Griselda’s son, Michael Corleone Blanco said J-Lo and her team are ‘disrespectful’ for not consulting him
‘I just find it more than a tad offensive that they would try to do something without consulting me and my family, the remaining Blancos,’ Michael said. He’s pictured clutching his mother after she dressed up for a his visit to her in US jail
Griselda went from growing up in a slum in the cocaine cartel city of Medellin, Colombia, to ruling a $2billion empire stretching from the South American country through Miami, New York and California.
She grabbed power by being more inventive and even more ruthless than the drug lords emerging in the 1970s.
And she kept order with a gold-plated submachine gun studded with emeralds, while netting $80million a month.
At one point, it is reported she and kingpin Pablo Escobar were ordering constant hits on each other.
J-Lo, 51, is teaming with the same production company that created her 2019 hit Hustlers, which earned her a Golden Globes nomination.
Griselda went from growing up in a slum in the cocaine cartel city of Medellin, Colombia, to ruling a $2billion empire. Pictured in a 1985 mugshot
The singer and actress will produce and star in The Godmother, which has no published expected release date. She has said of the project: ‘I’ve been forever fascinated by the story of Griselda Blanco and jumped at the chance to play her on screen.’
But the lack of consultation has angered Griselda’s only surviving son, who lives in Miami where his mother held a reign of terror in the city’s Cocaine Cowboys drug wars of the 1970s and ’80s. She is accused of being linked to 200 murders.
Michael said: ‘I made attempts at the beginning of 2016 to reach out to J-Lo when the movie was first being discussed. We heard nothing.
‘We did the same last year when J-Lo began speaking out publicly on it. Again no one got back to us. We have emailed over eight lawyers in connection with the movie…nothing. It’s offensive.
‘We emailed STX in June. Nothing at all.’
A rep for Jennifer refused to comment on Michael’s complaint.
Industry bible website IMDB says The Godmother is in pre-production, with The Handmaid’s Tale director Reed Morano signed up. It is not known when shooting will start.
Michael, 42, was a major figure himself in his mom’s criminal empire after she was given 25 years in the US for trafficking. His brothers Osvaldo, Dixon and Uber were all murdered.
But he eventually turned his back on crime and risked his life to get out of the cartel. He now lives as a ‘suburban’ dad with fiancée Marie Ramirez De Arellano and three children.
Michael admitted he felt ‘honored J-Lo is doing a movie on my mother’.
But he added: ‘What I find highly disrespectful though are these Hollywood elites trying to replicate the story for a movie, based on individuals who are alive or passed away, without reaching out.
‘I just find it more than a tad offensive that they would try to do something without consulting me and my family, the remaining Blancos.’
In a personal message to J-Lo, he added: ‘If you respect my mother so much that you are willing to take the role on, then wouldn’t it be right for you to reach out to her son and family and get direct input from the people who smelled, held and loved Griselda?
‘Wouldn’t it just be correct for you to hear the stories, ask questions, just on how my mother was, how she acted, the person she was? Wouldn’t it be right for you to get both sides of the story?’
Michael exclusively revealed graphic details of being a child and seeing his father assassinated, possibly on his mother’s orders. Toddler Michael is pictured with his father Dario Sepulveda
Griselda Blanco holds newborn Michael. She insisted on the middle name Corleone because she was obsessed the with mafia family in the The Godfather movies
From the day he was born in a Medellin hospital, even Michael’s middle name would be inextricably link him with crime.
Griselda decided it should be Corleone because she was obsessed with the Godfather movies and the central mafia family.
His dad was her third husband, cocaine trafficker Dario Sepulveda.
But the couple ended up in a custody fight over Michael and Dario whisked him to Colombia from Florida where Griselda was living.
It was a fateful decision, two of her former associates later told law enforcement officers.
Michael was approaching his sixth birthday in 1983 and travelling with Dario and a bodyguard when their Chevy Cavalier was ambushed in Medellin by men in police uniforms.
Despite his very young age at the time, he vividly recalls the day. He said: ‘The car was pulled over by corrupt police, part of the hit.
‘We were led to a cul de sac, next to a church. I stayed in the back seat and my father came out to speak with the police lieutenant. I remember vividly it was a lieutenant – my father even called him teniente – and asked what’s the problem?
‘The guy grabbed my father’s hand and handcuffed him to the car. And that’s when my father understood.
‘He shouted to his bodyguard Oscar, ‘wake up, this ain’t nothing, this is a hit’.’
‘And then he told me Michael, pass la nina to Oscar. La nina, the little girl, meaning his .45 caliber pistol. Because I had his .45 in the back seat.
‘So that’s when I passed the gun to Oscar and that’s when he opened up. As soon as he grabbed it. It was already locked and loaded, because my father had trained me in that.’
Michael recalls how he was approaching his sixth birthday in 1983 and travelling with Dario and a bodyguard when their Chevy Cavalier was ambushed in Medellin by men in police uniforms. Michael eventually turned his back on crime and risked his life to get out of the cartel. He now lives as a ‘suburban’ dad with fiancée Marie Ramirez De Arellano and three children
The singer and actress will produce and star in The Godmother, which has no published expected release date. She has said of the project: ‘I’ve been forever fascinated by the story of Griselda Blanco and jumped at the chance to play her on screen’
Michael recounted the blazing gun battle, with car loads of assassins screeching into the cul de sac to back up the bent cops.
He said: ‘My father just realized a couple of seconds too late what was going on. But Oscar opened up over the car and the first cops ran for their lives.
‘But then came the other cars. And I remember to this day what cars they were. I remember the weapons that killed my father.
‘It was one more police car, two motorcycles, a Toyota pickup and yellow Volkswagen. That’s when the banditos mixed in with the authorities.
‘My father’s bodyguard then opened up with more than one weapon, he started with the .45 but he also had a .38 on him and he just started letting go.’
Michael continued: ‘The men jumped out of the cars and then you heard the stuttering of the Uzis.
‘My father managed to break free of the handcuffs and took two or three steps, running. He looked back and saw me opening the back door trying to get out.
Griselda’s empire was making $80 million a month smuggling 3,400lb of cocaine for the Medellin cartel of her old friend Pablo Escobar at its height in the 1980s. She’s pictured in a mugshot
‘I had already been in similar scenarios, even at that age. Even though I was scared and crying I was still in movement, I was still active in the moment.
‘And my father said, ‘No, stop running’. That’s when he picked me up, turned me around and took his other two steps.
‘That’s when I saw hitmen laying up with Uzis. And I looked to my right and saw another letting off with the Luger. We fell together.
‘Like a scene from a movie, the church bells rang and nuns came out. As the hitmen came to me, the nuns and the schoolgirls coming out the church jumped on me – saying ‘no el es un nino’, you will not take him, he is a child. The nuns and these girls helped save my life.’
Sepuldeva was shot 27 times, mostly in the back. Miraculously Michael was largely unscathed, being shielded by his father.
By this time other police and paramedics had been called. Michael said: ‘I was in the ambulance with my father and he flatlined in front of me. He died in my arms.
‘There were so many holes in his back and all the blood coming out of so many holes. I knew even then what had happened, they were dirty cops, they were paid off.’
Referring to J-Lo again, he said: ‘So for anybody to give this moment to the general public and not consult the only living person who was there is wrong. Even to just say, you know what, thank you for the respect.’
Michael said he has survived seven assassination attempts while growing up in Colombia and becoming part of the family business from the age on nine. By his teens he was effectively in control, helping his mother from her California jail cell after her 1985 arrest.
He said: ‘I lived the life of a teenage capo. I wasn’t allowed to be a kid, I had to do grown up s**t, risk my life every single day I left the house, for being a Blanco.
‘It’s different when you are part of a family and you live in a world of mafiosos.
‘It’s not like there is ever a day off. It’s not like other people might say, OK I’m going to be a criminal today and tomorrow I’m going to be a blacksmith. It’s not like that.’
Griselda Blanco was a barely 5ft tall Colombian cocaine ‘queenpin’ linked to 250 murders with an empire stretching from Medellin to Miami and New York
Griselda married third husband Sepulveda in 1978, a killer with whom she had her youngest child, Michael. Pictured: Griselda with her son Michael Blanco. Michael has never been able to confirm if his mother ordered the hit on his father. Former Griselda associates said she did
Michael has never been able to confirm if his mother ordered the hit on his father. Former Griselda associates said she did.
‘When I have expressed and asked the question to family members, including to my mother, I learned that it was a line that I could only touch with her and that I could never touch it again,’ he revealed.
‘That being said, they were both my best friends. I cannot condemn her, him or his enemies because if they were responsible for his murder, it was a different time, it was a different era.
‘Back then, there were no rules. What would a mother do to protect her child?’
Griselda was released and deported to Colombia in 2004.
However, her enemies fatally caught up with her in 2012 while leading a quiet life in Medellin. As she walked out of a butchers, she was murdered aged 69 by a technique she devised herself – a ride-by assassin on a motorcycle.
Despite the chilling irony, Michael said: ‘It wasn’t invented by Pablo, it was coined and invented by Griselda. When my mother was in Medellin kids didn’t do the hits. She wouldn’t allow that. They were 30-year-olds, they were banditos, they were classy banditos who had those motorcycles.’
Michael was already cutting ties with criminality when his mother was killed. He was working with her to make legal money by developing a ‘cartel culture’ for movies and merchandising before she was murdered.
But he was conflicted when he received the news of the assassination – with thoughts of revenge and safeguarding his family.
He said: ‘It was, all right, do I kill a whole bunch of people just in case? ‘Do you make that phone call, do you make that green light, do you call the people that you know with one phone call will kill anybody you tell them to? ‘Or do you say I will cut all generational curses right now and I won’t pass this on to my kids?’
Michael decided on the latter. Now he now runs a fashion company called Pure Blanco, whose website describes it a ‘billionaire cartel lifestyle brand’. He also stars in VH1 reality show Cartel Crew which follows people with past connections to cartels. And he is consultant for TV projects, giving an insight into Colombian crime.
By the time she was released from prison in 2004, two of her sons had been killed by rivals in Colombia, and Griselda was deported there as an illegal U. S. immigrant. Pictured: Griselda with Michael
He describes the conflict of loving his mother and confronting her chilling ruthlessness.
‘My mother was not a saint,’ he said. ‘She might have been a dark figure in an era that co-existed with other dark figures. She had to survive and do her thing.
‘But at the end of the day, she was my mother. I will forever honor her and respect her. I love her.’
And he added: ‘I had a bounty on me from before I was born until around the age of four. But my mother took care of that.’
He also revealed his mother’s survival methods, saying: ‘She had no choice but to take it to the wall.
‘She would think, if I have to erase my competition to protect my family then I am erasing everybody. So my mother is like, all right, let’s just make a list.’
And explaining his eventual freedom from the grip of cartels, he said: ‘I never wanted to be a slave to society. I never wanted to be a regular person, to me that was dishonoring what my family was.
‘By not wanting to be a slave to society though, I found myself becoming a slave to my criminality. To evolve and mature from that took me my whole life.’