Jimmy Smits has signed to star in and executive produce CBS’ untitled Cynthia Cidre drama pilot, says The Hollywood Reporter.
Additionally, the actor’s El Sendero Productions has set up two projects through the company’s pod deal with ABC TV Studio: a drama from filmmaker Todd Robinson at FX and a miniseries from Gregory Nava at ABC.
The untitled Cynthia Cidre project (previously “Los Duques”) follows the lives of three generations of the Duques, a powerful Latin American family in South Florida who work in the rum business.
Smits will play Alex Vega, an outsider who has been given control of Duque Rum by the Duques’ ailing patriarch.
The first of El Sendero Productions’ projects for ABC TV Studio is “The Inside,” set up at FX. It centers on a former Special Forces operative who agrees to give up his identity and family to go undercover and infiltrate a dangerous drug cartel.
The second project is described as an epic miniseries about U.S. immigration told through interconnected stories to be written and directed by Nava. The mini reunites Smits with Nava, who directed him in the 1995 feature My Family/Mi Familia.
