Foster Gets Sweet for Sugar Kings

Originally Published: July 26, 2005

Just weeks before her Flightplan lands in theaters, news arrives that Jodie Foster will direct the upcoming film Sugar Kings.

Produced by Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Films, the drama will tell the tale of a young lawyer who teams up with a veteran public-interest attorney to bring down powerful sugar barons. The story’s human-interest angle — the ‘sugar kings’ are exploiting their poorly-paid migrant cane-cutters — has proven strong enough to draw the attention of Jodie Foster, who’s slated to direct and possibly star.

An obvious comparison is The Insider, another giant-institution-basher in which two righteous underdogs take on a corrupt industry.

Marie Brenner’s article, Kingdom Of Sugar, focused on two brothers, Alfy and Pepe Fanjul, who owned a sugar empire in Florida. The brothers were hounded by an attorney, Edward Tuddenham, who charged the two for enforcing slave labour on their 20,000-strong force of cane-cutters and hiding the injustice behind their political connections and social standing.

Foster is back on form in front of the camera and her third directorial effort, Flora Plum, is in production right now.