‘DON’T GET CHEATED’
Many will take advantage of you, Chilean miners warn Thai football team
GUARD against exploitation: that’s the message Chilean miners have offered the 12 Thai boys and their football coach following the harrowing ordeal of spending 18 days trapped in a cave.
Before even the clothes of the Wild Boar football team players had dried following the last dramatic escape from the flooded cave on Tuesday, plans were already made to turn their heroic tale into a Hollywood movie.
Eight years ago, 33 Chilean miners were stuck underground for 69 days after a cave-in, before their torment was turned into a motion picture starring Antonio Banderas.
But although The 33 grossed US$25 million (RM100 million) at the box office, the miners never saw a penny of that.
“Hopefully, they’ll make a film, a television series, a best-selling novel, but that they do it well, that they are smart and don’t get taken for a ride by fraudsters,” said Mario Sepulveda, who was played by Banderas in The 33.
The boys are aged 11 to 16 and even their coach is only 25, whereas the Chilean miners were all grown men.
Many of them have suffered terribly since their traumatic experience in the San Jose mine in the Atacama desert.
“The important thing is that the authorities and their families protect these kids because many people want to take advantage,” said Luis Urzua, another miner.
On Tuesday night, the managing partner of United States faith-based production house Pure Flix, Michael Scott, revealed on Twitter his plans to turn the story into a film.
But before worrying about how to sell their stories, Urzua warns that recovering from “the experience of a lifetime” won’t be easy. There is bitterness at having been exploited by lawyers, producers and others who wanted to benefit from their story. Another miner, Jose Ojeda, had to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
“Once they’d got the information off us, they disappeared.”
Urzua said they were badly advised and fell for promises they would be made millionaires, so “ceded all (intellectual) rights for life”. He is among a group of miners who want to rescind that decision. Despite spending more than two months 600m below the surface, “we can’t even sell one line of the 33”, he lamented.
Urzua said the miners never received a penny from the film, directed by Mexican Patricia Riggen, or the book written by Los Angeles Times journalist Hector Tobar.
“They destroyed us,” said Urzua, who praised the protective circle that had enveloped the Thai boys.
Urzua said all he got was “less” than the five million pesos (less than RM32,000 in today’s exchange rate) that Chilean businessman Leonardo Farkas handed each miner.
Sepulveda, though, had faith in the Thai footballers, saying the “strength of these boys is different to ours”.
“If they keep training, they’ll handle it really well, as long as they stick together,” he said.