‘Flamin’ Hot’: Read The Screenplay For Eva Longoria’s SXSW Winner About A Man Who Bets His Chips And Wins

Patrick Hipes

5 December 2023 at 7:44 pm·1-min read

Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts continues with Flamin’ Hot, the script from Lewis Colick and Gentefied creator Linda Yvette Chávez that became Eva Longoria’s feature directorial debut.

The rags-to-riches story of Richard Montañez, the Frito-Lay janitor (played by Jesse Garcia) who becomes the marketing godfather of the spicy-chip revolution, hit the spot right away with audiences. The pic from Searchlight Pictures won the Headliners section’s audience award after its world premiere at SXSW, after which it became the first film to debut simultaneously on Hulu and Disney+ when it premiered in June.

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Longoria told Deadline earlier this year that after sparking to the original script by Colick (October Sky and Charlie St. Cloud) and coming aboard, her first suggestion was that the story’s point of view needed to be Montañez’s.

“This is his version of what happened,” she said. “I’m not doing the history of the Flamin’ Hot Cheeto from Frito-Lay’s point of view. I’m making a story about this man, and that is his story.”

The result is a pic from DeVon Franklin’s Franklin Entertainment that follows Montañez as a food industry disruptor who channeled his Mexican-American heritage to turn Flamin’ Hot Cheetos from a snack into an global phenomenon.

Annie Gonzalez, Emilio Rivera, Dennis Haysbert, Tony Shalhoub, Matt Walsh, Bobby Soto and Pepe Serna round out the ensemble cast.

Click below to read the script.

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