Vancouver’s Margin Films and Mexico City’s Escuadrón Cinema have signed an agreement to co-develop and produce the romcom feature A Wedding in Tequila.

Margin Films’ founder Quentin Lee (Comedy Invasion; pictured) will write and direct the film, which follows a Mexican-Canadian writer whose upcoming wedding to the heir of a tequila empire is cast into uncertainty by a life-altering revelation about her birth mother.

Lee and their Margin Films partner Cindy Au Yeung (The Way You Dance) will produce the film alongside Daniela Uriza and Sergio Sanchéz of Escuadrón Cinema. The team plans to position the film as a Canada-Mexico treaty coproduction, taking advantage of bolstered tax incentives in Mexico’s Jalisco region.

Canada is responsible for 60% of the financing and the remaining 40% will come from Mexico, Lee told Playback Daily.

The producers first connected at the virtual Canada-Mexico Co-Production Forum in June, which was facilitated by the Canadian Media Producers Association and Mexico’s Trade Commissioner Service.

“As filmmakers, we both fell in love with Tequila — there’s a magic to the place, a natural cinematic quality that’s impossible to ignore,” said Uriza in a statement. “Partnering with Quentin and Cindy flowed from day one, and it’s been clear from the start that this film has something truly special.”

Photo by George Pimentel