Kline, Jovovich star in sex-slave saga

LOS ANGELES - Kevin Kline and Milla Jovovich are poised to star in "Welcome to America," a sex trafficking drama based on a New York Times Magazine cover story.

Kline will play a Texas cop who finds out that he may have had a daughter who was sold as a sex slave some years ago. In the course of his investigation, he meets a young boy (Mexican actor Cesar Ramos) from Mexico City whose 13-year-old sister (Mexican actress Paulina Gayton) has been kidnapped. They go on a quest to save the Mexican girl, who is befriended by Jovovich, a young Russian woman who thinks she is coming to the US to become a nanny, but is instead enslaved in Mexico.

The project is based on "The Girls Next Door," a January 2003 New York Times Magazine cover story by Peter Landesman.

The $12 million film is scheduled to start filming in Mexico City in late November, said the film's producer Centropolis Entertainment, which is headed by director Roland Emmerich ("The Day After Tomorrow"). Up-and-coming German filmmaker Marco Kreuzpaintner ("Summer Storm") will direct. Lions Gate will distribute in North America.

After the movie's original German backing fell apart, Emmerich felt so strongly about making the movie that he funded it himself.

"It is very important to tell this story from the victims' point-of-view," said Emmerich. "I realized that with independent financing, somebody has to be the locomotive. So I'm putting my own money into it."

- REUTERS