Because he’s probably the only Spanish actor you’ll definitely pay to see and it will take a few years to animated more dancing cats in footwear. Antonio Banderas is going to play Pablo Picasso on 33 Days.

33 Days will focus just on the inception and creation of Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica. The film’s angle is that the painting pulled Picasso out of a personal crisis, during the time of his relationship with the French artist Dora Maar.

Completed in the summer of 1937, the 25ft painting depicts a violent chaos of people and animals, and was designed to bring attention to the blitzkrieg bombing of the Basque town by Franco-supporting German forces during the Spanish Civil War. It currently lives at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, and is generally considered one of the great masterpieces of the 20th century.

Talking about the role Banderas said:

“He’s a character that has pursued me for a long time. I am from Malaga, and he was born four blocks from where I was born.”

The popular perception of Picasso is that he was a short bald man, but this film will prove once and for all that he was in fact the human form of the ultimate feline lover Puss in Boots.

33 Days, which is budgeted at 8 million euros, is written and directed by Carlos Saura (The 7th Day, Goya In Bordeaux), with legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storraro (Apocalypse Now) in talks to join the project. Shooting on the French and Spanish-language film starts in the summer.