Chatô, o Rei do Brasil

The narrative begins with Assis Chateaubriand suffering a stroke in 1960. From this point, the story traces his origins—from a poor childhood in Paraíba to his rise as a media magnate—while depicting Chatô's delusion of being put on trial during a television broadcast.^[5]

Guilherme Fontes stated his intention in adapting the life of Assis Chateaubriand was to create a "Brazilian Forrest Gump" as well as "a musical tragicomedy, my personal strategy for, in the future, reinventing characters from Brazilian history and building a new dramaturgy." To realize this ambitious production, Fontes forged a partnership with Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope. He established an office at the company's San Francisco headquarters and spent eight months discussing the project's technical, artistic, and promotional aspects, including several planned spin-offs such as the television documentaries Dossier Chatô and Five Days That Shook Brazil (covering Chateaubriand and the suicide of Getúlio Vargas, respectively) and a sitcom titled O Caudilho e o Jagunço, about the relationship between the two men.^[5][6] Zoebra Filmes was subsequently founded in July 1998 in the Jardim Botânico neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro.^[7]

The first draft of the screenplay was written by the filmmaker Carlos Gerbase. After passing through three other writers, the script was translated into English and sent to American Zoetrope. While receptive, the studio indicated a proper assessment required familiarity with the source material. In response, a team from the Instituto Alumni translated Fernando Morais's book within a week at a cost of US$20,000, sending it electronically to Zoetrope. After reviewing the book, the studio enlisted screenwriter Matthew Robbins to develop his own adaptation. Robbins traveled to Rio, studied the biography extensively while staying at the Copacabana Palace, and even visited Chateaubriand's hometown of Umbuzeiro in Paraíba before returning to Los Angeles to write. His version was subsequently adapted into the final shooting script by João Emanuel Carneiro.^[8]

The critic Chico Fireman, writing for UOL, described the film as a "tropical Citizen Kane", calling it hysterical, almost histrionic, and delirious—mirroring the most striking traits of its protagonist, media magnate Assis Chateaubriand. Fireman emphasized the project's ambition, evident from the opening credits, and its "inherent sauciness"—not sexual, but a roguish, street-smart cheekiness that embodies a distinctly Brazilian cunning. He praised the art direction, non-linear editing, and agile narrative structure, which breaks free from the rigid mold of traditional biopics. Regarding the cast, he found Marco Ricca "exceptional" in the title role, balancing the character's explosive temperament without slipping into caricature, and highlighted strong performances from Andréa Beltrão, Paulo Betti, and Gabriel Braga Nunes. In closing, Fireman noted that although production began in 1999, the film remains strikingly relevant in its portrayal of political and media machinery, calling it "a film without a date, yet not dated"—a quality that unexpectedly complements the deliberate anachronism of its storytelling.^[16]