Singer and actress Jennifer Lopez was confirmed in the cast of the Chilean miner film The 33. She is joining  Hollywood star Antonio Banderas. The recording is set to begin in the second half of 2013.

The drama is based on the true story of survival of the 33 Chilean miners who were rescued in 2010 after being trapped for 69 days in the San José mine, northern Chile. Their bailout was fallowed live by more than one billion people.

The script of The 33 was written in collaboration with miners and includes unknown data.

It will be Lopez's first big screen role since starring in the action-thriller Parker, the Hollywood Reporter said Monday. She has expressed concern about addressing the issue of global tragedies in a respectful film.

The drama will be produced by Mike Medavoy (The Black Swan) and Mexican director Patricia Riggen, who directed La Misma Luna, is set to direct. Martin Sheen and Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro have also joined the film. Santoro will play Florencio, the first miner to surface. The production of The 33 is set to begin this fall in Chile.

So far there has been no details on who J.Lo will be playing, but we know Banderas landed the role as Mario Sepulveda, the charismatic miner who was nicknamed "Super Mario" during the incident in 2010. Sheen will play a miner's father and Santoro is playing another trapped miner. The film was presented to foreign buyers at last month's Cannes Film Festival.

Back in 2011, Medavoy nabbed the rights to tell the story of the 33 miners that were trapped half mile beneath the Earth's surface. Chilean entrepeneurs Carlos Eugenio Lavín and Leopolfo Enriquez will executive produce.

Scripted by Mikko Alanne and José Rivera, the drama focuses on the events that took place in the San José mine in the Atacama Desert, where the 33 workers spent 70 days some 700 meters underground before their rescue in October 2010.  

The script was written in collaboration with the miners themselves and includes details never before made public about their first 17 days below ground, before they managed to contact the surface.

The 33 will be shot entirely in Chile, although it will be a production in English.

Simultaneously with the filming, journalist and author Héctor Tobar is currently writing the official book about the miner's story.