Antonio Banderas will star in an upcoming movie as one of the 33 Chilean miners trapped deep underground for more than two months in 2010, reports the Washington Post.

Mike Medavoy, producer of "The 33," announced on Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival that Banderas will play Mario Sepulveda, who became known as "Super Mario" and was the public face of the miners.

The film will dramatize the cave-in at a mine in Chile's Atacama desert and the globally televised rescue of the miners that mesmerized millions worldwide.

Sepulveda told the Associated Press on Monday that he's thrilled because he's a fan of the Spanish actor and that he hopes the movie will remind people how life is the most valuable gift.

"I'm very excited and full of anxiety. All of my mates are looking forward to this big production," Sepulveda told AP. "Banderas is very charismatic. I like him a lot and I think this movie is going to make him even more famous than he already is."

"There are people who don't realize the value of what they have next to them. And after those 69 days we know that there's nothing as important as being alive, being healthy and enjoying the people you love while you're alive," he said.

The miners said it felt like an earthquake when the shaft caved in above them on Aug. 5, 2010, filling the lower corridors of the copper and gold mine with suffocating dust. Hours passed before they could even begin to see a few steps in front of them. Above them tons of rock shifted constantly, threatening to bury them forever, according to AP.

People on the surface didn't know for more than two weeks that the men had survived the collapse. The small emergency shaft allowed food and water to be lowered to the miners while rescuers drilled a bigger escape hole. Finally, in the early hours of Oct. 13, the miners were hauled up one-by-one in a cage through 2,000 feet of rock.

Back on the surface they were received as heroes. They got paid trips to the Greek Islands, visited the Real Madrid stadium in Spain and paraded at Magic Kingdom in Disney World.

But the fantasy began to crumble on their return home.

Many ran out of money and had to scratch out a living in the dusty working-class neighborhoods and shantytowns of the desert city of Copiapo, reports the Washington Post.

"I'm thankful for things in life," said Sepulveda, an electrician who earns a living giving motivational speeches. "Some are good, others bad, but God gave us another chance ... The door that was opened for us is huge."