It was born as a spin-off from his upcoming film, Los Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces), a four-way love story shot in film-noir style starring his Oscar-winning muse, Penelope Cruz as both a blonde and a brunette. The auteur from La Mancha said he was so impressed by the “extraordinary talent” of an actress who played a minor character in the film that he wrote the cannibal script for her “on a creative whim”.