Hot Cheeto’s Fan? Your Favorite Snack Is Heading to the Big Screen

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There’s a lot more to the fiery red, spicy chips that we thought.

We’ve seen movies about emojis and fruit ninjas.  Now it’s time for a spicy, delicious snack to get a big break.  Yes, we are talking about your favorite snack Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. According to Variety, Fox Searchlight is planning to create a delicious new movie “Flamin’ Hot.”

Oh, wait, are you imagining the animated chili powder-covered Cheetos cavort or Chester Cheetah jumping around and dancing?

Well, it is not going to have anything like that. Instead, it is a serious biopic about Robert Montañez, the janitor who invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and then persuaded Frito-Lay to make them. If you don’t know the finger-dust history of Cheetos, here’s the short of it.

The journey of Montanez

Richard Montanez started out as a janitor in 1976 at Frito-Lay plant of Rancho Cucamonga, California. But everything changed when he felt that Cheetos needed an extra kick. Call it fortune or a passion, but for Montanez, it all started while witnessing another guy eating a cup of corn.

He saw a man adding butter, cheese, and chile to his corn. This was when he thought what if I add chile to a Cheeto? But he was unaware that this single idea is going to make him a legend. An idea that he got from elote, a classic Mexican grilled-corn dish dressed in Chile changed the snack game forever.

He tried the recipe in his family’s kitchen and let friends and co-workers try it. Later, he was able to take the idea to the president of the company.

The difficult part was still in the shell.

It is not easy for a janitor with zero-to-no English skills to turn an idea into a Flamin’ Hot product. He had two weeks to prepare a presentation, so he rushed to the library to get to know about marketing strategies and created a mock design for the bag.

The president loved the idea, and the Flaming hot Cheetos, Frito-Lay’s top-selling snack was born.

This billion-dollar idea propelled Montanez to move up in the corporate ladder. Today he leads Multicultural Sales & Community Promotions across PepsiCo’s North American divisions. It is still unbelievable for him that how his out-of-the-box idea opened a huge door for his success. His statement “Many times, greatness will come in ridiculous forms, a ridiculous idea might be a billion dollar idea” is certainly true.

This is how a janitor became the “godfather of Hispanic branding.”

This inspiring story behind the hot snack is being turned into a serious feature-length film

Well, the story sounds almost as good as spicy, flavorful Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Fox Searchlight is soon to produce a movie titled “Flamin’ Hot” based on this story according to Variety.  “October Sky” writer Lewis Colick is going to write the screenplay, and the film will be produced by DeVon Franklin under his Franklin Entertainment banner.

No clue who will sign on to star but hopefully, the well-known Flamin’ Hot Cheetos fanboy, Oscar Isaac, gets a chance to sneak in for a cameo.

Although the name is causing plenty of eye rolls, we will love to watch this true, inspiring story of the billion-dollar snack.