Arenas has had a long-standing relationship with Disney, working on 10 pictures a year, many of them family films. Disney, like all major studios, has come to recognize the moviegoing habits of Hispanic audiences and fully integrates them into their marketing efforts. On some films, Hispanics represent as much as 40 percent of the moviegoing public, industry sources say.

It was Arenas, sources say, that reached out to Los Angeles' Latin Business Association, whose chairman, Rick Sarmiento, came away so impressed after seeing ''Apocalypto'' that he persuaded his board to confer the Chairman's Visionary Award on ''Apocalypto'' filmmaker Mel Gibson at the group's Latino Global Business Conference and Digital Expo at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. Gibson appeared at the Nov. 2 luncheon to accept the award and, after a Q&A session with Sarmiento before the luncheon crowd, screened about 10 minutes of his film to resounding applause.

Don Martinez, a founder and board member of the LBA and a senior marketing partner at the Domar Group, an executive-search company focusing on bilingual and multicultural hiring, was among those in the audience who came away impressed and believing that the Hispanic community would embrace it.

''Just looking at brief parts of the film, I will tell you, it gave me goose bumps,'' he said. As for Gibson's anti-Semitic tirade, he added: ''I look at it this way. He's a human being just like you and me. Regardless of what happened, we need to move on. … People do make mistakes. He screwed up. So what? Move on. This is an opportunity to move forward.''

Jorge Corralejo, a fellow LBA board member, has not seen the film but noted that despite Gibson's efforts most in the Hispanic community are unaware of it.

''I can't tell you anybody who knows anything about it,'' he said. ''It's going to be a tough sell. It takes money to spread the word.''