Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B Entertainment and Disney are collaborating in a film project about Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, also known as Dr. Q, the director of the Brain Tumor Surgery Program at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.
Project development began in 2007 after the producers heard about Dr. Q through a radio broadcast.
Born in Mexico, Quiñones-Hinojosa entered the U.S. in 1987 at 19. To pay for his education at San Joaquin Delta College, he sought work opportunities painting, welding and picking cotton.
He went on to earn his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and later completed his training in general surgery and neurosurgery at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2005, he started practicing at Hopkins.
In 2011, he published an autobiography, Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon, which received the International Latino Book Award in 2012.
He was the commencement speaker at Hopkins in 2013.
