So, you might not remember this, but a few years ago, David O. Russell and Mark Wahlberg were looking to make a feature adaptation of the critically acclaimed documentary "Cocaine Cowboys." The 2006 film centered on the notorious '70s drug dealer Jon Roberts who moved from New York, where he was involved in gangland takeovers of the city's nightclubs, to Miami, where he was set up with a powerful drug cartel. And it seemed like the Russell/Wahlberg project was really coming along. "We’ve the rights of those guys, Jon Roberts and Mickey Munday, and set it at Paramount as well. Evan Wright did a pass on the script and will have somebody else doing another," Walhberg said at the time. But the filmmaker and actor fell out, with both moving on to other separate things, but it seems Wahlberg really wants to make the movie about this story.
- 6/27/2013
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
Exclusive: Paramount has set Oscar-winning The Departed scribe William Monahan to rewrite American Desperado, the film that is being shaped as a star vehicle for Mark Wahlberg. The film, based on the book American Desperado: My Life As A Cocaine Cowboy, focuses on the criminal exploits of Jon Roberts, who made a fortune smuggling cocaine into the U.S. for the Medellin Cartel. Roberts wrote the book with Generation Kill author Evan Wright, the latter of whom wrote the most recent draft of the script. Monahan will go back to the book for his script. Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson are producing with Film 44′s Peter Berg and Sarah Aubrey. Leverage’s Michael Garnett has been overseeing the project. The exploits of Roberts and Mickey Munday were first chronicled in the 2006 Billy Corben documentary Cocaine Cowboys, which is in the process of being developed at HBO as a series that...
- 12/13/2012
- by MIKE FLEMING JR.
- Deadline
With "Cocaine Cowboys," filmmaker Billy Corben simultaneously told the story of the South Florida drug trade of the 1970s and replicated some of the scene's live-wire energy with twitchy editing and frenetic pacing. He didn't just tell you what '70s Miami was like; he gave you a tate of what it felt like too. Corben's new film, "Square Grouper: The Godfathers of Ganja," takes a similar approach to South Florida's pot smuggling trade of the same period. But in this case, Corben may have replicated his subject's pharmaceutical effects a little too well. I've heard of movies for potheads; "Square Grouper" is movie as pothead: mellow, genial, and a little sleepy.
"Cowboys" weaved a massive tapestry of crime and vice across two continents, but "Square Grouper" is a small-scale anthology, three different stories of high times in the Florida lowlands. In the first and best segment, the Ethiopian Zion...
"Cowboys" weaved a massive tapestry of crime and vice across two continents, but "Square Grouper" is a small-scale anthology, three different stories of high times in the Florida lowlands. In the first and best segment, the Ethiopian Zion...
- 3/19/2011
- by Matt Singer
- ifc.com
A Best Director nomination, to no one’s surprise, gets you a lot of offers. David O. Russell is experiencing this right now, with Uncharted, Two Guns, Old St. Louis and, as we’re just learning now, Cocaine Cowboys being in his sights. Focusing on that last one, the director recently talked to ThePlaylist, and revealed that he’s considering (among many other things) a narrative version of Billy Corben’s documentary of the same name which was released in 2006.
In what shouldn’t come as a big surprise, Mark Wahlberg is the rumored lead for the potential film; this should be expected, as he was in O. Russell’s films Three Kings, Huckabees, The Fighter, and is planned to be his lead in Uncharted. He spoke with Sgt.Film last fall, and was quoted as saying about the project:
“We’ve the rights of those guys, Jon Roberts and Mickey Munday,...
In what shouldn’t come as a big surprise, Mark Wahlberg is the rumored lead for the potential film; this should be expected, as he was in O. Russell’s films Three Kings, Huckabees, The Fighter, and is planned to be his lead in Uncharted. He spoke with Sgt.Film last fall, and was quoted as saying about the project:
“We’ve the rights of those guys, Jon Roberts and Mickey Munday,...
- 2/22/2011
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
- For those of you who have been enjoying HBO’s enthralling Iraq War miniseries Generation Kill, this will be welcome news. Evan Wright, who penned the book on which the series is based, has been brought on to adapt Billy Corben’s 2006 doc Cocaine Cowboys for Paramount. If you missed it (get on that by the way), the film is a high-energy exposé into the inner workings of the Columbian drug trade that hit Miami like a tidal wave in the ‘80s. Told primarily through the eyes of major player Jon Roberts, an ex Vietnam vet turned mob gangster, who not only slung a mountain of rock for the infamous Medellin drug cartel but also acted as middle man for America’s arms dealings with the Contras. Stories of the era inspired both Scarface and Miami Vice for better and for worse (respectively). The doc drew major plaudits from
- 7/24/2008
- IONCINEMA.com
Gonzo journalist-screenwriter Evan Wright has moved from American cowboys on the Iraqi frontier to the cocaine cowboys of 1970s Miami.
Wright, who wrote the nonfiction book on which the HBO miniseries "Generation Kill" is based, has closed a deal to write the feature "Cocaine Cowboys" for Paramount. The deal grew out of his work on a parallel book that Crown will publish next year.
Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg have been attached to star in and direct, respectively, the story of Jon Roberts, an injured Vietnam vet by age 20 who ended up involved in gangland takeovers of New York City nightclubs in the early '70s (his uncle was the consigliere to Carlo Gambino). By the end of the decade, Roberts landed in Miami, dealt billions of dollars worth of coke for the Medellin drug cartel and ultimately spent 10 years in prison.
Billy Corben's popular documentary of the same name, released by Magnolia in 2006, covered a slice of Roberts' history.
"It's really an exciting story about the secret history of America," Wright said. "It's also a story that outwardly seems familiar, but the more you get into it, it's never really been told this way. It's about a guy who was a cocaine smuggler in a mafia -- we kind of know those stories -- but he also worked closely with the government to smuggle arms for the Contras."
Berg and Film 44 cohort Sarah Aubrey are producing with Wahlberg and "Entourage" executive producer Stephen Levinson.
Wright had already been meeting with Roberts, who's now in his late 50s, and his partner Mickey Munday in Florida since February, but he only recently decided to pitch the producers on his "burning desire" to adapt his in-the-works book into a film.
Wright, repped by Endeavor and attorney Alex Kohner, was a Rolling Stone reporter embedded with the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion Marines for two months during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He went on to co-write the HBO miniseries airing this month, and he's adapting his March 2007 Vanity Fair article, "Pat Dollard's War on Hollywood," for Fox and Scott Free Prods.
Wright, who wrote the nonfiction book on which the HBO miniseries "Generation Kill" is based, has closed a deal to write the feature "Cocaine Cowboys" for Paramount. The deal grew out of his work on a parallel book that Crown will publish next year.
Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg have been attached to star in and direct, respectively, the story of Jon Roberts, an injured Vietnam vet by age 20 who ended up involved in gangland takeovers of New York City nightclubs in the early '70s (his uncle was the consigliere to Carlo Gambino). By the end of the decade, Roberts landed in Miami, dealt billions of dollars worth of coke for the Medellin drug cartel and ultimately spent 10 years in prison.
Billy Corben's popular documentary of the same name, released by Magnolia in 2006, covered a slice of Roberts' history.
"It's really an exciting story about the secret history of America," Wright said. "It's also a story that outwardly seems familiar, but the more you get into it, it's never really been told this way. It's about a guy who was a cocaine smuggler in a mafia -- we kind of know those stories -- but he also worked closely with the government to smuggle arms for the Contras."
Berg and Film 44 cohort Sarah Aubrey are producing with Wahlberg and "Entourage" executive producer Stephen Levinson.
Wright had already been meeting with Roberts, who's now in his late 50s, and his partner Mickey Munday in Florida since February, but he only recently decided to pitch the producers on his "burning desire" to adapt his in-the-works book into a film.
Wright, repped by Endeavor and attorney Alex Kohner, was a Rolling Stone reporter embedded with the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion Marines for two months during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He went on to co-write the HBO miniseries airing this month, and he's adapting his March 2007 Vanity Fair article, "Pat Dollard's War on Hollywood," for Fox and Scott Free Prods.
- 7/24/2008
- by By Jay A. Fernandez and Borys Kit
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
- July 11, 1979. 2:28 p.m. Two Columbian men enter Crown Liquors at Miamiâ.s Dadeland Mall and hose the place down with automatic weapon fire before fleeing on foot, leaving the interior of the store covered in broken glass, spilled booze, empty shell casings, and blood from the two bullet ridden bodies of former players in Miamiâ.s billion dollar cocaine industry. And thus begins Cocaine Cowboys, director Billy Corbenâ.s flashy, audacious, violent, and highly entertaining documentary about the international cocaine business that bloomed from Miami, Florida in the 1970s and 80s. Munday The film is a collage of imagery â. money, cars, speedboats, planes, bikinis, women, beaches, skyscrapers, guns, blood, and mountains and mountains of cocaine â. cut together and projected at a hundred miles and hour. There are clips from news broadcasts, crime scene photos, excerpts and behind-the-scenes footage from film and televisions shows (â.Miami Viceâ
- 10/27/2006
- IONCINEMA.com
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