Having only hit the shelves last month, Fox and Ridley Scott have wasted no time in snapping up the rights for an adaptation of Don Winslow’s well-received novel, The Cartel.
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Release in June, “The Cartel” tells the intertwining stories of DEA Agent Art Keller and cartel leader Adán Barrera, who are engaged in a decades-old blood feud. The new book focuses on the horrific past 10 years, the alleged collaboration between the Mexican government and organized crime, and fictionalizes El Chapo’s 2001 escape from prison – when he slipped out in a laundry cart (although some believe he was allowed to simply walk free by corrupt prison officials.). Unwilling to live in a world with Barrera in it, Keller goes on a ten-year odyssey to take him down. It’s a follow-up to his 2006 tome The Power Of The Dog.
Keller fights his personal battle against the devastated backdrop of Mexico’s drug war, a conflict of unprecedented scale and viciousness, as cartels vie for power and he comes to the final reckoning with Barrera-and himself-that he always knew must happen. It is the story of the war on drugs and the men-and women-who wage it. Scott’s commitment to directing the film was apparently instrumental in securing the deal, in the face of rival bids from the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way production company.
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Salerno recently wrote Savages, Oliver Stone’s own look at the drug trade, which was also based on a Winslow book.
