Marching Powder film (2012)
Marching Powder, a book by Rusty Young, has got the green light to be released in 2012 as a film by Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B Entertainment, along with Periscope Entertainment and Crescendo Productions.
Don Cheadle (Iron Man 2, Swordfish, Oceans Eleven and Hotel Rwanda) has been earmarked as the imprisoned drug
smuggler Thomas McFadden, as well as being the Producer for the film. Brazilian director Jose Padhila has been attached to write and direct the film.
The plot is based on the book of the same name (read our Marching Powder book review for more info), which follows McFadden’s bizarre incarceration in Bolivia’s “most notorious prison”, San Pedro, where the finest cocaine in Bolivia is produced, cells are a part of the property ladder and tours are available to passing back packers as advertised in the Lonely Planet.
When Thomas is double crossed by a Police official in La Paz just as he is about to pull off a large drug run out of Bolivia he is sent to San Pedro to await a lengthy trial and appeal process. Documenting his brutal first tastes of prison life, to his move up the prison pecking order, Marching Powder is a great insight into a hole different world.
According to the Marching Powder Facebook page neither Thomas McFadden or Rusty Young have creative control over the film. However, they are consultants for the production, so hopefully it will have some of the humour, brutal realism and insight that the book had.
The screenplay for the film is currently being written. More information on the Marching Powder film will be added as it becomes available. Though information has sort of dried up on the production, the hope is that it’s still on for a 2012 release date.
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