Mark Wahlberg is set to star in Paramount Pictures AMERICAN DESPERADO. The film is an adaptation of a famous novel by Jon Roberts and Evan Wright titled “American Desperado: My Life–From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset.” The script was adapted by screenwriter William Monahan who won an Academy Award for his impressive work on the DEPARTED, which incidentally starred Wahlberg. The film will be directed by Peter Berg whose last film was the laughable BATTLESHIP and the upcoming LONE SURVIVOR, which incidentally also stars Wahlberg. This could be an interesting project, but the people involved have a longer track record for making fun films over quality. Nonetheless, the story seems pretty interesting. (Deadline)
Here is the official Amazon synopsis of the novel: In 2008 veteran journalist Evan Wright, acclaimed for his New York Times bestselling book Generation Kill and co-writer of the Emmy-winning HBO series it spawned, began a series of conversations with super-criminal Jon Roberts, star of the fabulously successful documentary Cocaine Cowboys. Those conversations would last three years, during which time Wright came to realize that Roberts was much more than the de-facto “transportation chief” of the Medellin Cartel during the 1980s, much more than a facilitator of a national drug epidemic. As Wright’s tape recorder whirred and Roberts unburdened himself of hundreds of jaw-dropping tales, it became clear that perhaps no one in history had broken so many laws with such willful abandon.
Roberts, in fact, seemed to be a prodigy of criminality – but one with a remarkable self-awareness and a fierce desire to protect his son from following the same path.
American Desperado is Roberts’ no-holds-barred account of being born into Mafia royalty, witnessing his first murder at the age of seven, becoming a hunter-assassin in Vietnam, returning to New York to become — at age 22 — one of the city’s leading nightclub impresarios, then journeying to Miami where in a few short years he would rise to become the Medellin Cartel’s most effective smuggler.
