John Stockwell is set to adapt and direct Kid Cannabis for HBO Films. The story is based on the real-life story of young Idaho suburbanites who built a multimillion-dollar marijuana ring. The script is being developed from several articles on the incident including the 2005 Rolling Stone piece “Kid Cannabis: How a Chubby Pizza-Delivery Boy from Idaho Became a Drug Kingpin” by contributing editor Mark Binelli.
Binelli’s article focused on Nate Norman, a 19-year-old from Coeur D’Alene who ran the operation with six friends. By the time they got arrested, they had sold $38 million worth of marijuana smuggled from British Columbia.
Stockwell told Variety, “I had been looking to do something in this realm that didn’t involve minorities or urban drug dealers. These were all white, suburban kids with no criminal records. Nate Norman had been a pizza-delivery boy. Another worked at an amusement park… They managed to transform themselves from minimum-wage workers to drug lords.”
Stockwell said he has just returned from visiting Norman in federal prison, where the latter is serving a 12-year sentence.
HBO Films is expected to give the film to sister company Picturehouse to distribute, but nothing is official on that front as of yet.
If you couldn’t figure it out from the link above you can read the Rolling Stone article here.
