Variety is reporting that Mark Wahlberg is set to star in the untitled film based on the life of international drug dealer Jon Roberts, whose rise and fall was chronicled in the documentary “Cocaine Cowboys” with Peter Berg (The Kingdom) set to direct.
The script has not been written yet, so this is a film that will have to wait for the strike to end to get underway, but the story centers around a decorated Vietnam soldier returning home from war. Roberts headed to Miami in the late ’70s and formed a relationship with the Medellin drug cartel, distributing cocaine worth billions of dollars. Roberts was turned in by a cohort and served a decade in jail for his crimes.
We are going to be seeing a lot of Wahlberg in the near future as he stars in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening later this year, Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones due out next year, and will begin filming The Fighter with Brad Pitt for Darren Aronofsky once he completes his work on Bones. Oh, he is also said to be up for the title role in the videogame adaptation Max Payne for director John Moore.
It looks to me like his Oscar nominated turn in The Departed has done the old boy well. Good on yah Mark.
