Cartels – Page 17 – The Pen Hustle With Brandy Cavalli

Antoine Fuqua to Direct ‘Goodfellas’-Style Cartel Movie ‘Wolf Boys’

While Antoine Fuqua prepares to release The Magnificent Seven, the director is already lining up his next project.

In addition to producing the upcoming Training Day series for CBS, Fuqua has signed on to helm Wolf Boys, a movie based on the real-life story of two American teens who get in over their head with a Mexican cartel.

Variety reports that Fuqua will produce and direct Wolf Boys, based on the book by Dan Slater. The story centers on two teens from the US who are recruited to work as hitmen for a Mexican cartel, and the Mexican-American detective who pursues them as he realizes that the War on Drugs is futile — that last bit sounds a little similar to themes explored in Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario, but with the recent re-capture of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and our collective ongoing struggle with the seeming hopelessness of the drug war, cartel stories are drawing more attention.

This isn’t the only new cartel-centric film in the works. Ridley Scott is also set to direct his own drug war movie — The Cartel, based on the book by Don Winslow — while Fuqua’s project has been described as similar to Goodfellas.

Fuqua is set to release The Magnificent Seven, starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt, on September 23. He is also producing and will direct the pilot for CBS’ Training Day TV series.

Actor Sean Penn Regrets El Chapo Interview

A picture of Sean Penn and “El Chapo” displayed on Rolling Stone’s website after the magazine published an interview by the actor after the drug lord’s arrest.

“Let me be clear. My article has failed.” -Sean Penn

Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn on Friday rejected Mexico’s claim that his secret meeting with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was crucial to the drug kingpin’s recapture, saying officials were trying to put him in the crosshairs of the feared cartel.

Penn also told talk show host Charlie Rose that he regrets the fallout from the Rolling Stone article based on his interview with Guzman.

Their meeting in a jungle hideout was the first interview anyone scored with the fugitive drug lord, and Penn said he had hoped it would spur a broader discussion on the drug war.

In Penn’s first major television interview about the meeting, Rose asked the actor whether he believed Mexico President Enrique Pena Nieto’s government had deliberately sought to credit him with Guzman’s capture to put him at risk from the Sinaloa Cartel.

“Yes. There is this myth about the visit that we made, my colleagues and I with El Chapo, that it was… ‘essential’ to his capture. We know the Mexican government, they clearly were humiliated by the notion that someone found him before they did.”

Read more about Sean Penn’s controversial meeting that may have taken down Mexico’s most powerful cartel boss on Fortune.