Editorial Staff
Universal Pictures have acquired the spec script “Mena” – which they’ve paid a sumly $1 million to have taken off the market – for Ron Howard (“Rush”) to direct.
Deadline says the flick, based on a script by Gary Spinelli, will tell of “Barry Seal, a portly pilot who, in the 1980s, was a 300-pound gun runner, and drug trafficker who transported contraband for the CIA and the Medellin cartel. He was eventually shot to death by the latter in Baton Rouge. The title refers to Mena, Arkansas, where a lot of the illegal activity took place, under the noses of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.”
Howard’s last flick, also based on a true story, was “Rush” about the rivalry between race-car drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda.
