Ash
New Regency and Chiwetel Ejiofor are set to team up again to bring Rusty Young and Thomas McFadden’s nonfiction prison novel to the silver screen.
After producing Ejiofor’s “12 Years a Slave”, New Regency is looking to develop “Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America’s Strangest Jail” as a staring vehicle for the Oscar nominated actor.
The book centres on the true story of, as the title suggests, one of South America’s strangest prisons.
San Pedro prison saw inmates buy cells off real estate agents with corrupt politicians and drug lords living in luxury apartments. Families lived inside the jail with their convicted husbands and fathers and there were shops, restaurants and drug labs.
Ejiofor will play Englishman McFadden who ran tours inside the Bolivian prison following his drug trafficking conviction. Young, an Australia journalist, was backing packing in South America when he heard of the life McFadden led in the prison and bribed his way into sharing a cell with the tour guide. Their novel tells the story of life inside the jail.
Jerry Kalajian will produce.
