*Chiwetel Ejiofor has been tapped to star in the film adaptation of the nonfiction Rusty Young and Thomas McFadden book “Marching Powder.”
Deadline.com reports the page-turner was acquired by New Regency as a star vehicle for the Oscar nominee. The feature will be based on the book “Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America’s Strangest Jail.”
Ejiofor will play McFadden, a convicted English drug trafficker who ran tours inside Bolivia’s notorious San Pedro prison.
After hearing about McFadden while backpacking in South America, Young, an Australian journalist, bribed the guards to allow him to live in the prison and share a cell with McFadden. Deadline notes that the two went on to chronicle one of the strangest and most compelling prison stories of all time. According to McFadden and Young, the inmates ran San Pedro prison. Prisoners were expected to buy their cells from real estate agents, the pair mentioned, adding that shops and restaurants were present as well as hundreds of women and children, who live with imprisoned family members. In addition, Young and McFadden also revealed that corrupt politicians and drug lords lived in luxury apartments. As kids ran around during the day, some of Bolivia’s busiest cocaine laboratories percolated at night, stated the authors.
As moviegoers await for the “Marching Powder” film to hit the big screen, Ejiofor, can be next seen in the John Hillcoat-directed action thriller “Triple Nine.”
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