With the success of drug cartel TV series like Narcos: Mexico, Queen of the South and Better Call Saul, the interest from audiences about the seedy, underground world of kingpins and criminals isn’t going to waver anytime soon.
It’s the same on the documentary film front where real-life stories are, in many instances, more incredible than anything Hollywood can make up.
Such seems to be the case for the true story of Peter McAleese, the Scottish mercenary who was hired by a Colombian drug cartel to assassinate Pablo Escobar, founder of the Medellín drug cartel. According to Variety, Two Rivers Media has secured the rights to McAleese’s narrative and will make a feature documentary called Killing Escobar on the ex-operative and his 1989 mission to kill the narcoterrorist.
Mick McAvoy, head of factual at Two Rivers Media, says the film will feature interviews with McAleese and his team, Escobar’s former bodyguard and DEA officers Javier Peña and Steve Murphy, who are portrayed in the Netflix series Narcos by Pedro Pascal (TV’s The Mandalorian) and Boyd Holbrook (We Can Be Heroes). The film will also include never-before-seen archive footage that Killing Escobar director David Whitney said is a “goldmine.”
“We pride ourselves on bringing remarkable stories, told by the people who were at the center of the action, to the screen,” McAvoy told Variety. “This film tells the unlikely tale of how a man from the East End of Glasgow was asked to bring together a team of ex-special forces operatives to travel to the very heart of the criminal empire of the world’s most dangerous man in order to assassinate him.”