Stephen Gaghan developing Drug Smuggling and Human Trafficking projects

Stephen Gaghan has smuggling on the brain for his next two projects. Deadline is reporting that the Syriana director is setting up a film about smuggling cocaine from Mexico, and one about smuggling human cargo from China. Gaghan has set up the untitled Cartel Project at Warner Bros., and the indie drama based on the book The Snakehead: An Epic Tale Of The Chinatown Underworld And The American Dream at Flashlight Pictures.

New Yorker writer Patrick Keefe wrote The Snakehead, and he is also set to write the script for the Cartel project at Warner Bros. The Cartel project will be produced by Gaghan’s Unsupervised Shingle along with Kevin McCormack’s Langley Park. The story will be partly based on Richard Marosi’s four-part series published in the LA Times this summer, about how "an extensive DEA wiretap operation cracked a variety of smuggling rings transporting tons of cocaine from Sinaloa, Mexico, into Los Angeles and then across the country. Those methods included loading cocaine into everything from cars with elaborate hidden compartments to small airplanes and tractor trailers covered by pallets of frozen chicken. The wiretaps elicited highly personal information on smugglers, including one who would not make a move without the advice of a psychic."

Gaghan plans to direct this project first. This marks the second project that McCormick has being made into a feature film. Ruben Fleischer's Gangster Squad with Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin and Emma Stone, is also based on articles he wrote. The project is reportedly planned as "The Departed meets an updated Traffic." Gaghan has a strong handle on this subject having penned Steven Soderbergh's Traffic. 

Snakehead will reportedly focus on "Sister Ping, a grandmother who operated a small noodle shop on Hester Street, spearheaded a multimillion-dollar operation in which she smuggled illegal immigrants from China. They would disappear in the underground Chinatown economy, working endless hours to pay off $18,000 transport fees for a piece of the American dream. Sister Ping made over $100 million in the 1980s and was a Don Corleone in the closed community of Chinatown, until authorities became wise to her empire in 1993 when a ship loaded with 300 undocumented immigrants ran aground off a beach in Queens. An FBI task force known as the “Jade Squad” spent the next decade untangling the network and chasing its elusive leader, who got a 35-year prison sentence." Nic Pizzolatto, who wrote the novel Galveston and two episodes of AMC’s The Killing, is penning the script for Gaghan. The project is being produced by Gaghan and Richard Brown. 

Gaghan wants Sister Ping and her relationship with young Chinatown gangsters to be the primary focus on the film. The gangsters wanted in when they realized how lucrative her smuggling business was. According to Deadling, "Gaghan doesn’t look at Sister Ping as a villain, noting that the grandchildren of some of those illegal immigrants realized their parents’ dreams and became doctors. There are statues of her in China." Here is what Gaghan had to say about the project:

“The story is relevant today. Humans are tribal but we migrate, and the forces driving that are hunger and opportunity, and now many of us are the ones migrating for jobs.”

These both sound like great stories that I would be interested in seeing. I enjoyed Syriana and loved Traffick. I think Gaghan has the ability to take people that are usually viewed as villains and only for the things they do bad and flip them over to take a look at their other sides. What are your thoughts on these two projects?