Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The project, from Jonah Greenberg’s Salty Pictures, is at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) in Taipei. The 10-episode series, with 45-minute episodes, opens in New York in 1986.
While the DEA has its sights set on Colombian cocaine cartels and the city’s “Five Families” of the Mafia, a scrappy crew of Asian-American agents teams up with a hard-charging Irish prosecutor nicknamed “The Dragon Lady.” Together they form DEA Group 41, which becomes the first squad to chase the No. 4 heroin pouring into the U.S. through a network few had noticed. Over the next decade, the underfunded unit grows into an elite international task force. Its targets include Johnny Kon, a Hong Kong boss whose billion-dollar triad spans five continents; Johnny “Onionhead” Eng, a brutal Chinatown gangster; and Khun Sa, a warlord in the Golden Triangle with a 20,000-strong narco-army.
The show explores immigration, prejudice and what the American Dream costs, with stories from both sides of the law. Greenberg, a former managing director of CAA’s China office whose producing credits include Zhang Yimou’s “Shadow,” wrote the source book with Marc Iserlis and Aidan Swift, who are also producers and writers on the series. Greenberg says shows about present-day law enforcement can be great, but surveillance technology now gives cops the upper hand.
And all the bad guys carry guns, and the danger to cops and informants is real,” Greenberg says. The crimes, and the agents who solved them, were largely overlooked at the time, he adds. People were busy watching ‘Miami Vice’ (myself chief among them!) and watching Rudy Giuliani convict the Italian mobsters,” Greenberg says.
Neither the media nor even the DEA made Asian cases a priority, according to Greenberg. It’s literally the war on drugs we actually won but which no one knows about.” He also sees room for several seasons across the 10-year saga, with Khun Sa looming over the whole show as a Colonel Kurtz-like final target, giving the series what Greenberg calls a “save the best for last” advantage. The source material, a 180-page nonfiction book titled “The Incredible Story of D.E.A.
Group 41 & The Rise and Fall of the Asian Heroin Trade,” will be published next year. Greenberg says the team has the trust and cooperation of the real people involved. Taiwan’s Each Other Films, co-founded by co-producer Tiffany Yu-chia Chen, is on board as co-production partner, and former CAA TV co-head Adam Berkowitz of Lenore Entertainment Group serves as executive producer.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
