Casting Call: The Cartel

In which we suggest who should star in the next big adaptation, remake, or historical film.

According to Deadline, Fox has just purchased the film rights to Don Winslow’s latest novel The Cartel for a cool seven figures (the specific amount is somewhere around six million for both The Cartel and its predecessor The Power of the Dog). Ridley Scott is already set to direct, Don Winslow and his screenwriting partner Shane Salerno are writing the script, and names like Leonardo DiCaprio are being thrown around for the leading role.

Together, The Power of the Dog and The Cartel span 40 years of the war on drugs. The books are set largely in Mexico, and focus on DEA Agent Arturo “Art” Keller and his friend-turned-nemesis, drug kingpin Adán Barrera, with a very long list of fleshed-out supporting characters. It’s going to be difficult to squeeze everything into one film—and details are still scarce—but we imagine the easiest solution would be to focus on The Cartel with flashback scenes to Dog.

Before the casting gets finalized, we have a few actors we’d like to put forward. Leonardo DiCaprio is not one of them. 

Casting Call runs every Friday. For more, click here.