Murder. Betrayal. Guns.
Amazon Studios has greenlit the story of an Internet mastermind who flummoxed even the vaunted FBI.
From the trades:
Amazon Studios has put in development Mastermind, a crime drama series based on Evan Ratliff’s critically praised book The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal., with the Russo brothers’ AGBO Films, Noah Hawley’s 26 Keys and Skybound Entertainment producing. Writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns (1917) is set to pen the adaptation.
A Blow Redux?
We’ve seen this plot before in films ranging from Blow to Goodfellas, but the twist here is that the entire MacGuffin revolves around the Internet.
From the trades:
Mastermind is the true-life story of Paul Le Roux, an unassuming former programmer who built a sophisticated globe-spanning criminal empire— the sheer volume and diversity of which authorities had never before encountered— until he was taken down by his own lieutenant and the DEA and became one of the biggest criminal informants in DEA and FBI history. The show follows Le Roux’s lieutenants as they compete for his power and affection, institute wild criminal schemes, and examine the nature of good and evil for each other in the process.
What Are We To Make Of This?
This will have legs on Amazon, where it will probably attract the number of minimum viewers possible for a show and become a niche hit.
And with a writer as talented as Krysty Wilson-Cairns this can’t miss.
