Mischa Glenny's McMafia To Be Moviefied

By Brendon ConnellyApril 14, 2009 10:07 am EST

Mischa Glenny's nonfiction account of globalised crime, McMafia, has been optioned by Working Title. It seems likely that the film will take on a format not unlike Traffic, Fast Food Nation or perhaps Syriana, this time rooted in organized crime. Maybe we'll end up with something like Gomorrah, but on a broader scale.

The book's central thesis is that the Soviet bloc was a breeding ground for the individuals and requisite abilities that have given rise, since the fall of the Iron Curtain, to an international network of crime organizations. He makes some amazing claims in the book, which seem like the basis for a truly epic crime drama.

Glenny's narrative, and therefore likely that of the fictionalized film, begins with the murder of a stockbroker in England. Though it initially seems inexplicable, tracing the threads that lead to this crime uncovers a worldwide tapestry that includes Ukrainian gun runners, Saudi Arabian money launderers, Canadian drug dealers, Brazilian hackers, Japanese racketeers and the big, bad Bulgarianpower players, decked in bling and twisted so far off of any moral axis I can understand that they simply terrify me.

Let's take some of Glenny's amazing research on face value for a moment. The world is a scary place. Included in the book are claims that:

80% of Western Europe's heroin supply has filtered through the corrupt Bulgarian DS police force.

Boris Yeltsin's economic reforms led to a gross reattribution of wealth, with a small percentage of the richest Russians took control of oil, diamonds, gas, precious and economical crucial metals. This, says Glenny, constituted "the grandest larceny in history and stands no historical comparison.

Glenny identifies the wars on drugs and terror as paradoxical. "The legalization of drugs would administer by far the deadliest blow possible against transnational organized criminal networks."

I'm hopeful that Working Title will put a great team on this one – Billy Ray and/or Tony Gilroy to script, Ray or Gilroy to direct? Sounds incredible to me.

Source: THR