Andrea Berloff Writing 'Cocaine Cowboy' for Paramount (Exclusive)

6:44 PM PDT 3/21/2011 by Jay A. Fernandez, Borys Kit

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The real-life story is based on Jon Roberts, who by the late 1970s had become a billion-dollar coke dealer in Miami.

Thos Robinson/Getty Images

World Trade Center scribe Andrea Berloff has been hired by Paramount to write the screenplay for its unofficially titled drug saga Cocaine Cowboy.

The real-life story is based on Jon Roberts, an injured Vietnam vet who by the late 1970s had become a billion-dollar coke dealer in Miami, then government conduit and, eventually, prisoner. Billy Corben made a popular 2006 documentary called Cocaine Cowboys that covered part of Roberts' history.

Generation Kill writer Evan Wright was the original screenwriter on the project, as he was working on a book about Roberts. Crown is publishing Wright's book, American Desperado: My Life -- From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset, co-written with Roberts, in November.

Repped by UTA and Benderspink, Berloff also has the NWA story Straight Outta Compton in development at New Line and the pilot Verona in development at ABC Studios.