LOS ANGELES, June 30 — The American actor and producer is planning to team up again with director Peter Berg (“Lone Survivor”) for this thriller about Miami drug-trafficking in the 1970s and ‘80s, reports Deadline.com.

“American Desperado” will be scripted by William Monahan, the Oscar-winning writer of “The Departed.” Mark Wahlberg plays a small-time hoodlum from the Italian-American New York mafia who rises in the ranks to become a kingpin smuggler for the Medellin Cartel, bringing drugs from Colombia to Florida.

The film draws on bloodhound journalist Evan Wright’s eponymous book, published in 2011, relating three years of jaw-dropping interviews with super-criminal Jon Roberts, who grew up in the mafia.

Peter Berg and Wahlberg had for a long time been looking to dramatize this episode in the history of US crime based on Billy Corben’s 2006 documentary “Cocaine Cowboys” (also about Jon Roberts).

“American Desperado” is set to start shooting in early 2014. At the same time, Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg will be presenting the fruit of their first collaborative effort, “Lone Survivor,” a military drama about living hell in Afghanistan. – AFP-Relaxnews