EXCLUSIVE: Prime Video will premiere the three-part docuseries Cocaine Quarterback: Signal-Caller for the Cartel on Sept. 25.
The docuseries from Mark Wahlberg‘s Unrealistic Ideas follows the rise and fall of Redondo Beach native Owen Hanson, who went from being a walk-on for the National Championship-winning USC football team to global cocaine kingpin. Deadline first told you about the project.
Cocaine Quarterback: Signal-Caller for the Cartel follows Hanson from modest beginnings, to unexpectedly walking on to the powerhouse USC football team, to illegal sports bookmaking, and eventually smuggling cocaine. After graduation, with his superstar friends making millions in the NFL, the lure of fast money soon becomes too much to resist, as Hanson parlayed his small-time criminality into a risky alliance with a powerful Mexican drug lord, intertwining his quest for wealth with the deadly world of organized crime. When his harebrained money laundering scheme loses millions of the cartel’s cash, Owen is caught in a web of dangerous debt, absurd criminal mishap, and a huge FBI takedown.
Hanson was arrested in September 2015 and sentenced in late 2017 to more than 21 years in federal prison. He was ordered to pay a $5M criminal forfeiture, which included $100K in gold coins, luxury vehicles, jewelry, vacation homes, a sailboat and interests in several businesses. The FBI teamed with the New South Wales Police Force in Australia to nab Hanson and uncovered an illegal sports-gambling, money-laundering and drug-trafficking enterprise of thousands of kilograms of illegal narcotics that led to Hanson. More than 21 of his associates also were arrested. Hanson was released early from Federal Prison before his 21 year-term in March 2024.
Cocaine Quarterback: Signal-Caller for the Cartel is produced by Mark Wahlberg’s Unrealistic Ideas. The documentary is executive produced by Wahlberg, Stephen Levinson, Archie Gips, David Wendell, and Jody McVeigh-Schultz. McVeigh-Schultz is also set to direct.
