Hollywood director Ridley Scott is teaming up with studio giant Fox to film a novel paralleling the life of escaped Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, a report said Thursday.

The "Blade Runner" and "Alien" filmmaker will adapt "The Cartel" by Don Winslow, published just a month before the July 12 announcement that Guzman had escaped for the second time in 14 years, said the Hollywood Reporter.

Scott will direct the film, based on a screenplay by Shane Salerno, who will also produce, said the industry journal.

Winslow did extensive research for "The Cartel", spending over a decade learning about El Chapo.

It includes a fictional version of Guzman's first jail escape in 2001, when he supposedly hid in a laundry cart, noted the journal.

This month's escape from a maximum-security prison outside Mexico City dealt a humiliating setback to Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, just 17 months after the drug lord's much-celebrated capture.

The episode saw Guzman slip out of his cell through a 1.5-kilometer (one-mile) tunnel dug under his private shower in the Altiplano maximum-security prison, some 90 kilometers west of Mexico City.

Last week, Mexican prosecutors investigating the escape formally placed 22 prison officials in custody on Tuesday over suspicions that the infamous fugitive had inside help.
Source: AFP