Jose Padilha is set to write and direct a movie based on “Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine and South America’s Strangest Jail,” a memoir Thomas McFadden wrote with Rusty Young.

Marching Powder, the working title of the film, is a drama that Don Cheadle has long wanted to star in and produce.

Cheadle intends to play McFadden, a British drug trafficker. He was arrested in Bolivia and jailed in La Paz’s San Pedro prison. During his six-year stretch, McFadden served as a tour guide in a prison that thrived under a capitalist system made possible by bribery of officials.