Derek Tsang, the filmmaker behind “3 Body Problem” and “Better Days,” is attached to direct and executive produce “Group 41,” a true-crime drama built around the first Asian-American squad inside the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
The project, from Jonah Greenberg’s Salty Pictures, is being presented at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest in Taipei. It is still in the packaging stage: seven years into development, the team is looking for a writer-showrunner and may attach cast before taking the series to platforms next year.
What the series covers
The 10-episode, 45-minute drama starts in New York in 1986. At the time, the DEA was aimed at Colombian cocaine networks and the city’s Mafia families. A small group of Asian-American agents forms Group 41 with an Irish prosecutor called “The Dragon Lady” and becomes the first team to pursue the No. 4 heroin flowing into the US.
Across a decade, the unit expands into an international task force. Its targets include Johnny Kon, a Hong Kong triad boss with a billion-dollar network; Johnny “Onionhead” Eng, a Chinatown gangster; and Khun Sa, a Golden Triangle warlord with a 20,000-strong narco-army.
Why the package has a series-long hook
The source material is a 180-page nonfiction book by Greenberg, Marc Iserlis and Aidan Swift, due for publication next year. Greenberg argues the story was repeatedly deprioritised while other law-enforcement stories became screen staples.
“It simply wasn’t considered as sexy to work Chinese cases in the 1980s,” Greenberg says.
He describes the property as “the war on drugs we actually won but which no one knows about.” That underdog positioning, with cooperation from the real people involved, gives the project a clear differentiator in a crowded true-crime market.
- 10 episodes at 45 minutes, with room for further seasons.
- 1986–1996 timeline spanning New York street gangs to Southeast Asian supply lines.
- Real-life cooperation and a forthcoming nonfiction source book.
- Taiwan co-production via Each Other Films, with ex-CAA TV co-head Adam Berkowitz as executive producer.
The market logic for buyers
Rather than pitch a single season, the producers are framing Khun Sa as a long-game antagonist — what Greenberg calls a “save the best for last” advantage. That gives a platform a multi-season narrative, which matters in a market where subscriber retention often depends on returnable series.
The TCCF visit is partly about packaging. The team wants to examine Taiwan and regional incentives to reduce the budget, explore Asian distribution, and line up financing before approaching US platforms. For buyers, that sequencing could make the project arrive with more of its risk already answered.
Greenberg says the deeper draw is purpose: agents such as Cathy Palmer and the Group 41 team dismantled a heroin pipeline from Southeast Asia to the US, and he compares the project’s moral backbone to “Serpico.”
The Taiwan Creative Content Fest runs from November 6 to 9 at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center.
Source: Variety
