Derek Tsang to Direct DEA True-Crime Series 'Group 41'

Derek Tsang, the filmmaker behind "3 Body Problem" and "Better Days," will direct and executive produce "Group 41," a true-crime drama about the first Asian-American squad at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Jonah Greenberg's Salty Pictures is launching the project at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) in Taipei, running Nov. 6–9 at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center.

The series runs 10 episodes of 45 minutes each. It opens in New York in 1986, while the DEA chases Colombian cocaine cartels and the Mafia's "Five Families." A scrappy crew of Asian-American agents teams up with a hard-charging Irish prosecutor nicknamed "The Dragon Lady" to form DEA Group 41 — the first squad to chase the No. 4 heroin pouring into the U.S. through a network few had noticed.

Who are the targets?

Over the next decade, the underfunded unit grows into an elite international task force. Its targets include:

• Johnny Kon, a Hong Kong boss whose billion-dollar triad spans five continents
• Johnny "Onionhead" Eng, a brutal Chinatown gangster
• Khun Sa, a Golden Triangle warlord commanding a 20,000-strong narco-army

The show explores immigration, prejudice and what the American Dream costs, telling stories from both sides of the law. Greenberg sees room for several seasons across the 10-year saga, with Khun Sa looming as a Colonel Kurtz-like final target — what he calls a "save the best for last" advantage.

Why the 1980s setting?

Greenberg, a former managing director of CAA's China office whose credits include producing Zhang Yimou's "Shadow," wrote the source book with Marc Iserlis and Aidan Swift. Both are also producers and writers on the series. He argues the era beats present-day policing for drama, because surveillance technology now gives cops the upper hand.

"Back in the 1980s when you went undercover, you went deep. And all the bad guys carry guns, and the danger to cops and informants is real," Greenberg says.

The crimes, and the agents who solved them, drew little attention at the time. Neither the media nor even the DEA prioritized Asian cases, he says.

"It simply wasn't considered as sexy to work Chinese cases in the 1980s. People were busy watching 'Miami Vice' (myself chief among them!) and watching Rudy Giuliani convict the Italian mobsters," Greenberg says.

"So it's an underdog story. It's literally the war on drugs we actually won but which no one knows about," he adds.

What happens next?

The source material — a 180-page nonfiction book, "The Incredible Story of D.E.A. Group 41 & The Rise and Fall of the Asian Heroin Trade" — will be published next year. Greenberg says the team has the trust and cooperation of the real people involved.

Taiwan's Each Other Films, co-founded by co-producer Tiffany Yu-chia Chen, is on board as co-production partner. Former CAA TV co-head Adam Berkowitz of Lenore Entertainment Group serves as executive producer.

After seven years of development, the team's next steps are finding a writer-showrunner and possibly attaching cast before pitching to platforms next year. At TCCF, they want to learn how incentives in Taiwan and the region could offset the budget, and to explore Asian distribution, so production, financing and distribution are lined up before approaching U.S. platforms.

Greenberg says he has stayed with the project out of a wish to tell stories about people driven by purpose, pointing to Cathy Palmer and the Group 41 agents who took apart a heroin pipeline running from Southeast Asia to the U.S.

"'Serpico' was always a foundational film for me and well, maybe nobody liked the guy, but he lived by a certain code. And that's what interests me," he says.