The "El Chapo" story will likely end up in a movie or TV show seen on both sides of the border.

The first question today is simple: who will get to play Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán?     

The second question: Will the cartel leader get paid for someone telling us his story?

It is that crazy, as my friend Allan Wall reported:

The article begins thusly: “There’s a new TV drama in the works about drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, and there’s plenty of controversy about it already. 

Andrés Granados, a lawyer for El Chapo, told the Associated Press last week that his client will sue Univision and Netflix if they air a new TV series on the imprisoned Mexican drug lord’s life without remunerating him.”

So here you have this drug kingpin sitting in jail, his future under consideration, and he’s suing media companies for the profits for a television series about his life of crime.

You can’t make this stuff up.

That's right.  Truth is better than fiction when we are talking about El Chapo!

Beyond telenovelas or films or maybe an audiobook read by El Chapo himself, there are some serious issues here for Mexico and the U.S.   

Let me remind you that we are talking about a man who makes Al Capone look like a Boy Scout leader.  El Chapo is responsible for the deaths of many innocent Mexicans who happened to be drinking coffee or walking in the park at the wrong time.  In simple language, El Chapo is a ruthless killer, or the kind of person who'd get the death sentence in Texas.

So let's get him up here as soon as possible.

First, El Chapo is a bank of information that U.S. authorities are desperate to start drawing from.  He probably knows about the financial infrastructure of many cartels.  He could easily identify a handful of companies in Mexico who are laundering cartel money.  It could be a mortal blow to his own cartel.

Second, El Chapo will likely be killed in Mexico if he stays there much longer.  Cartels in Mexico know that El Chapo will turn on them, especially in exchange for a lighter term or privileges such as seeing his U.S.-born children more frequently.  Cartels in Mexico fight each other for territory and profits.  They kill each other daily.

Third, there is a chance that El Chapo will escape again if he stays in Mexico.  He did it twice already!  Believe me: a third El Chapo escape, and President Enrique Peña-Nieto may be forced to resign.

Fourth, El Chapo would rather spend the rest of his life in a U.S. prison.  He won't be killed in Brooklyn, and I'm sure the prison warden will let him watch his own story on TV.     

In the meantime, El Chapo and Trump are what Mexico is talking about these days.  Maybe some enterprising Mexican will do a telenovela about "El Presidente Trump" meets "El Chapo"!

P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.