Will Todd Phillips’ Next Film Be About Stoner Arms Dealers?

Todd Phillips should be right at home with these guys: The director of ‘The Hangover’ has optioned the feature film rights to Guy Lawson’s Rolling Stone article ‘Arms and the Dudes,’ which will be developed as a potential directing vehicle for Phillips, according to Variety, The dudes in this case are two stoners who became major arms dealers.

The story, which appeared in the March 31, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone, tells the saga of two American kids from Miami, David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, who got into arms dealing during the Bush administration and won multi-million contracts from the Pentagon to arm America’s allies in Afghanistan — before crashing and burning by handling illegal shipments of Chinese ammunition and getting busted by the feds in Aug. 2007. The article points out the boondoggles and corruption in the procuring and arms dealings fostered by the Pentagon.

This could be a change of pace for Phillips, whose forte is raunchy humor and sexual innuendo, from ‘Old School’ through ‘The Hangover’ and, of course, the $ 562 million worldwide success of ‘The Hangover Part II.’ Phillips hasn’t picked his next directing project; if he chooses this one, let’s hope he handles it wisely and reverently; the project has the makings of a great expose, a kind of ‘Social Network’ for arms dealing.