George Clooney coming to Coronado?

It’s the summer of ’69, and a Spanish teacher/swim instructor at Coronado High School masterminds what would come to be the West Coast’s most enterprising and successful marijuana-smuggling operation. All it took was a handful of Lou Villar’s hippie surfer pals to grab their boards and float the pot across the Tijuana border. The $100 million reefer empire eventually struck a reef in the form of interference on the part of the DEA.

Fact-based events such as these can only happen in the movies, right? That’s what George Clooney’s Smokehouse Pictures and Columbia Studios are banking on. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Debora Cahn, Emmy-nominated writer and consulting producer on Grey’s Anatomy, is on board to adapt Joshuah Bearman’s investigative article “Coronado High.”

Bearman also penned the Wired article that inspired Argo, the 2012 thriller that won a Best Picture Oscar for Clooney and producing partner Grant Heslov. No word on who will star as Villar or whether Clooney will direct. For all we know they’ll green-screen Coronado on the Burbank backlot. If they do bring a crew to town, here’s hoping there’s a part in it for local treasure Alan Arkin, who earned a best supporting Oscar nom in Argo.

And while I’m dreaming, it sure would be sweet if cinematographer Robert Elswit, a frequent Clooney/Heslov collaborator (Good Night, and Good Luck, The Men Who Stare at Goats) and subject of next week’s slam-bang Big Screen interview, is hired to shoot.

Read Joshuah Bearman’s Coronado High here.