Prime Video sets September 25 premiere for Cocaine Quarterback: Signal-Caller for the Cartel, chronicling Owen Hanson’s shocking fall from USC football player to cartel drug kingpin.
Prime Video is diving deep into one of the most jaw-dropping true-crime stories in sports and organized crime. The streaming service announced that Cocaine Quarterback: Signal-Caller for the Cartel will premiere globally on September 25, 2025, with all three episodes available to stream in more than 240 countries and territories.
The three-part docuseries comes from Mark Wahlberg’s Unrealistic Ideas and unpacks the unbelievable rise and fall of Owen Hanson, a Redondo Beach native who went from a walk-on player for the National Championship-winning USC football team to a high-level cocaine trafficker working alongside one of the world’s most dangerous cartels.
At its core, the series is a cautionary tale of ambition, greed, and consequence. Following graduation, Hanson watched his teammates and friends move on to lucrative NFL careers, while he drifted into shady dealings. What began as illegal sports bookmaking quickly escalated into cocaine smuggling and money laundering. Eventually, Hanson struck a perilous alliance with a powerful Mexican drug lord.
But when his reckless laundering scheme lost millions of the cartel’s money, Hanson found himself trapped in a spiral of dangerous debts, absurd criminal blunders, and an FBI investigation that would ultimately bring his empire crashing down.
Cocaine Quarterback: Signal-Caller for the Cartel brings this wild true story to life with first-hand accounts from those who lived it—including Hanson himself—alongside shocking archival footage and stylish dramatizations. The result is a gripping chronicle of a man who climbed to the heights of both sports and the drug world, only to face the inevitable downfall.
The docuseries is produced by Wahlberg’s Unrealistic Ideas and executive produced by Mark Wahlberg, Stephen Levinson, Archie Gips, David Wendell, and Jody McVeigh-Schultz, with McVeigh-Schultz also directing.
Subscribers can stream all three episodes exclusively on Prime Video as part of the Prime membership, which combines savings, convenience, and entertainment in a single package.
With its mix of sports glory, cartel danger, and law enforcement drama, Cocaine Quarterback: Signal-Caller for the Cartel promises to be one of fall’s most talked-about true-crime releases.
