The film was based on the book Meu Nome Não é Johnny by Guilherme Fiuza.

[1] The film narrates the true story of João Guilherme Estrella, an upper-middle-class man from the State of Rio de Janeiro that would become the head of the drug traffic in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

João demonstrates a knack for entrepreneurship early on in his life, when he delivers papers as a teenager, unusual for an upper-middle-class teen in Brazil.

It is painted as a lifestyle that brings money and happiness without much effort, which speaks to the idea present in many Brazilian crime films of social mobility.

Though João is already in the upper tier of Brazilians, the prospect of rising even further without much effort acts as even more of an incentive to get involved in the glamorous lifestyle of drugs.