NEW YORK — Eric Newman, showrunner of the Netflix show “Narcos: Mexico,” sat rapt in the gallery on a recent day when Lucero Guadalupe Sánchez López, former mistress of the Mexican crime lord known as El Chapo, tearfully testified in U.S. District Court.

“I got lucky — it was a really good day,” Newman said.

The drug conspiracy trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, began in November, and Newman said it had been “an amazing open book for us.” He made a special trip to New York just to watch the proceedings in person. “To hear these people talked about in the first person is remarkable.”

In reality, there have been many good days at El Chapo’s trial in Brooklyn — at least for those looking for scripted-material fodder. In 10 weeks of testimony, 56 witnesses for the prosecution have described nearly every possible detail about Guzmán’s Sinaloa drug cartel: the high-tech methods used to traffic tons of cocaine, the gruesome murders the kingpin ordered and committed and the “Game of Thrones"-like dynamics within the organization.

But the trial has also uncovered the absurd. For example, during one of her two days of testimony, Sánchez said she had once accompanied the kingpin when he had eluded officials while fleeing naked through a secret tunnel.

Just on that day of his visit, Newman heard how Sánchez had stamped kilos of marijuana with a heart and the number four, signifying her beloved Guzmán’s April 4 birthday, and about the time Mexican marines found plastic bananas filled with cocaine in El Chapo’s hideout after a raid in 2014.

The material has almost seemed beyond the imagination of any Hollywood writer.

The stories will certainly be fruitful for Newman’s show, whose first season premiered in 2018 on Netflix. The series was a follow-up to “Narcos,” which in three seasons chronicled the Colombian drug wars of the 1980s and ’90s and focused on Pablo Escobar.

“Narcos: Mexico” details the 1980s rise of the Guadalajara cartel, led by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo. Guzmán is a supporting character on the show.

Tidbits from the trial could filter their way into future scripts for “Narcos: Mexico,” which has not yet begun production on its next season. But that has not stopped people associated with the show from doing some firsthand research.

On Monday, Alejandro Edda, the actor who plays Guzmán in the series, showed up at the courthouse to watch the day’s proceedings and instantly became part of the absurdity. After El Chapo’s lawyers told their client that the actor who played him on the show was in the gallery, the kingpin turned around from his spot on the defense table, smiled and waved at Edda.

“I didn’t smile back. I was just paying respect to him,” said Edda, who lives in Mexico. “I was shocked in a way. He has a very intense look. His eyes say a lot. He’s a bit intimidating.”

Netflix has already coproduced “El Chapo,” a Spanish language telenovela about Guzmán’s life that concluded in 2018 after three seasons. The streaming service also released “The Day I Met El Chapo,” a docuseries in which Mexican actress Kate del Castillo recounted her role in helping to set up Guzmán’s interview with Sean Penn for a now infamous interview for Rolling Stone.

But there still could be room for more El Chapo-themed projects, given the wealth of material that has come from his trial. Del Castillo attempted to secure the rights to Guzmán’s story for a movie, but Newman said such an arrangement would not be necessary.

“You don’t need life rights for the most famous drug trafficker on the face of the Earth,” he said. “The great thing about slander is you have to prove damage. What could you show El Chapo doing that he would say, ‘Hey, you’ve gone too far. You’ve besmirched my good name!’? I’d like to see that trial.”

Newman said he heard from associates of Guzmán that the drug lord enjoyed the early seasons of “Narcos.” “I don’t know if that’s good or bad,” Newman said. “But I believe we’ve never glorified these guys. They lead these incredibly stressful lives being hunted and end up dead or captured on a roof.”

Tom Fontana, a producer of the TV crime dramas “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Oz,” said he could imagine a series based on one of Guzman’s lieutenants who have testified against him in the trial.

“El Chapo seems like the same guy at the beginning of the story that he is now. It’s not like he had a moment where he said, ‘Oh, man, I’m a really bad guy,'” Fontana said. “Whereas a guy who was in the middle of it all and ended up turning, that’s the story you’d want to do.”

Peter Tolan, who plumbed a Mafioso’s psyche for laughs in the scripts he co-wrote for “Analyze This” and “Analyze That,” envisioned a satirical take on the tidbit revealed in the trial that Guzmán wanted to write and direct his own biopic. “There’s probably a ‘Get Shorty’ version where a fringe Hollywood producer gets involved with this guy and sees it as his meal ticket,” he said, invoking the Elmore Leonard novel that spawned two darkly comic movies and a TV series.

Tolan, Fontana and Newman all agreed Guzmán’s desire to direct his own biopic was a bad idea. “He’s a little too close to the material,” Tolan deadpanned.

Newman said El Chapo’s behavior in the courtroom gave him insight into the kingpin’s ego.

“It feels like a circus. He comes in, and he’s blowing kisses to the courtroom illustrators,” Newman said. “He seems to be enjoying it. Either that or he has no concept of what lies ahead for him, which is as close to certainty as you can get spending the rest of his life in a supermax prison.”

Of course, gangsters have been figures of public fascination going back to the original 1932 “Scarface,” a fictionalized biopic of Al Capone. Guzmán fits squarely in that tradition. “He’s this little dynamo,” Newman said of the diminutive drug trafficker, whose nickname means “shorty.” “He’s like a Latin James Cagney character.”

Unlike Cagney in films like “The Public Enemy” and “White Heat,” though, Edda does not play the lead role in “Narcos: Mexico.” The most recent season ended in 1985 when El Chapo was still a soldier in the organization of Félix Gallardo, who is played by Diego Luna.

His screen time could increase considerably in future seasons, however. “At this point of our story, he’s a bit player,” Newman said. “But he will continue to rise within the cartel.”

The possibility of an El Chapo-themed spinoff has not been ruled out. “Every season of ‘Narcos’ is a spinoff in a way,” Newman said. “We’re in a constant state of spinoff, because that’s what the drug business does,” with its high body count.

In any case, Guzmán’s story rolls on in court and on screen. “It’s just crazy — it goes on and on until today,” Edda said. “No one could have planned this timing better. It’s perfect.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.