Gangster movies have tended to be a bit hit and miss at the box office, but there's been a lot of excitement in Hollywood about The Gangster Squad (previously known as Tale From The Gangster Squad), with Warner putting it on the fast-track, trying to attarct top directors and pulling together a great cast.
Now Deadline reports that Giovanni Ribisi is signing up, joining a supberb looking emsemble that already includes Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Michael Peña and Anthony Mackie. Penn will play hardman gangster, Mickey Cohen, a former boxer who became an associate of the likes Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel. He was a man about Los Angeles, and also a suspected sociopath who caused a great deal of harm to those he came in contact with. Gosling and Brolin will be two cops trying to bring this notorious gangster down in the late 1940s.
Ribisi will be Conway Keeler, a cop in the group who is a master of electronics and wires - and in the 1940s that meant something rather different to the high-tech surveillance and techniques we have today.
It's not certainly when the movie will start shooting, but hopefully Fleischer will get on to it quickly after he finishes promoting his upcoming comedy, 30 Minutes Or Less.