Mickey Rourke cast in The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer

Mikey Rourke has landed another great badass movie role! He will star in a movie based on the true story of Richard “The Ice Man” Kuklinski, called The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer, Rourke will take on the role of The Ice Man. 

The movie will be adapted from the 2006 book written by Philip Carlo. It tells the true story of a man who admitted to killing over 250 people while working for crime families in Newark, NJ and New York City.

This seems like a role that Rourke is perfect for. Producer Matty Beckerman agrees saying,

This is a role Mickey Rourke was born to play and, as a huge fan of David McKenna’s work, I am thrilled to have him on board.

This is the kind of role that could win Rourke an Oscar. What do you all think about Rourke taking on the role of this mad man?

Here's a description of the book:

Top Mob Hitman. Devoted Husband and father.  For thirty years, he led a double life—becoming the most notorious professional assassin in American history. This is the true story of THE ICE MAN

He was Sammy the Bull Gravano’s partner in the killing of Paul Castellano. John Gotti hired him to torture and kill his neighbor. A favorite among all the seven East Coast crime families, Richard “Ice Man” Kuklinski conducted his business with coldhearted intensity. By his own estimate, he murdered over two hundred men, taking enormous pride in his variety and ferocity of technique.

But behind Kuklinski’s trail of murder was a traditional, loving, Catholic family. A married father of three, Kuklinski was always regarded as being especially kind to children; he threw summer block parties in his New Jersey neighborhood, and he was always generous around Christmastime. And before his crimes finally caught up with him, his family never suspected a thing…

Here's the official Press Release:

Natural Selection CEO Matty Beckerman announced today at the Toronto International Film Festival a deal for the company to fully finance and produce a feature adaptation of the Philip Carlo tome "The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer" and have attached Mickey Rourke to star. David McKenna (who wrote American History XBlow) is penning the screenplay based on the eponymous book written by Carlo. Beckerman will produce. Graham Taylor at WME Global will handle North American sales on this title.

"The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer" is the true story of Richard "The Ice Man" Kuklinski who for over 40 years led a completely secretive double life as both a notorious professional assassin and a doting husband and father in suburban New Jersey.

"Richard Kuklinski's life and Philip Carlo's true account, three years in the making, is fascinating and unlike any mafia story that's been brought to the big screen," says Beckerman. "This is a role Mickey Rourke was born to play and as a huge fan of David McKenna's work, I am thrilled to have him on board," says Beckerman.

Carlo was born and raised in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, considered a major area for Mafia activity. Carlo's first book, "Stolen Flower," was about an abducted eight year old girl used by pornographers, and the efforts of the Neapolitan Mafia to get the child back. Carlo's second book "The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez," the second most popular true crime book after Capote's "In Cold Blood," is considered the definitive book on Ramirez, who terrorized Los Angeles county for fourteen months, breaking into homes in the middle of the night, taking twenty-nine lives. "The Ice Man," which follows the life and crimes of Kuklinski, a two-hundred-twenty pound Mafia hit-man became a New York Times bestseller. Diagnosed in 2005 with Lou Gehrig's Disease, Carlo is currently researching a book about Colombian drug lord Juan Carlos Ramirez Abbadia, with the full unprecedented access of the DEA.

Carlo said: "When I met Matty Beckerman, I immediately knew he was the producer to take the "Iceman" to the bigscreen. He immediately grasped the significance of a loving husband, caring father and a man who is a professional killer who travels around the world filling murder contracts at will, displaying an animal-like predatorial ability we've never seen before or since – an excessively powerful man who could kill with his bare hands or a long list of weapons, his wife and family having no idea. As bad as Richard was, he hated rapists with a passion and he could never see a child abused and not do something."

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