Michael Peña has joined Ruben Fleischer's GANGSTER SQUAD

Michael Peña has joined the cast of Ruben Fleischer's film Gangster Squad. Peña is a prolific actor. He had a breakout turn in Crash, and has starred in recent films Battle: Los Angeles, The Lincoln Lawyer and Everything Must Go. Audiences will see him in Fleischer's comedy 30 Minutes Or Lessalongside Jesse Eisenberg and Aziz Ansari.

Fleischer spoke about the Warner Bros. film in a recent interview with MTV:

“We’re going to start shooting in September, and it’s pretty exciting. It’s Sean Penn, Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling...and Michael Pena is featured in this movie. It’s a period gangster movie set in Los Angeles in 1949."

The movie will be based on a series of articles in The Los Angeles Times written by Paul Lieberman back in 2008. The articles examine an LAPD unit that's set up in the 1940s to fend off the growing influence of the East Coast Mafia in the city. The police group ended up becoming very powerful, and the battles with the Mafia escalated, leading to mayhem and betrayals. The LAPD unit was a secret "off the record" police task force who went after Meyer Harris "Mickey" Cohen, a high-profile gangster who was a member of the "Jewish Mafia". Gosling and Brolin are set to play the two cops, while Penn will play Cohen No word yet on Pena’s role.

I am sure that there will be a number of other cast announcements about this film. The ensemble cast is already amazing and will likely be nominated for a number of awards. Shooting starts in the fall for a 2012 release. Check out the video interview below and share your thoughts:

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