Director Ruben Fleisher talks about GANGSTER SQUAD
Zombieland director Ruben Fleisher's next film project Gangster Squad is a film I'm really looking forward to seeing. This is going to be a great cops and mobster film, that has the right elements of a new classic gangster film. The film already has an incredible cast that includes, Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Michael Pena and Anthony Mackie. Bryan Cranston was at one point in negotiations to star in the film as well, but he unfortunately had to drop out due to scheduling issues.
Check out a video interview below of Fleisher talking about the movie at this years Comic-Con.
The script was written by Will Beall, a former Los Angeles Police officer, and the movie is 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".
Cohen started out as hired muscle for Al Capone in Chicago, but blossomed as a mogul after being sent to Los Angeles by Murder, Inc. kingpin Meyer Lansky to surveille Bugsy Siegel, who Cohen helped set up the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas and ran it's sports betting operation. He also ran a panoply of L.A. businesses, presumably as fronts to launder money — including floral shops, paint stores, nightclubs, casinos, gas stations, a haberdashery, and an ice cream parlor — before getting busted for tax evasion in 1950 and serving four years in federal prison.
You should definitely read the series of articles over at the LA Times. Then you'll see for yourself what an awesome movie this will make.